New supply chain types: food, ore

[dmcbride]

Rather than requiring the sender to pick a food type, allow the system to pick for you. For space stations, it really doesn't matter what type.

I'd suggest four choices: food (max), food (even), ore (max), and ore (even). The max versions would pick whichever food/ore type(s) that are max production, the even versions would pick evenly across all food/ore types based on current production.

Using Algae and Fungus as examples, say you were producing 60/hr algae and 40/hr fungus (and no other food), and chose to send 40/hr food to the target. Under "max", this would send 30/hr algae and 10/hr fungus because after the first 20, both algae and fungus would be the max production types and contribute evenly. However, under "even", this would send 24/hr algae and 16/hr fungus.

The same algorithm could also be used quite nicely for pushing food/ore to planets, or for posting to the TM, SST, etc.

[icydee]

that's a bit more complicated than I planned, and difficult to describe to people.

I prefer it to take the same percentage from each type, what you call 'even' I think.

[dmcbride]

Yes, more complicated. Difficult to describe? That's what the wiki's for. This game has a number of areas that are "difficult to describe" - but Spirithawke's good at filling out the wiki :)

The reason I suggested these four options is that when it comes to food, I generally prefer max (usually algae or fungus) so that I can keep food variety maximised, but for ore I prefer even (P35 planet sources), again, pretty much to keep ore variety maximised. However, if the algorithms are written to ignore whether it's acting on food vs ore, then we can maximise flexibility without much effect to the code (or really the documentation since we can document the two methods in one wiki page (each?) and refer to them elsewhere).

[dmcbride]

Actually, now that I think of it, even on P35 I prefer "max" - because on a P35, "max" and "even" are the same thing. If I had a non-P35, such as a GG, I'd still likely want "max" for supplying SSs, again, so that the supplier would maximise ore variety. "Even" is what supply pods send, which gives the receiver variety, and what I'd use for supplying a new colony to get it up and running on its own, but for SSs where the types don't matter, I'd rather keep the variety on the supplying planet and just send max.

[Spirithawke]

Wondering if there has been any progress on this...