Increased Smelter capacity

[AngelSpice]

Has anyone else noticed this? One of my charries that's an expert iron worker will make what used to be 2 days of iron on a primitive smelter in two game hours. I also checked another charrie that is in a building with a regular smelter and the iron production perday on a regular smelter has increased also. *happy dance*

[west]

Shhhh....

[Ovault]

Has anyone else noticed this? One of my charries that's an expert iron worker will make what used to be 2 days of iron on a primitive smelter in two game hours. I also checked another charrie that is in a building with a regular smelter and the iron production perday on a regular smelter has increased also. *happy dance*

sweet *cough* skillz *cough*

[Jos Elkink]

It's quite unrelated to skills, really ... well, good skills help here, of course ... but for all smelters, or rather, all machines that produce either iron or steel, the speed at which it does so has been increased by a factor of 7.

(EDIT) I calculated that manufacturing a passenger car takes about 457 man hours, after a tip by west that something was going wrong, and decided to make some drastic change (in collaboration with Anthony).

[julie2]

I have mixed feelings abourt this. I was hoping that the amount of iron/steel required to make certain things (well, most things in fact, but vehicles especially ) would be drastically reduced.. And yes , I did hope the rate of production could be usefully increased , too (perhaps by a factor of two) But this is actually bad news for established iron industies, by and large. It devalues pre-existing stock considerably, and means putting most of the currently people employed in smelting onto resource running instead, because the quantity of resources requited to keep them busy will also increase by a factor of seven , won’t it? (hang on though. What with recent limits on resource gathering, they’ll all have to become traders in fact, won’t they?If they can find anything to trade.)

Major headache. Now, OK, before my steelworks manager alters all her prices and changes everything about., can you assure that this won’t be suddenly changed back? (though I rather hope it will be modified, along the lines I suggested- and soon!)

[formerly known as hf]

weehee!

about sums it up...

[julie2]

Btw, since-- depending on where you're located of course-- more than half of cost of iron production is in trading for resources, transporting resources and c rushing hematite (all of which are unaffected by this change ) this won't bring the cost of vehicled down anywhere near as much as it would seem on the surface. In fact, it doesn't matter how fast you make the smeltin process, you simply can't reduce the cost of iron by more than half. not by that means, not even if you make it instantaneous. You mostly just divert the ironworkers' efforts into other
related jobs. It would help in some measure if the rate for hematite crushing was increased proportionally. It would help a lot more if the anmount of material required for vehicle manufacture (and -to a lesser extent -tool manufacture) was reduced instead.

[Jos Elkink]

It's nice that at least some changes are welcomed ......

The production costs of cars will also go down in the near future, that was already planned.

Crushing iron ore already seemed to be at a reasonable speed. Should that still be increased as well?

And yeah, value of steel stock goes down. It's impossible to make the costs of cars a lot lower without affecting the economic balance.

[Jos Elkink]

Oh, I also suggested the RD to make resource gathering machines for all materials used in iron/steel production, except perhaps limestone which is already gathered at decent speed.

[AngelSpice]

I thought there were already coal drills and hematite drills.

[Antichrist_Online]

I think he means machines for the alternative fuels. For the crushing, the current rates are fine for hand crushing, but maybe a cranked machine for crushing the hematite slightly faster?

[julie2]

Crushing iron ore already seemed to be at a reasonable speed. Should that still be increased as well?
.

Well, having approximately one worker crushing hematite for every five making iron (which is how it was before this change) was fine. . Increase the smelting rate by afactor of seven, though, and that throws the balance right out. That puts the majority of workers onto crushing hematite in order to keep up to keep up with the furnace. Also it means a lot more moaning about the price of iron from the "public" who al seem to know how much iron you can refine in one day, but who seldom seem to realsie how much work goes into producing iron before it ever gets to the smelting stage. This increases the disparity bettween the perceived cost of iron and the actual cost. More than half of my steel-works staff are already doing something other than smelting in fact, nearly all the time. This change means that only a small minority will ever be working on smelting, in futrue.; the rest will be running thenmselves ragged trying to keep the furnace supplied.

Again, though I have somewhat mixed feelings. I don't want to shunt skilled iron-workers over to hematite crushing instead, but hell, I'm going to need to find something for them all to do, because my character pledged not to ever make anyone redundant Emptying the factory and sending most of them out on respource runs instead simply isn't an optiion (though like I said, that will have happen to a very large extent, nonetheless, because the extra iron wil need proportionately extra resources. I don't see resources ever getting collected at seven times the rate they are now- nor any figure approachin that, so if things get slowed down at the hematite-crushing stage, there's someything to be said for that. It gives a reason for keeping workers at home, which is badly needed. For one thing, how can you decide to trust someone with a valuable vehice loaded up with valuable trade goods, until after they've worked for you for a little while? For another, it would kinda destroy the atmosphere. break the social bonds between characters and leave the factory bleak and emty, if everybody's out getting resources instead of processing them)

Either way, I reckon a hematite-crushing machine is long overdue.

[Ovault]

It's quite unrelated to skills, really ... well, good skills help here, of course ... but for all smelters, or rather, all machines that produce either iron or steel, the speed at which it does so has been increased by a factor of 7.

(EDIT) I calculated that manufacturing a passenger car takes about 457 man hours, after a tip by west that something was going wrong, and decided to make some drastic change (in collaboration with Anthony).

Oh... eh?. Sweet
Jos your rock

Oh wait...

I calculated that manufacturing a passenger car takes about 457 man hours, after a tip by west that something was going wrong, and decided to make some drastic change (in collaboration with Anthony)

aw... oh well you still rock though

[west]

Remember, kids, the amount of each resource you need to make that amount of iron and/or steel hasn't changed, just instead of taking years and years to do all the smelting, it'll take a bit less time.

Thanks, Jos!

[Surly]

I think this is a very posistive change.

A bit depressing for my characters who have spent years doing what will now take days...

But that's the price you pay. I think this is a great change.

See, I don't moan over everything. Just things I think are detrimental to Cantr.