Production Buildings, Labor, and Manpower

[RedKetchup]

too much long time i didnt played that game ^^ IMO
i cant tell. the ones who can answer this are @irrelevant  and @Nilla !!

[irrelevant]

So taverns have a work of 10, and if I'm not mistaken, put out 10 units of Ale a batch, and i read somewhere that they can (provided you are draining them rapidly to a TP) produce about 500 units a year. With one worker. So this translates to roughly 500 work units/year. Coats and tools are usually each produced in batches of 2, yes? 500 work units divided by 5 is 100 batches, so about 200 coats made a year per tailor sound about right? Tools about the same?

The most production I've ever gotten in one year (that I noticed):
Tailor - 264 wool coats, makes me think that 300 is possible
Smith - 194 iron tools, makes me think that 200 is possible
Brewer - 580 ale, makes me think that 600 is possible
Chopper - maybe 1000-1200? Never really studied the choppers, so I don't know what to think 

The smith and tailor were both with @slink's specialized markets directly across the street, so this was near optimal.
The brewer was fronted on a market with ~1000 fruit always in stock; again, optimal.

[Chon Waen]

Hmm, maybe need to figure out how much initial ingredients the tailor/blacksmith/brewer stock in before cycling production.  Could be that needing more ingredients and maybe the heavier masses involved have a bigger negative impact on stocking and how many runs before they have to go out for more ingredients compared to the tailor. 36 mass of 2 different items to make 2 tools vs what the tailor produces with 20 mass worth of one ingredient, leather.... even with optimal spacing for the pickup, they have to stop working, drop stuff off, and pick stuff up, (blacksmith twice) so that's gonna eat up time, hmm, might need to compare steel tool making vs iron tools and if you produce significantly less due to having to spend more time stocking 3 ingredients.  If iron tools are roughly equivalent to warm coats in production/year, I bet that number of different ingredients will really need to be factored in.  As is, wool coat production rate (1 ingredient) is much more comparable to ale production (1 ingredient) than to iron tools (2 ingredients) when just looking at int_workRequired=<x> alone.

Thanks @irrelevant !  Time to do some more investigating whilst trying out Red's new cathedral!

[irrelevant]

Hmm, maybe need to figure out how much initial ingredients the tailor/blacksmith/brewer stock in before cycling production.  Could be that needing more ingredients and maybe the heavier masses involved have a bigger negative impact on stocking and how many runs before they have to go out for more ingredients compared to the tailor. 36 mass of 2 different items to make 2 tools vs what the tailor produces with 20 mass worth of one ingredient, leather.... even with optimal spacing for the pickup, they have to stop working, drop stuff off, and pick stuff up, (blacksmith twice) so that's gonna eat up time, hmm, might need to compare steel tool making vs iron tools and if you produce significantly less due to having to spend more time stocking 3 ingredients.  If iron tools are roughly equivalent to warm coats in production/year, I bet that number of different ingredients will really need to be factored in.  As is, wool coat production rate (1 ingredient) is much more comparable to ale production (1 ingredient) than to iron tools (2 ingredients) when just looking at int_workRequired=<x> alone.

Thanks @irrelevant !  Time to do some more investigating whilst trying out Red's new cathedral!

@Chon Waen you're welcome.

You don't have to figure this out 

Bannies carry 100 load points (except vendors and traders who can carry 500 with their wheelbarrows). So a brewer will grab 100 fruit (weight 1 load point each) and take it to his tavern to make ale. He will make three batches (30 fruit=10 ale), then he will have to re-load as he doesn't have enough fruit to make a fourth batch.

Wool and leather weigh 10 load points each; logs weigh 11, and iron weighs 25. But bannies will often grab less than capacity of these, as they may need to grab from a location that doesn't have enough stock for them to grab the full amount. Also, they typically will grab only one type of resource at a time, so smiths (and tailors making warm coats) will have to make multiple trips to keep their production running. This obviously will negatively impact their output. One more reason to purchase rather than make warm coats, to say nothing about steel tools, with three inputs! Coal weighs 15 each.

Anyway, a full load of wool or leather would be 10 units of either one. A full load of logs is 9 units, iron is 4 units, and coal is 6 units. So a tailor will ideally stock 10 wool or leather before beginning production, while a smith will stock 9 logs and 4 iron first. An educated smith therefore will be able to make only 4 batches of iron tools (8 tools) before his iron is gone; he will then stop and go pick up 4 more iron, make 8 more tools, pick up 4 more iron, make two more tools, and then he is out of logs. He goes to pick up 9 more logs, makes 6 more tools, and then he is out of iron again. As you can see, tool production is fragile. Steel tool production is far worse.

Actually, now that I think about it more, the theoretical capacity of a smith likely could be the same as the capacity for a tailor. But a smith will never get close to the theoretical max because he has to make so many more trips for resources, due to the higher unit weights of his inputs, particularly of iron.

[rkelly17]

Something we haven't thought of yet: Time spent working vs. time spent doing other things as a factor in productivity. On a town I was working on yesterday I had to build a fishing dock pretty far from the nearest market. Even though the houses and barn were right next door, the 4 fishers spent a lot of time getting supplies for their two houses. When I built a general store (small market mod from @Elfecutioner with graphics by @RedKetchup) next door to the barn they spent way more time fishing and much less time getting supplies. Then I built a school next to that so their children didn't have to walk a long ways to school--which delays graduation significantly.

Conclusion: I'm assuming that the distance between the worker's house and the nearest source of supplies (market, barn or storage yard) will impact productivity. An ideal industrial area will include housing, storage, and a source of supplies in close proximity to the workplace. Any testing needs to take that into account as a variable.

Then there is the need to idle. I'm not at all sure how that factors in. I always build a variety of idling locations, but my citizens never idle only at the nearest location. They wander around the map seemingly at random (Though probably not really at random). I've also seen workers with an active assignment at a work place with full materials idling rather than going to the work site. The original game notes said that unhappy workers idle more, but I've seen 5-star citizens choosing to idle rather than work. Obviously that has an impact on productivity, but I'm not sure how you would factor it in to any testing.

[Chon Waen]

Idle time really shouldn't be a factor in balancing production buildings, since theoretically all bannies idle equally.  What I am most interested in is finding a stock formula or small matrix that allows you to figure out balances between annual production rates, trade prices, and value added per worker.  These are the primary factors with value added per worker being the most tightly constrained. Typically you will want something in the range of 700-1300 per worker.  The low-end is usually reserved for initial production sites (farmers, foresters, etc). The middle of the range for intermediate activities (millers, supposedly woodcutters, etc). And the high end for export goods (ale, warm coats, steel tools).  Where this is seemingly breaking down is on complex ingredient production.
I guess one of the next questions to ask, then is whether or not int_workRequired is strictly per building, or if it can be adjusted per task within a building.  Ideally, it should be by task, but I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't to reduce complexity.

[Chon Waen]

Also, distance to supplies is definitely a factor on production! However, its not one you can really adjust for in a production building's design except perhaps in number of different input ingredients.  Its why I am most interested in near-optimal supply. Sub-optimal supply infrastructure will impose its own penalties to players, and the fault will not lie in the building's design but in that player's gameplay.