Production site ware request fullfilled before equipping worker request

[Tino]

Consider the following situation for babarians:
- Stored: No trainer, 5 axes

Then build a barracks.

Expected outcome:
- One trainer gets equipped with an ax, 4 axes are stored to the baracks, 4 soldiers can be trained.

Current outcome:
- 5 axes are delivered to the baracks, no soldier gets trained due to missing trainer.

In my opinion the ware request to "build a worker" should always prioritized to a ware request from a building.

[kaputtnik (franku)]

This was discussed several times and we endet in the solution to add 3 trainers to the starting conditions. The conclusion was that only experienced players may need more than 3 buildings which need a trainer. And experienced players should be able to find the way to get an additional trainer (e.g. by just reducing the amount of axes in the barracks).

But i am not against prioritizing building a worker.

[Tino (tino79)]

Hm, i missed that discussion.
But it does make no sense that a building requests wares first and the main worker second?

I encountered this problem on playing the second barbarian campaign mission:
Initial starting condition is 0 trainers and as far as i understand the lua scripts, later when you have to build baracks, arena and training camp no trainer is added.
At that point the game first fills every soldier/rekrut spot in those 3 buildings before trainers get equipped.

[kaputtnik (franku)]

See bug 1075562 starting from comment 41.

I played the scenario yesterday but had no problems getting trainers, but i built the barracks very late, so the Ax Workshop started making axes before they are demanded by the barracks.

Instead of prioritizing workers we may should check for trainers in this campaign and give the player a hint? Or change the campaign to build the training camps and barracks after the Ax workshop has been built?

[Tino (tino79)]

Hm, that is a completely different aspect you mentioned and that was discussed (how many and when to produce trainers and initial trainer count).
(Btw: I was not blocked in any form in the Tutorial mission and the axe prodcution was already ongoing...)

I'll update the Bugs title and try to explain better:

If a building (i think the baracks is currently the only one) stocks/requests the same ware as it is needed to produce a worker (in this case: trainer) for it, the engine fullfills the stock request before it fullfills the worker request (when no building worker is already stocked).

The worst case scenario would be: No trainer available, but 8 axes (and no ressources to produce more axes)

Result: No soldier at all, 8 axes stocked in baracks.

Excpected result: 1 Trainer and 7 Soldiers.

So in my expectation the engine should always prefer equipping workers before sending wares to production sites (where the user can set the priorization).

[kaputtnik (franku)]

As said i am not against your suggestion :)

The only concern i have is: It will make the game less focused on economy. I believe managing an economy is a big part of the game and doing some managing automatically by the engine would make it easier for players to focus on other things, e.g. creating fast a big army.

Just my personal opinion :-)

[Tino (tino79)]

Yeah, and i have the same opinion as you: The player should be able to manage the economy (and less automatically managing by the engine).

But i am not suggesting adding automation but to fix a existing,faulty engine decision ;).

The best solution of course would be to implement a UI for this (like the small UI buttons the player can use to priorize ware distribution between production site requesting the same ware), but this would be complicated...

Managing the economy: yes: Managing to circumvent engine bugs: No.

"Bug" here: Very weird decision to stock a ware instead where it is stocked in a building instead of creating specialized worker which makes the item usable in the first place.

This is definitely different from the aspect to let the user figure out how to produce most optimized soldiers by configuring arena/training in a short(er) time.

Ok, enough from me, let's wait for some more opinions.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

I think we should do 2 things here:

1. Seems like we overlooked to add some trainers to the Barbarian scenario. This is aimed at beginners, so we should add some.

2. +1 for building requested workers before shipping out a ware. The user will still have to manage that required wares for a worker are in the same warehouse, which is more interesting than pulling your hair at having manages your ware locations correctly and not getting a worker. Having to reduce ware inputs all over the place just for this is not interesting management ad neither is it expected that one would need to do that.

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Migrated to https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/3427