Production time error?

I've been watching this for about a month now and can't seem to find my error (I assumed it was my error but now I'm thinking it's an error in the game or the way I understand production times).

Here's the example, you figure out what's going on:
I built a steel smelter with a production time of 12m 24s
I built a steel weaponsmith with a production time of 24m 40s

Steel weaponsmith uses 2 steel bars per cycle. It takes 24m 48s to create 2 steel bars. Without buffs I am somehow able to producing more bars than I need. I've never run out of bars, I actually have 180 more than I need and that number keeps growing. It is not due to buffs...originally I thought I was going to need to buff the building every once in a while to keep up but I've never had to because I've always had an excess of bars.

Any thoughts? Anyone else experience something similar?

Rantankerous

Are you looking at production time or Overall production time? For example, I'm not to steel yet, but my copper runs like this:

1 of my Copper Smelters says this:

Storehouse -> Workyard: 18 sec
Work preparations: 18 sec
Production Time: 6 min 0 sec
Cleanup: 18 sec
Workyard -> Storehouse: 18 sec

Overall Production Time: 7m 12 sec

And one of my Bronze Weaponsmiths says this:

Storehouse -> Workyard: 12 seconds
Work preparations: 12 seconds
Production time: 6 min 0 sec
Cleanup: 12 sec
Workyard -> Storehouse: 12 sec

Overall Production Time: 6 min 48 sec


When you work with comparing numbers on production rates, what you have to account for is the Overall Production Time. Not the Production Time in the center. You may take longer to actually "make" the item, but there are still the times for set up, cleaning up, and moving the finished item to and from your storage.

So, in the above example, I get the ingredients, head to the smelter, smelt 1 copper bar and take it to the storehouse every 7 minutes and 12 seconds.

The weaponsmith, every 6 minutes and 48 seconds, goes to the storehouse, picks up a copper bar, heads to his workshop, make the sword, and takes the finished sword back to the storehouse.

So, just make certain you're looking at the time at the bottom of the details screen that says "OVERALL PRODUCTION TIME".

Rantankerous,

With those production times as you posted, it works out to about (-) .63 Steel Bars a day. One buff on that Steel Smelter could def have skewed your impression of what is going on. I had roughly the same set up and and I was wondering also why I was not running out of Steel Bars. Even one Sandwhich Buff (self-buffed) adds 9.63 Steel Bars to your inventory - enough to cover over nine days of unbuffed production. So there may be nothing going on.

Yes, I'm counting overall production time. And no, I haven't buffed the building. Even since I made the post 2 days ago my steel bars have increased without buffs.

It's very odd. The only explanation I could think of is if the steel sword building quits working sometimes on it's own, but I've never seen it with the ! and I always make sure I have plenty of iron bars and coal available.

Here is my suspicion that I was hoping someone else would post on their own to confirm mine (if they read mine first it might influence their thinking).
I think that when production is complete there are a few seconds between the end of a production and the beginning of the next production cycle. I've watched the timer on buildings at the beginning of a cycle and the timer doesn't start counting down imediately. I haven't actually timed to see how many seconds are "wasted" but I have watched. Anyone else watched for this? The easiest way to tell is on a building that you've already stopped production. After you hit the button to get it working again it'll finish that cycle within 20 seconds or so, then watch the timer (refreshing the window by clicking off then back on) and you'll see what I'm talking about.