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Topic: How to force production? (stop skip production)

player123

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Joined: 2011-09-03, 06:08
Posts: 11
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2011-09-03, 06:50

The production skipping "feature" of the economy in this game is retarded and driving me mad. I'm trying to expand fairly quickly a long, long way away from my HQ, and it takes forever to get anything built because the game insists on fetching everything from the HQ (Which has stock of what I want) instead of producing what I need locally in the factories I've build and storing it in the local warehouse!

If I want a factory or worker not to produce I'll just click the stop button associated with them, I DON"T need the game deciding when to skip production for me!

Examples of what I mean in the image links below:

http://s2.postimage.org/9sphaouap/WL01.jpg

http://s4.postimage.org/9v3rkyq5d/WL02.jpg

http://s2.postimage.org/9spsvg9r5/WL03.jpg

http://s4.postimage.org/9v3y7444h/WL04.jpg

http://s2.postimage.org/9sq9etqox/WL_version.jpg

Now, how do I modify the conf files for the buildings so that they never skip production (unless I click their stop button)?

By conf file, I mean the following (sawmill as an example)

size=medium output=wood soundfx=../../../sound/sawmill/sawmill

[aihints] is_basic=true

[buildcost] trunk=2 stone=1 wood=1

[working positions] carpenter=1

[compatibility working positions] toolsmith=flash carpenter

[inputs] trunk=8

[programs] work=_Work

[work] return=skipped unless economy needs wood consume=trunk:2 sleep=16500 # much faster than barbarians hardener playFX=../../../sound/sawmill/sawmill 180 animate=working 20000 # much more faster than barbarians hardener produce=wood

[idle] pics=sawmill_i_??.png # ??? hotspot=54 70

[working] pics=sawmill_i_??.png # ??? hotspot=54 70

The offending line as far as I can tell is "return=skipped unless economy needs wood", but I don't know how to modify it.


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Nasenbaer
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Joined: 2009-02-21, 18:17
Posts: 828
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Location: Germany
Posted at: 2011-09-03, 08:13

Hi player123,

Perhaps I missinterprete you, but please try to find calmer words the next time - you have to keep in mind, that Widelands is developed by people in their free time and nobody recieves money for their work - same with the forum support like this one is. It is one thing to dislike a feature, but another to write things like "retarded" or "I DON'T need..."

Anyway the answer to you question is simple: Remove that line completely and the building will work as you would like it to.

[work] consume=trunk:2 sleep=16500 # much faster than barbarians hardener playFX=../../../sound/sawmill/sawmill 180 animate=working 20000 # much more faster than barbarians hardener produce=wood

Btw. that really IS a feature, not a bug and you can set things up quite easier, than with just start/stopping buildings just give it a try with:

  • The priority buttons right to the wares in a productionsite
  • The "prefare storage/do not store/move out of this warehouse" feature for wares
  • The general ware preferences to set the target quantity for wares.

Cheers Nasenbaer


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player123

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Joined: 2011-09-03, 06:08
Posts: 11
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2011-09-03, 08:21

Thank you!


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player123

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Joined: 2011-09-03, 06:08
Posts: 11
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2011-09-03, 08:24

Not wanting to be rude, and I appreciate this is a community built game, but, I frankly don't know how half of this game works despite years and years playing The Settlers because the documentation and in-game help is absolutely terrible and tells you next to nothing (most of it is poorly translated one-liners that often barely make any sense).


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Nasenbaer
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Joined: 2009-02-21, 18:17
Posts: 828
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Location: Germany
Posted at: 2011-09-03, 08:57

player123 wrote: Not wanting to be rude, and I appreciate this is a community built game, but, I frankly don't know how half of this game works despite years and years playing The Settlers because the documentation and in-game help is absolutely terrible and tells you next to nothing (most of it is poorly translated one-liners that often barely make any sense).

I agree - the problem in most cases is, that there are mainly two types of Widelands players - those who are involved in development of the game and thus are familiar with almost every feature and those who get in touch with Widelands and have to understand a quite complex game without prior knowledge.

It is hard for us developers to find out, what is obvious and what is not, as everything is for us ;).

Anyway there are some helps like pages in this wiki (take a look at MainPage ), the in game tutorial, the campaigns and the (yet very rare) in game help windows.

If you like the game in general and would like to help a bit, please help ! Every helping hand is welcome face-smile.png - e.g. the wiki can be edited and therefore improved by every registered user. The translations are translated via a tool on lauchpad.net directly in your browser (see TranslatingWidelands page). And there are even more other things like improving graphics, sound, music, maps, missions and last but not least of course the program code.

Cheers Nasenbaer


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Astuur
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Joined: 2009-02-28, 10:08
Posts: 733
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Location: Frankfurt / Germany
Posted at: 2011-09-03, 10:56

Just to add my 2 c to Nasebaer's comment, that I otherwise support in all its aspects, let me point you to the minimal storage amount, that can be adjusted by clicking on any of the road flags and than on the wares symbol.
In this way you can produce a configurable number for each ware "for the stock" without disabling the demand driven production totally.
To make such changes permanent, you can also add or modify the "default_target_quantity=nnn" statement in each ware's conf file.
Not so retarded ... clever rather face-smile.png


Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills.
I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino).

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player123

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Joined: 2011-09-03, 06:08
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2011-09-03, 14:48

Okay, okay, sorry about the retarded comment! But its very annoying waiting forever for a 95% complete building to finish just because the economy wants to haul goods halfway or more across a map rather produce them locally to where they are needed. Never happened in Settlers 1 & 2.

What is the use of building new factories if they are only going to sit idle?!

The enemy just loves it! waits for the situation to happen then attacks while you are waiting on a marble column or some such.

Edited: 2011-09-03, 14:50

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Venatrix
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Joined: 2010-10-05, 20:31
Posts: 449
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Posted at: 2011-09-03, 15:12

Well, as it was said, you can send wares to specific ware houses and make sure, that they will be sent there all the time, if needed. And you can rise the target quantity of a ware and stop the production in specific production sites, so that the ones nearer the border will produce more of the stuff you want. What’s the problem with it? The game is about economy and if you don’t get the ware that you need (and have, if I understood right), where you want it, then maybe there’s a problem within your way to build your economy. Changing anything in conf-files in other purposes than testing, may be considered as cheating. That’s definitely not a fine way to solve your problems.

The enemy just loves it! waits for the situation to happen then attacks while you are waiting on a marble column or some such.

Well, I don’t think the AI waits for special circumstances like that one. It’s too stupid at the moment. Other human player… Yes, when they see, you got problems with your economy, they know that’s the best time to attack. But that’s normal, isn’t it?


Two is the oddest prime.

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player123

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Joined: 2011-09-03, 06:08
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Pry about Widelands
Posted at: 2011-09-03, 17:25

I'm sure you can send certain wares to certain warehouses, but I don't have a clue how you do that in game and I'm not sure I want every copy of a certain ware produced ending up in just one warehouse anyhow. That doesn't help me expand in multiple directions at once.

The change I asked for and have made in my game makes it work more like settlers 1 did and that is good enough for me.

As for cheating, I don't play multiplayer, only vs the computer AI (its a time-filler game when I travel etc).


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Venatrix
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Joined: 2010-10-05, 20:31
Posts: 449
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Location: Germany
Posted at: 2011-09-03, 20:36

The thing is, Widelands is NOT Settlers, though it definitely origins from Settlers 2. Its economy became more complex. That’s a point most players that stick to the game like very much. So it is in some aspects more difficult to play. For example it is impossible to really reach a balance in production (such as: you need exactly three farms for one mill etc.). And it is essential, that production sites (apart from the ones who produce renewable ressources) skip there work when their product is not needed, especially when their ressources are needed at other places.

I don’t know, what exactly happens, if you send the wares out of the HQ and have different ware houses that are ready to take them. I suppose the next one takes them. But you can tell them to stop taking that ware, so that the next on the road go to another one. If you have time, that’s a possible way to move your wares, where you want them. By the way: When you open the ware house menu (or the HQ menu) you can click on the wares, I hope, I remember right, that that can change their attribute (store all of them here, don’t take new ones, get them all out). I have the developement version and I think, that ui changed since build16… (Now you can choose the wares and click buttons on the bottom of the window.)


Two is the oddest prime.

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