Guppy Logic

[Bingeling]

The situation here is an island that need ammo by guppies, but has no major power draw. The problem also arises with other kinds of guppy resupply, but this was an easy spot.

My situation was an island with a totem, some mines, and possibly some ammo need if a spore has headed their way. A low constant energy need. Two guppies serve the island. Lets call them "close" and "far".

"close" is always used if present. While it refills "far" is used, making its power level diminish a bit for each refill trip of "close".

Sooner or later "far" will run empty, always while "close" is away, and power supply is interrupted.

If there is a "landing" with many guppies, the same effect can be seen with multiple guppies of medium to low power levels sitting around, giving potential power interruptions if there is a higher power drain making the "front guppies" run out of juice.

Suggestion: When looking for power, look for the "lowest" guppy within say 30 (tiny) squares from the closest one. The benefit should be more reliable power from guppies, the negative should be that power may take a bit longer to arrive. This should prevent the "multiple half full guppies syndrome" unless they are spread around quite a bit.

[pawel345]

Well yes this "problem" is irritating sometimes but i guess it's to keep us form getting lazy. There is a button "return to base so just use it to manually send the "far" guppy for resupply when it's low on packets.
And I don't think it's an easy thing to change the packet request algorithm as think it's more like the unit makes a request for a packet and then one of the structures that can fulfill that request, so they don't request packets form a specific guppy

[Spencergray24]

Suggestion: When looking for power, look for the "lowest" guppy within say 30 (tiny) squares from the closest one. The benefit should be more reliable power from guppies, the negative should be that power may take a bit longer to arrive. This should prevent the "multiple half full guppies syndrome" unless they are spread around quite a bit.

An alternate idea, whatever item is requesting packets would instead "lock on" to one guppy at a time, and if it is unable to request a packet from that source it would seek out a new source, either it would be a 2nd guppy or the main command center (if you have connected it later on).

Either way would work I believe.

[Bingeling]

Having units locking on to different guppies would still give needless interruptions, although with lower likelihood. The best solution for supply is to drain them one by one, as long as they are not very far away from each other.

As for manual power management with ordering guppies to reload manually, that is not an interesting feature of this game. Managing power for a landing by landing sufficient guppies at the right time is interesting, making them behave in a good way after that is not.

[Amram]

if we're gonna talk improving guppies.

A toggle-able threshold for the guppies, below which if they are not the sole source of supply, they automatically go home for more if currently idle.

So for example your near and far. Near handles supply, runs out, goes home.  Far takes over supply demands.  Its supply crosses beyond the threshold, but being the only provider on this isolated network, the guppy stays since he's not yet empty, just low.  Near returns and takes over supply.  Now far, who is below his threshold detects that he is no longer sole provider, and heads home to restock even though he's not quite empty.

Say three settings?  Threshold at 15%, 30%, or 45%?  Just like PC's, a simple little check box would do perfectly.

Doesn't require changes to the packet logic.  Just needs a check to see if the network is supplied by something else, and a check of what the current percentage of the guppies load is.


Other than that, babysitting them and sending some home a bit early works just fine?

[Kharnellius]

The rate at which the Guppy Landing Pad requests packets is too high...high enough that I don' think a Guppy would ever be waiting for the Landing Pad.  Can the request rate for the Landing Pad be DECREASED to reduce the sudden load it has on your energy network?  It can really cause major problems when a bunch of pads suddenly are emptied all at once.

[Bingeling]

If the guppies are drained one by one (in each region), this would also help spikes at the landing pads. There will be a more steady stream of guppies, rather than multiple previously low ones being emptied at almost the same time. The power need is the same, but it is less spiky. In this case it helps to post somewhat large groups of guppies around, large enough that each group never runs out of power. This is also the best when it comes to avoiding a delay at the consumer if all nearby guppies suddenly disappear and power has to be fetched from much further away.

It is also worth mentioning that the difference between near and far can be one tiny square. No matter how tightly they are packed, there is always a nearest one, although it could be different ones for various parts of a network.

[Grauniad]

Suggestion: When looking for power, look for the "lowest" guppy within say 30 (tiny) squares from the closest one. The benefit should be more reliable power from guppies, the negative should be that power may take a bit longer to arrive. This should prevent the "multiple half full guppies syndrome" unless they are spread around quite a bit.

I know that many people over the course of development have mentioned the various issues around guppies and particularly this one.THe problem is with tha lagorithm of how energy is supplied - whether it's a guppy or a CN, the nearest source of energy is always tapped.

[Bingeling]

If modifying the power algorithm is a major pain, one could try to evade it by having touching guppies work as a unit, and having this unit empty one guppy at a time.  It could have some interesting issues if only guppies present and not the landing marks decides what is a unit, but this should not be a major problem.

[MizInIA]

I just add a third guppy. It vary rarely gets used and when it does run out one of the other two guppies are almost back and therefore nothing ends up using all of their packets before resupply occurs. I was just on a map that I had 8 guppies  due to both distance and amount of packets being requested to keep a constant supply.