Blackroot flour economy target is ignored

[_aD]

Using build 8942 Atlantean blackroot is milled into blackroot flour beyond economy target. (Corn)flour obeys economy target.

[Notabilis (notabilis27)]

Related entries in the forum at:
https://wl.widelands.org/forum/topic/2786/?page=21#post-26749

[Toni Förster (stonerl)]

Now that I play-tested this and once again got it explained by WorldSavior I understand the mechanics. It definitely isn't a bug. The target is used to favor the production of corn flour.

Lets say that the blackroot and corn supply is more then sufficient. Blackroot flour target is set to 15 and corn flour to 30 and stock is 0 for both. The mill then alternating produces corn flour and blackroot flour. When it reaches 15 blackroot flour units it stops producing them and only produces corn flour (twice as fast since the blackroot production slot is used for corn). When 30 corn flour units are produced, it stops the production of corn flour and continues with blackroot. Since blackroot is only processed in mills it doesn't harm any other production sites.

If corn flour would drop below 30, the mills would stop producing blackroot flour and only produce corn flour since blackroot is above the set target.

Makes perfectly sense now. It is a little bit counter-intuitive, because there are no other productionsites with this mechanic.

[_aD (ad-simplypeachy)]

Having the excess blackroot and blackroot flour being transported to and from the farms, mills and warehouses does mean the roads are carrying unnecessary traffic, though.

[Toni Förster (stonerl)]

But this is also true for all wares where one cannot set a target.

E.g. Logs, Water, Corn, Wheat, Fish, Meat and so on...

They all burden the roads with "unnecessary traffic", the only way there is to stop production in the building itself.

[Notabilis (notabilis27)]

Personally I like the behavior described in #2, so I wouldn't object to keeping it that way.
However, I think we should add some player-visible documentation of it somewhere. Maybe add some comment to the documentation of the atlanteans mill? And/Or describe it in the first atlanteans campaign? With the current state it does look like a bug; different from other wares the economy "limit" for blackroot flour is more of a minimum threshold and seems to be ignored.
Also, we should add a comment to the init file of the mill that the "missing" condition is missing on purpose.

[_aD (ad-simplypeachy)]

If the economy target for blackroot flour is not being adhered to, perhaps it should be removed from the GUI. The fact I could see the target prompted me to assume the current behaviour is incorrect. The lack of economy target for blackroot, corn etc. is (to a seasoned player) self-explanatory.

[Notabilis (notabilis27)]

Removing blackroot flour from the economy settings would (as far as I know) require that there in no longer a economy target for blackroot flour. That would mean that it would always be milled, even when the time would be better spend only producing corn flour.

As far as I see it, we have to decide between:
1) Leave it as it is. This would mean some confusion about a seemingly useless economy setting but would allow the feature that blackroot flour is milled if the mill is idle / no corn flour is needed. If we decide for this option, we should document it in the help text and config file.
2) Remove the economy limit. In that case blackroot flour is always produced, even when not required. To favor corn flour the player could manually forbid blackroot in the mill, though.
3) Change the game code to support "hidden economy limits" so we can keep the effect of #2 without the economy setting being visible.

1 and 2 are both okay in my opinion, but I don't really like option 3.

[Toni Förster (stonerl)]

I'd say 1) and have an explanation either in the Atlantean Tutorial and/or the encyclopedia.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Migrated to https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/3376