Fir wood foresters - constant fluctuations in workyard-to-deposit times

[Winterset]

Hello there, I think that I've found a bug. I've been having trouble tracking my fir wood production times, and I've just realised that what's been happening is that the reported overall production time for individual foresters keeps on fluctuating. I've just been looking at this with a particular group of foresters. In the space of five consecutive checks on the same forester, over a few seconds, I got five different overall production times, with quite a wide range of results. This is because the travel time between workyard and deposit kept on changing. And not just in a small way. I'm talking about large fluctuations. I was astonished to find that a forester literally touching a fir tree was on one occasion given an overall production time of 5 minutes 19 seconds i.e. 3 minutes and 4 seconds of travelling, to and from where exactly? :confused: Obviously not the nearest deposit, although the time shrank again the next time I checked.

Question: How is the workyard-to-deposit travel time calculated for foresters, when there are deposits of trees on all sides?

I've also noticed that building or demolishing fir wood cutters affects the travel times of all the nearby foresters. Perhaps that is intentional (and it would actually make perfect sense) but I'd like to know how it's calculated. It's very difficult to plan production chains when the foresters' travel times keep on changing for no apparent reason, even when the number of nearby cutters stays constant. It feels like there's something highly non-deterministic performing the calculations here, with a hefty dose of randomness thrown in for good measure! A little bit of randomness is a good thing, but I'm finding the game's behaviour on this particular issue quite unstable and counterintuitive.

[Winterset]

Aha, the problem applies to hardwood foresters as well. I have just seen a hardwood forester walk all the way from the north of the central region to the south, when there was a hardwood deposit and a hardwood cutter logging away merrily right next to him. Here is a picture showing the forester's overall production time displayed as 10 minutes 29 seconds. It is actually very amusing watching him going for a hike, but this will play havoc with my production schedule!

Hardwood forester turns his back on his community! (http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/5767/disorientatedhardwoodfo.jpg)

Is this possibly the result of not having any sawmills working in the immediate vicinity? My plan was to upgrade some distant sawmills to save on licenses.

[Acee]

This is not a bug. If u keep the ratio 3 foresters - 2 cutters you have nothing to worry about.

Let's see an example:
2x Level 1 Hard wood cutters, 3x Level 1 hard wood foresters - so that is balanced ratio.
Initial forest amount - 5 hard wood.

2 cutters are using 2 different forest depos. They lower amount of forest to 4 in each depo. Because you have 3 foresters and only 2 depos have lowered their amount, 2 foresters are going into same depo and 1 forester is going into different depo. Foresters work longer than cutters, but after few cycles 1 depo has 6 forest (this with 2 foresters in) and the other one has 5 forest still. Foresters will not walk into depo which has larger amount than its initial number thus we have one jobless forester for a while. If you have few chains like this it makes jobless forester to search for depos which they can walk into even if it's miles away, so this makes overal times to fluctuate.

[Lymond]

All the forests in your picture are at their maximum capacity (almost all clumps are only 5 units) so he will be travelling to a clump much further away to replant. Once a cutter in his vicinity chops down a hardwood tree then he will be able to replant closer to home. Long travelling times should be an indication that the local foresters are replanting faster than wood is being cut.

If this is true in several locations then you may find that a forester in zone A is the first to cycle to "ready" after a tree is cut in zone B. He therefore walks to zone B to replant. A few seconds later a cutter finishes in zone A and then a forester in zone B becomes free and decides to walk to zone A to replant. This sort of thing is inevitable unless the game puts in maximum distances that each settler is prepared to travel, but it should sort itself out quickly if the planters fall behind schedule and more stumps become available to replant in their vicinity.

[Winterset]

Thanks for your reply Acee. Yes, I realise that the forester:cutter ratio needs to be 3:2. The example image that I gave in my second post was a snapshot of a production chain still under construction, so I can see that your explanation is relevant there.

However, the problem that I posted about in the first place, i.e. fluctuating travel times between workplace and deposit, was in a fully developed production chain with the correct forester:cutter ratio. So your explanation doesn't cover that example, and I still think there's a bug.

[Winterset]

Thanks Lymond, I definitely think you've explained what's going on in the second picture, i.e. the hardwood scenario, with the long walk to another zone. As you say, the local deposits would have all been at maximum capacity. However, that doesn't explain what was going on in the first example.

I'm sorry folks, I think I've messed up my own thread by posting two different examples, one from a working production chain, and one from a chain under construction.

Please everyone disregard the hardwood example, because it's been properly explained now. But I think my first post is still relevant and unexplained.