Layout Plan Library are getting corrupted

[Lerura]

I have played with 4 different mods ( counting vanilla as an empty mod ) and saved Factory Layout Plans and Farm Layout Plans in each of them.

I saved a Farm Layout Plan for Oysters (RealWorld) but after playing a single vanilla game and returning to RealWorld, that Farm Layout Plan had changed.

It was saved with 4 sets of Livestock Raising+Livestock Processing linked to a single Sales units.
But one of the Raising units was gone and two of them unassigned. The Proccesing units linked to the now missing unit, and one linked to an unassigned processing unit were still set to procees Oysters and the two other were unassigned.
Being saved with 4 valid production chains, none of the production chains were valid after returning to Real World.

And in factory a Silica->Glass link was now an Oil->Glass link.

And even the Pre-defined Layout Plan are corrupted.

This is two of the Pre-defined Layout Plans currently existing in my Factory Layout Plan Library.


The first is weird as it suggests CPU is made from Silicon and an unknown porduct, and that something is then made from CPU and this unknown product.
it looks like it originally was Layout Plan for Notebook Computers, but now with 2 unassigned Purchasing Unit, and an extra link between the CPU unit and the purchase unit above.

The second looks like it is a Layout Plan for Cars, but now with two unassigned Purchase Units.

The players can't edit pre-defined plans, so it must be some errornous code that causes these weird changes

I found out that the Layout Plans are saved in C:\Users\%usernane%\Documents\My Games\Capitalism Lab\GAMESET\1STD.PLO, so I have zipped and attached that file.

And as we are talking Layout Plans:
I can see no reason for pre-defined and users defined plans being separated.
Some of the pre-defined plan are somewhat inefficient and probably rarely used, but they can't be removed.

Deleting the Category "Pre-defined Plans" Renaming "User-defined Plans" to "Complete Plans" or something similar and letting the pre-defined plans just be some predefined Complete Plans would make it possible for each player to only have Plans in their Library, that they actually use.

And lastly, why is not possible to set up a software producing unit.
When created they are basically just an ordinary manufacturing unit, that you can change any software product you want.

Again it is about efficiency. A software factory is initailly set up with 4 manufacturing units, but one manufacturing unit can actually cover the entire need for any software product, without even getting above 0% Utilization. even for small factories.
Based on that, a software producing unit at level 9, and 100% Utilization, would be able to cover at least 800 cities.
The only unit in a software factory is the sales units, and I have tried modifying a software factory to contain 2 purchase units, 2 production units and 5 sales units, and even though all sales units were close to 100% Utilization, the production units were still at 0%.

And I guess it would also be possible to allow saving a software layout plan.
Currently it is not possible, and the argument is that the software are unique from game to game.
That could be solved by saving a software unit as an unassigned unit, similar to purchasing units in wildcard plans.

The PLO-file: http://www.lerura.dk/CL/1STD.zip

[paulwoman]

Ah ! More messages that would be nice in t_game, especially since there seems to be some random elements, in this case here "Wheel & Tire"

Lerura, do you have these message in Vanilla, or only with a mod ?

I found out that the Layout Plans are saved in C:\Users\%usernane%\Documents\My Games\Capitalism Lab\GAMESET\1STD.PLO, so I have zipped and attached that file.

I would also like to have confirmation, if only to save my personalized plans.


Also, can you tell what you're think about these possibilities ?

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=7833

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=7834

Thanks for your feedback

[Lerura]

Lerura, do you have these message in Vanilla, or only with a mod ?

Both messages about invalid inputs appear when an assigned manufacturing unit lacks one or more inputs according to the current mod. The reason for the lack can be ,though the name of the input is the same, that the item has an unknown product code.
So if e.g you save a layout for canned corn in vanilla where the codes for corn and aluminium are CORN and ALUMINIU respectively, and do the same in a mod where the codes are CORN and ALUMINUM, then the layout saved in vanilla would be invalid when you use the mod, and v.v. Nothing weird about that.

In some cases the unit is just grayed out, if the product code associated with the unit is unknown according to the current mod (again counting vanilla as an empty mod)
The problem is that the game in other cases alters the layout plans that are not valid with the current mod, so when you return to the mod that the layout was saved from, it is no longer valid.

Once altered, the layouts are the same, no matter what mod you are using.

The messages about no saleable items can appear for layouts that technically are valid for the current mod, but are saved before any of the sales units has recieved any goods.

Also, can you tell what you're think about these possibilities ?

Sharing layout plans might be useful, as someone might have come up with a layout that in some cases are perfect, or at least close to perfect.

Personally, I never use any of the predefined layouts nor do i set that factory up using the manufacturer's guide.
That is why I suggested that the categories "pre-defined" and "user defined" should be merged, enabling deletion of the pre-defined layouts that you never use.

Pre-defined layouts can be very helpful to newbiess, in order to get the grasp of setting up a factory, so they shouldn't be removed entirely, but after a while you can in most cases, easily set up a more efficient factory manually.
e.g. the car factory layout. It would be close to perfect if you in vanilla had a small city, selling only cars and no motorcycles. but using RealWorld where there are several car types using car body, it is IMO more efficient to set up a car body factory, and let car factories by from there.

[David]

The dev team will implement a subsystem that supports separate layout plan libraries for different mods in the next post-release beta version 6.6.00, which will resolve the problem described in your post.