Negative resource usage problem

[madmanmick]

Hi guys,
Another problem my brother and I have found with Spring... maybe you guys know what it is? I have found (no matter what mod I play, be it BA, CA, PURE, NOTA etc...) that the amount of resources being lost is completely disproportionate to the amount being produced (which i know is normal for TA, but this is so far extreme its terrible). I'll give you a run down, I start the game off, build 4 solar panels and 3 metal extractors, it says im producing about 90 energy and 8 metal. When I use my commander to build an aircraft factory, my metal loss jumps to around -35, yet it says my commander is only using around 6 metal to build the factory, and my energy loss jumps to -120, but hes only using about 50.

I have looked around my base while building multiple objects and added together the amount of resources being used to build objects, and it doesn't add up to anywhere near the amount the top bar says I am losing. Basically it's almost like the usage bar is throwing another 0 onto the end of whatever I am losing.

Basic problem is, the game progresses really, really, really slowly because no matter how many metal extractors and makers i build, or how many energy plants i create, I'm always running at a loss! My brother had the EXACT same problem as me when we tried to play a game of PURE, it took over 30 minutes to build a megafusion plant with 5 droids helping...

What's the deal with this? Is this actually supposed to be normal?

[lurker]

The resources show the amount of drain you have on your resources, not the amount that gets used. If you have a lot of buildpower on a project and empty storage, your drain will be much higher than your income, and it will sputter and be extremely slow compared to the normal build speed if you had the resources. In the pure game you were probably making that building well before you had enough income to afford it.

On a side note, showing it this way is by far better. For a while the resource bars in star wars showed the actual usage, and you had no clue whatsoever if you had enough resources coming in to supply your builders, factories, etc.

[madmanmick]

Sorry my mistake, I should have worded it better - Drain was the word I was looking for. It is the same system as TA, is it not? Generators create energy, miners create metal, building drains both resources. Regardless of the error in wording, the problem is still the same - the drain on my resources does not total the drain from each building unit - if my commander is draining 6 metal and my aircraft plant is draining 3 to produce a construction aircraft, my total drainage will not be 9 - it will be close to 35 or 40 (Just on metal). This is what I don't understand - I don't know how to mitigate the problem, because the drain total (on both metal and energy) never seems to the correct total when I add individual unit drains (As I explained very simply above). I have found that the drain issue usually will either relate to metal or energy, not usually both - i.e. sometimes metal drainage is normal and energy drainage is disproportionate, sometimes vice versa. Rarely are both of them completely disproportionate to what my builders are actually draining.

To reiterate - Commander is draining 6 metal, Aircraft factory is draining 3. I have 5 metal extractors producing a total of 20 metal, yet the resource bar up the top indicates that total metal drainage is 34, not 9, as it should be. This figure grows proportionally, even when I have say 15 metal makers and 10 metal extractors producing 90+ metal, metal drainage is -340, when it should realistically be closer to -85 (Based upon what I was building at the time). I tend to find a large amount of the time it is the resources being drained by the commander that are incorrectly counted (e.g. Commander metal drain is -6 and energy -50, but top bar indicates metal drain of -30 and energy of -180).

Does that clarify the problem?

[Hoi]

Sorry my mistake, I should have worded it better - Drain was the word I was looking for. It is the same system as TA, is it not? Generators create energy, miners create metal, building drains both resources. Regardless of the error in wording, the problem is still the same - the drain on my resources does not total the drain from each building unit - if my commander is draining 6 metal and my aircraft plant is draining 3 to produce a construction aircraft, my total drainage will not be 9 - it will be close to 35 or 40 (Just on metal). This is what I don't understand - I don't know how to mitigate the problem, because the drain total (on both metal and energy) never seems to the correct total when I add individual unit drains (As I explained very simply above). I have found that the drain issue usually will either relate to metal or energy, not usually both - i.e. sometimes metal drainage is normal and energy drainage is disproportionate, sometimes vice versa. Rarely are both of them completely disproportionate to what my builders are actually draining.

To reiterate - Commander is draining 6 metal, Aircraft factory is draining 3. I have 5 metal extractors producing a total of 20 metal, yet the resource bar up the top indicates that total metal drainage is 34, not 9, as it should be. This figure grows proportionally, even when I have say 15 metal makers and 10 metal extractors producing 90+ metal, metal drainage is -340, when it should realistically be closer to -85 (Based upon what I was building at the time). I tend to find a large amount of the time it is the resources being drained by the commander that are incorrectly counted (e.g. Commander metal drain is -6 and energy -50, but top bar indicates metal drain of -30 and energy of -180).

Does that clarify the problem?

i have the same problem

[Tobi]

IIRC the resource bar shows the drain while on the tooltip it shows actual usage.

So if you are stalling the value on the resource bar may be a lot higher then the sum of the values on unit's tooltips. The difference is the amount you are stalling. (And should equal the drain minus the income.)

edit: hmm it's weird if it still differs when you're not stalling, as you seem to suggest

[madmanmick]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who has this problem... that means I'm not hallucinating. I don't know what you mean by stalling, but i think the meaning from what I have been saying is pretty obvious anyway - im always draining more than im producing, no matter how many metal or energy creators i have. I play alot of TA, and im good at resource management, so i certainly know when something is not right!

[SinbadEV]

Stalling means you are asking for more then you have which causes the total each builder is using to be reduced.

Your commander WANTS to use 50 (or whatever) so the negative number shows -50... but there is only 8 available for him to use so if you check his usage it will show 8... same goes for when you have 2 builders... the one with the higher "want" will get a higher percentage of whats available but you will see the total requested amount beside the resource bars.

Another way to put it is that the tool tip shows actual usage while the resource bar number shows maximum usage.

In theory if you have more production then usage the numbers should add up.

I believe there is a Widget out there that adds the actual usage number along with (or instead of) the requested usage number and this might be included in some mods and not others... not sure.

[lurker]

You misunderstood what I meant by drain so I'll try a different word.

If you are out of either resource, then the 'attempted usage' numbers on the resource bar will be far far higher than the 'actual usage' numbers you get when you select or mouse over a unit. By your own testing, you had +90 metal and it seemed you had about 90 actual use. The fact that it shows a huge number means that it's trying to use far more, and if you had the resources in storage it would use that much to build.

And while no one thinks you are crazy, it's probably just a misreading of the numbers, because no experienced players have reported this in all the time 76b1 has been out.

Now try rereading all the earlier posts keeping in mind that everyone else meant 'attempted usage' when they said 'drain'. And yes, it is the same system as TA.

If you can actually get something like this to happen when you have plenty of both resources in storage, then please upload the replay.

[Argh]

it's weird if it still differs when you're not stalling, as you seem to suggest

Hey, if anybody's looking at this... could somebody please tell me, hopefully in really simple sentences, how Spring is calculating this and when, in terms of frame-time? My UI isn't reporting exactly right- yet, I've tried to grab the resources every frame, and it still reports extremely weird results- resource uses jump up and down, whereas it should be constant, if pull is constant and you aren't stalling. It isn't, which is really really driving me nuts, and I'm not sure why. How often do I need to get the current level of M/E to ensure that I am displaying reality to players? Every frame? Every 16, 15, or 32 frames?

Sorry to interrupt, but this is annoying, I'm trying to just use the frame that this is reported in, or the frame right afterwards, so that I don't have to run the code every frame, etc., but it works really oddly and I'd like to get that straightened out.

[lurker]

You need to update every 32 frames. It jumps because resources come in in big batches every 32 frames, but are drained continuously by construction, in big burst by weapons, and I'm not sure when by some other things. It would probably be simple enough to make income continous, and wouldn't add significant load.

Or you could do as the default ui does and smooth the bar's movement.

[madmanmick]

Alright, well, in light of all this, it seems that you guys are adamant there is nothing wrong with the system. Being this the case, I'll play a few more games and see how it turns out, but it really seems to feel different to me to the standard TA system - otherwise I wouldn't have said anything... I've just never seen metal drain balloon out like it does in Spring, even in TA when I have no metal left in storage and am building too much stuff at once - 340 is an INCREDIBLE amount of metal to use!

Aside from this, I was playing a game of BA the other day with the NTAI bot, and the game locked up completely when a rocket tank attacked a laser tower my aircraft was building. Keep in mind I'm playing on Linux. Have you guys heard of crashing when combining that particular mod and AI? I'll play another one and see what happens, it's just frustrating because there is no ctrl+alt+delete for me on Linux, so I pretty much have to do a hard reset (Because Spring won't let me alt+tab out of the program).

[lurker]

ctrl+alt+backspace?
ctrl+alt+F1 killall spring?
alt+SysRq+k?

[aegis]

run it in a maximized window?
handles it much better imho

[madmanmick]

Thanks for the shortcuts... I don't really know them being new to Linux and all... I tried running it in a maximised window, and I get screen flickering ingame (black band that flickers across the screen). It only works when fully maximised. Either way I ran some more tests, NTAI ALWAYS crashes the game quickly, something to do with the ARM Samson rocket tank (i think its called a samson).

When I try to play with an AAI bot it tells me it couldn't be loaded and whether it has support for this mod. (it's BA_installer_version.sdz and in the AAI config folder there is one called BA_installer_version).

[KDR_11k]

Er, better don't talk about NTAI crashes or AF will flame you for something or another.

[AF]

Once again, the version of NTai released when the current spring was released contains a crash bug involving invalidated iterators. This si fixed in svn, and unless your using svn builds of spring you should not test NTai.

[LordMatt]

Use IceUI: problem solved (it lets you select how you want your resources displayed).

[madmanmick]

Ok so how do I go about getting this IceUI for Spring? Also, played another game with a mate, and had about four aircraft working on a plasma battery and a commander building metal extractors, was creating about 15+ metal and drain was about -70, see what I mean when i say the figures don't stack up? Jesus, you usually only get such massive metal drain when you are building experimental units and nuclear weaponry... towards the end of the game i had metal drain of -200 (WTF) and my mate had about -50, building similar stuff. Nothing drains that much metal... and I certainly didn't have 100 construction aircraft running simultaneously.

To AF, i do have the latest SVN for Linux, and i'm pretty sure its the same for Windows - I downloaded the latest SVN available and it said that it was out of date, the installer from the Spring website was the latest. I also downloaded the 'fixed' version of NTAI for .76b1... so I'm pretty sure everything is up to date. Who knows, it might be Linux related (seeing as Spring will crash for me running under linux after 10-15 minutes, but with NTAI it crashes as soon as a Samson attacks me). Anyone know why Spring would be unstable under linux (I'm using Mint 5 Elyssa), and the machine locks up completely, no keyboard shortcuts work at all (e.g. ctrl+alt+backspace) it requires a hard reset.

[LordMatt]

http://spring.jobjol.nl/show_file.php?id=961

[lurker]

Did you try the one with SysRq? Those combos are very special, they bypass EVERYTHING and instantly work. k kills all processes on the current terminal, so spring, X, it all gets shut off. Unless you have some really really really screwed up graphics drivers that go beyond even a kernel panic to a full lockup.

And please, zip up the replay and attach it to a post. I want to see how much you were using to build.