WPandP wrote:I'm not sure what glitches might be causing the anomaly prices, but I can confirm that I've seen them too. One thing to consider is that the prices go up and down at a fairly slow pace, compared to how fast the loads can move around the same map (especially when delivered by trains). So, a situation that starts off with a mill in great demand of an ore, for instance, creates a great green target that starts pulling all kinds of ore loads toward it.
Over time, though, a big stockpile of ore builds up, as it pours in faster than the industry can process it. The stockpile depresses the value locally, creating a yellow doughnut hole in the middle of the big green ring that the mill initially created. Of course, such a hole will push the loads out, the mill will go idle until the value comes back up, and then the stockpile should return. That's all in theory, of course.
Actually, I think what you describe is more than theory; I've seen it in practice in trying to manage a Steel Mill. As you say prices do take some time to adjust to the presence of a demand sink like a mill; I've got used to the idea that my $2m (?) investment in a mill will sit idle for a few months until the raw materials "find" it. One trick I've found effective is to "prime" the mill with some Ore and Coal (delivered at a loss if necessary - by "spoofing" the train destination to make it load and then sneakily changing its destination once it's under way). This makes the mill produce and gets the mill's "green arrow" operating more quickly.
I'm not sure I've seen an actual "yellow doughnut" visual effect when a mill stops producing. But what you describe must be happening, because once you let a mill stop production, the elasticity of the prices makes it very difficult to get resources to it to start it up again. Prices are elastic with respect to actual supply vs production at a mill, but inelastic with respect to potential production (=demand). (Oh, a bit like the UK labour market at the moment, but that's
!)
Of course in time it will start up again; but as you can probably conclude from what I write I prefer to buck the market and keep the mill producing at 100% as much as possible.
There's a flaw in the game's economic model that makes Steel Mills even harder to manage. It's to do with one resource having a higher value only in the presence of another resource. This results in game-generated Steel Mills (which are often in really stupid places) dragging away Coal and building up enormous stockpiles of it, when they have absolutely 0 Iron to actually use the Coal on, and no chance of getting any! I can fully understand how hard it is for the game to realistically model the price of coal at a mill: it would have to take into account not only how much ore is there, but how much is on the way - by train or other means, or is likely to be delivered; which means moving from commodity pricing into commodity futures pricing.
But back to my main point, which is that these "price blotches" seem pretty obviously to be bugs, precisely because they're so extreme. As you point out, even a huge demand sink like a Mill only gradually forms a green high-price zone around it. These "price blotches", in contrast, appear suddenly, are extreme (as you can see from the pictures), and don't even have a green demand arrow inside them. I think I may have tracked down the cause (over on the other thread) to something to do with price modifiers being in effect: either game-wide ones, company-specific ones, or a combination of the two at once. The game doesn't seem to handle this properly.
PS I've downloaded your yards, but haven't tried them out yet.
PPS Yep I'd like to give Trainmaster a go - but I don't feel I've mastered vanilla RRT3 yet.
