Furnances acting strangely

[JayGould]

This post in another thread was asking about the way furnances appear to work.

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=1090#p15965

I'm working with a furnace that is amply supplied but not producing much. It wants rock and ore and produces 1 ceramic with the rock and 1 ingot with the ore. The max is 8 and upgraded is 16 loads per year, but mine was only producing 3.5 loads per year until I upgraded it, and now it seems to be producing even less (2 loads in the year of upgrade and .3 by March of the next year, with lots of ore and rock just sitting on top of the furnace. Maybe the roof collapsed. No other new industries are running and the old stuff is running just fine. Also, I'm using the 1.04 beta exe with the 1.06 industries loaded.

If its still wanted, I could build the later industries in the editor to get any desired info.

I have noticed that furnances lose money when their output accummulates locally and is not hauled away quickly. Building a machine shop nearby improves their operation when the cargo economy can move the output away easily. Dedicated trains hauling ingots and ceramics away will help furnances maintain their profitability. The only demand for ingots comes from the machine shop. A single furnance can produce enough ingots to supply two upgraded machine shops. Furnances producing ceramics from rock do better because of the greater demand for ceramics by other industries.

[steelm]

I guess we are playing the same scenario. That is what I found.

According to the strange behavior of the furnace, I take a look at the bty-file. It seems furnace will produce 8(16) items, up to 4(8) ceramics and
4(8) ingots. Even though it looks like it will try to build the highes demand first. It can sit on a mountain of stone, but is trying to build some ignots
and is looking despertly for some ore. So you either deliver both resources, or be sure that there is only one high demand by building the furnace near
the machineshop or concrete plant.

It would be better to separate the production of ceramics and ingots.

/cu steelm

[JayGould]

I setup a test map to check out the furnance behavior. A furnance will use it's entire capacity (8 or 16) to process ore into ingots if ore is available and ingots have a nearby demand. It will also convert rock into ceramics up to it's capacity (8 or 16) when rock is available and ceramics have nearby demand. Breweries, distilleries and textile mills also use their full capacity of each input when both are available. A recycling plant plant can handle three times the waste when all three possible outputs (steel, aluminum and paper) are active cargoes. The tool and die plant produces three times the goods when all three inputs (steel, aluminum and plastic) are available.

The production capacity in the BCA file is part of the header data. Each active production entry directs the conversion of an input quantity to an output quantity up to the capacity limit. There is no check to see if other processing is being done at the same time. There does not appear to be any errors in the furnance BCA file.

Strange behavior can occurr with any industry due to the effects of the cargo economy.