possible upgraded building suggestion

[Sigmar]

im not sure how many people have done it but i know i'v done it a tleast twice so far lolol. and that is to upgrade a building that over extended my resource chain causing bottle necks.

so i was thinking, why cant we have an option on the building to reduce the production cycle?

by that i mean, if you upgrade a building to level 2 or 3 ..ect have the option to lower its production cycle by a level or 2. i know i have caught my self doing it more then once, during my mass upgrade sprints upgrading a building that over produces my raw production (good example 1 lv 3 mill 1 lv 2 bakery.. upgrading the bakery and winding up bottle necking bread do to slower milling times)
so instead of having to watch the big red ! pop up and wait for 1 or 2 or 3 raw goods to be finished for the building to produce once more "how even fleeting that is"
have the option to go under the production details and lower its production.

take a level 2 or 3 bakery and lower its cycle to produce at level 1 or level 2.. (instead of needing 3 bags of flour at lv 3 have it make 1 bread with 1 flour)

im not suggesting change the overall production time or upgrade costs or even production costs as a whole. just have the option that at level 2+ drop its cycle 1 level. so if you find you out upgraded your resources you just lower the buildings demands and keep it producing at a slower rate until you upgrade or build more buildings to support it.

if you wanted to get around abusing it. put a 24hr timer on it between cycle changing (claim its for re calibrating the machines if you wanna RP-style it)

it would not change the buildings at all, you would still need the raw resources but instead of having to wait for 2x or 3x the stock for 1 production you could choose to downgrade the production cycle for a lower output, but keep it online (other wise you have to shut it down or watch it be unproductive for how ever long it takes your other buildings to meet its demand)

~sorry for rambling im horrible when it comes to writing out my jambles of thoughts lololol~

[Gata]

You can stop the building from producing until you have source resources accumulated and then turn it back on. No reason to overcomplicate things.

[Tapewormz]

I agree with Gata, over complicating the game mechanics isn't a step in the right direction. Part of the challenge to a worker placement game is learning to micromanage your resources and the chain. That's what make these kinds of games fun.

Also you can probably take advantage of your friend list if someone on your list is particularly successful...just visit them and try and duplicate their build.

[Lordebon]

An element that makes that kind of unnecessary in this game is buffing: you can tweak your production chains using buffs when upgrades don't make it an even number for what you can do at a given time.

For example, lets say you have 2 cutters and 3 foresters to start, all level 1: everything's great and in balance. But you need more wood, so you upgrade a cutter and a forester to L2... but now you're going to be getting stumps everywhere, since you have 4/3 (1.33) instead of 3/2 (1.5) for your forester:cutter ratio. But you can tweak it by buffing either your L2 forester (giving you 6/3, or a whopping 2.0) or a L1 forester (giving you 5/3, or 1.67, more than enough).

Another great example is gold production. When you look at it from a base material standpoint, it sucks: for the giant cost of a gold mine, you get only 300 gold ore which makes a pitiful 37.5 coins, because its 2 gold ore per bar, and 4 bars per coins, and making coins takes 2x as long as anything else so you'll need 2 smelters and 2 mines per coinage... what a mess!
But then enter buffing... in one cycle of a coinage, a single buffed mine will make 4 gold ore (2 cycles @ 2/cycle). That 4 gold ore is enough for 1 smelter to make 4 bars from that 4 gold ore (2 cycles at 2/cycle consuming 2 ore/cycle). Those 4 gold bars are enough for that coinage to make 2 coins in that single cycle. So now with the magic of buffing, not only do you reduce your building needs significantly, but you also go from a pitiful 37.5 coins per mine (at a ratio of 8 gold deposit per coin) to a whopping 300 coins per mine (at a ratio of 1 gold deposit per coin).

You can do the same thing where resources are shared. ATM, I have 9 levels of hardwood sawmill, 1 level of longbowmaker, and 6 levels of cutter. Total flow in is 12 hardwood per 9-minute period. Total flow out is 9+6 (longbowmaker takes 16 per 8/3 cycles, equivalent to 6 per 9-minute cycle) = 15 per 9-minute period. Now without doing anything, resources will get used and my longbowmaker will get the short of it (since it requires 16 at a time)... it will have to wait 5-6 cycles for the 3 not used by the sawmills to accumulate, then it'll be able to run (in 2.67 cycles), leaving it down roughly half the time. Now you could tweak things by lowering your hardwood production (i.e. turn off 3 levels of sawmill to bring things equal), or you could just buff your cutters: fully buffed that'd be a total flow in of 24, leaving a whopping 9 per cycle (ie 1 hardwood per minute) extra to save up for when you weren't buffing.

[Sigmar]

you guys did not understand what i was suggesting.
when you upgrade a building you lose access to the lower "tier" production. so basically if you have a fir sawmill making 1 plank at level 1 at a cost of 1 fir log, at level 3 its making 3 at a cost of 3 logs, NOW say for example you decide to remove a fir logger or find you have upgraded the sawmill but do not have the supplies to upgrade a logger or two to support it, after you have upgraded it. BUT you only have 1 sawmill.
rather then using more building licences to make another level 1 sawmill and turning off the level 3. you just go in to the production details of the level 3 sawmill and turn down its production to level 2 or level 1 production. there by no longer producing 3 at a cost of 3.

it does not over complicate anything, by default the building will use the next level production, this would be a means to keep production going without having to turn off buildings (good if you go to bed and still want to wake up to having wheat and not 6 disabled farms or disabled mills do to lack of wheat.

simply adding a drop down menu to the production amount and setting it to product a level or 2 lower or higher (depending if you set it lower before hand) really doesn't make anything complicated and would actually help when you produce too much of one good and still want to produce it but at lower quantities.. without deleting or turning off a building.

seeing as there is no way to "downgrade" any buildings without totally deleting them and rebuilding them (total waste of resources) this would make it more beneficial to actually upgrading buildings. leaving deletion only required for moving buildings or freeing up obsolete buildings.

[Rantankerous]

I like the idea, I don't think it's complicated at all. I'm not sure I would use it but the idea has nothing wrong with it. It doesn't change the mechanics of the game, doesn't change the production chains, etc.

it's just a preference thing and much more realistic. In a real factory if you want to slow production you are able to slow it to whatever speed you choose. It's never either full speed or stop.

[apoth]

pressing the stop button works for me