DEVELOPMENT SNAPSHOT #63 — No New Mines: Where Ore Goes, and Who Makes Fuel

Can copper output rise without opening a single new mine? This development round fixed a case where the raw materials factories needed on the previous day never reached the mine allocation. That fix had a small side effect on charcoal, so we also revised how fuel-producing facilities decide how many workers to hire. Here are the numbers that improved, and the ones that got worse.

The mine did not get bigger

The copper ore resource illustration. All three images are existing game assets, not test-screen captures or newly added interfaces.

In the development data used for testing, the mine extracting copper and iron ore produces 50 per day in total when fully staffed: 1,300 over 26 days. The fix added no facilities, workers, cash or stock.

The problem lay in the signal that decides where mined ore goes. Outside the fuel chain, the amount of raw material a factory actually needed on the previous day was not included in that signal. After the fix, that demand feeds into the existing allocation floor.

Same start data, same 26 days	Before	After
Copper ore mined	97.5	134.5
Iron ore mined	1,202.5	1,165.5
Metal produced from copper ore	57.3	151.5
Metal produced from iron ore	1,007.5	1,207.9
Charcoal, lowest daily fulfilment	95.7%	93.5%
Insect oil, lowest daily fulfilment	61.0%	74.0%

Total extraction stays at 1,300 in both runs. With the same mine output shifted toward the ore factories were waiting for, copper metal rose about 2.6 times. As the second-to-last row shows, however, charcoal fulfilment on its worst day went down.

A national surplus can hide a regional shortage

The charcoal resource illustration, one of the game’s fuels.

Investigating the charcoal drop showed that hiring targets were set from national stock levels. Because the country as a whole had surplus charcoal, the target for adding workers fell even in a region that was physically short.

Facilities that keep producing fuel or inputs now use the larger of two floors: the existing national floor, or a floor based on that region’s demand, capacity and unsold stock. Regions that ship to other regions keep their supplier floor, so a producer’s hiring is not erased just because the consumption happens elsewhere. Nothing forces extra stock, cash or labour into existence.

Different start data, same 26 days	Before	After
Charcoal, lowest daily fulfilment	96.4%	98.4%
Charcoal, 26-day total fulfilment	97.8%	99.3%
Insect oil, lowest daily fulfilment	72.9%	76.3%
Insect oil, 26-day total fulfilment	86.1%	82.7%

Insect oil still has homework

The insect oil resource illustration, also classified as a fuel.

Insect oil improved on its worst day but fell over the 26-day total. Demand grew from 439.9 to 471.8, while the amount actually used only rose from 378.9 to 390.0. Metal from copper and iron ore also dipped slightly, from 159.7 to 158.0 and from 1,179.4 to 1,175.2. We keep these adverse results in the record rather than dropping them.

The main reason insect oil goes unused turned out to be ore, not fuel. Metal plans expect 87.3 ore per day, but domestic mines supply 50. Imports are limited by treaty and smuggling caps, a profitable purchase-price ceiling and real carrier capacity. Without ore, metal cannot be made, and the insect oil planned for that step is not consumed. Adding more fuel alone will not solve it.

About these numbers

Each table compares two 26-day runs from the same starting state in development data, before and after a fix. The two tables use different start data, so numbers should not be chained across them. Coefficients are development values and are not a promise about final balance or play results.

For how ingredients pass through production stages, see #62 on wheat, feed and wool. For storing goods such as copper ore, see #60 on warehouses.

Check the download page for currently available files and development status. If no build is available yet, follow the developer blog for further snapshots.