Report for the community 57

Report for the community #57
Metro update and fuel consumption.
Release	August 21st, 2022
Related links	Official website Steam

Report for the community #57 is a report for the community released in august 21st, 2023.

Content

The report informs about the development of the game. It's main focus is about the metro update progress and information about fuel consumption changes.

Transcript

<poem class="va-transcript-text" style="">Greetings dear Comrades of the Soviet Republic. Another heat wave has arrived at Central Europe, but that does not mean that it will slow us down in delivering the upcoming update. As we released the Metro update for internal testing this week, our development team is on fire but in a good way, doing their best to fix as much issues as they can, because we want to release this update before the end of August for public testing. Even if that will not be the final release, it will make the update available for most players. We already have a plenty of bug reports to deal with because the more people participate in testing, the more unconventional ways of play can be used to reveal potential issues. The main problem always is, that with each change in the code, there is a chance that typos or oversights may happen, which are easy to miss while checking the code and you can only see the mistake when the feature is being used, and even then somebody needs to notice that something is not as it should be.

The last bits we wanted to add to metro infrastructure were above ground metro stations. Some people may be interested in using them even the use of bridges you will need to connect them may be a bit more expensive. On the other hand, this may offer you a way how to have a nice above ground with spectacular view. Only issue you may face is that you will need to use an underground end station for that so not the whole line can be above ground as you also need the depos to be on the ground.

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There were several minor changes also introduced just before the game was released for public testing. You can now see how much money you are allowed to borrow. The limit is dependant on the number of workers you have as we value the potential each worker has more than economic numbers your Republic may output. The scalability with growth and inflation is not too complicated then. You can now have longer city names and your cities will not be flooded with pedestrian crossings because they will be placed on the road only if there will be a pathway connected on both sides. Another small but useful change will be that you can set vehicles to be unlocked according to their production start year and they will not become locked afterwards. Then we also allowed you to buy containers at customs, so you do not need to make your own nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants anymore.

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From bigger changes we made, the fuel consumption formula change is worth mentioning with a short commentary. Now the consumption of vehicles will be more dependant on their weight category, power, top speed, and actual speed. What that means? Vehicles with weaker engines have lower fuel consumption. Also, vehicle driving slower for example on gravel or prefab road will have lower fuel consumption than vehicles driving full speed on an asphalt road. Technically it is counting in the air-drag a vehicle needs to face when is driving faster. There is a way to add vehicle's current load into the formula, but it was not done yet, because we want to see how this change will affect overall fuel consumption. One important thing worth mentioning is that driving ranges (how much a vehicle can do with one gas tank before it needs to refuel) for personal cars were reduced by 40% due to lower capacity of their fuel tanks. Other vehicles have a bit lower driving range too, but it can be tweaked if necessary, adding to it. So, what are the numbers? After doing some tests we found that overall consumption of vehicles dropped by 10-15%. For vehicles driving during winter on unmaintained roads it was even 40% for the respective period. That means you will save fuel compared to previous fuel consumption formula anyway. And you will have to consider if you really want to use the 500 kW truck from the workshop with 160 km top speed instead of a weaker 250 kW with 100 km top speed.

Next thing we want to write about a bit is the latest change for price calculation formula. We read the feedback and the explanation was quite generic but difficult to understand. Because of that we want to give you few examples now to show you what happens with the price if you buy or sell certain resources in certain amount to allow you to see the consequences. There are few important points you need to take into consideration. The spreadsheet we showed you contains numbers of thresholds for each resource in their respective amount (tons, megawatts, cubic metres etc.) and that is the limit when the calculation for price change switches from linear to exponential. So, to keep maximum profits or not overpay too much you need to stay below that number for last 75 days. Then you need to know that when you export that amount of resources from the spreadsheet in the period the price movement should be +/-5% depending on what kind of trade it is, but there may be slight deviations as inflation is calculated each 5 days and also some global events may affect the price.

Next thing you need to know is that the threshold scales. If you do not have any workers your threshold for all imports and exports is lowered to 50% of it's value and you get 50% of the value for each 25.000 workers living in your Republic.. That means you will have lower profit margin for exports without having your own workers in certain situations and you will pay more for excessive import of resources. You can do the math by yourself to calculate how much resources do you need to import and how much will it cost by recalculating the threshold to a year which has 365 days. Next important thing is that resources traded through aerial/waterway customs have three times the standard threshold to lower the price fluctuation there and if you want to trade in vast numbers, it will be more profitable to use ships or planes.

https://1drv.ms/x/s!AupeI3t5EG4EgotZWgLmvdE2rOrA2Q?e=1QXWKZ - ODS spreadsheet https://1drv.ms/b/s!AupeI3t5EG4Egota7MUbqcRKDBsx0A?e=oVc8J4 - PDF spreadsheet

Now let us show you some examples from in-game situation. Some players like to start by importing fabric and making clothes for exports out of that. A single fully utilizes clothes factory can make 438 t of clothes in a year and you need to import double the amount of fabric for that. So, if you would do that without having any population then the threshold for fabric import in RUB is 175 t (for 75 day period no population) and the threshold for clothes exports in RUB is 110 tons (for 75 day period no population). So you have to import 876 tons of fabric in a year and if you would do that regularly using a truck then you reach are going to reach the threshold and the price movement will stabilize at about 5% above the regular price, which means you will pay extra 5% for imported fabric until you do not lower or raise imports. For exported clothes you will reach 80% of the threshold and you will get about 4% less value at the customs house if you will not change the amount, you will be exporting regularly. If this would not be there you would have about 75% margin on the produced clothes but this way the margin shrinks by 10% and then you need to deduct the cost of transportation and workforce from that. We are talking about one clothes factory which cannot be considered as overproduction but if you would do the same with two clothes factories then you lose 20% of the margin and it goes exponential.

Formula for actual threshold calculation: Actual Threshold = (Threshold * 0,5) + (Threshold * Workers in Republic / 50.000) It is 3x if it goes through waterway/aerial customs.

Another example may be food production because food has lower thresholds. You can produce 7.300 tons of food in single food factory in a year at maximal utilization and you would need 15.330 tons of crops to produce that. The threshold for crops on the import side in RUB is 1250 tons (for 75 day period no population) and for food on export side in RUB is 145 t. (for 75 day period no population) If you would import all the crops needed to produce the food for exports, you would exceed the threshold to about 250% and the exports of food would exceed the threshold to about 1000% which would mean that you would have to pay 13% more for crops and would get 40% less for your food exports. You can clearly see that this would not be the most profitable thing to do.

Simplified formula for price change: Price Factor Export = 1 - ((Exported / Actual Threshold) * 0,05 Price Factor Import = 1 + (Imported / Actual Threshodl) * 0,05 You need to consider all imports and exports as the final ballance is counted. for each resource. The price change is applied to base price of the resource not the previous trading price, so no hyperinflationd due to trade will happen. as base prices are independent form trade prices.

Now one more example just to consider purely imported resources. So, let us say you have a Republic with 25.000 workers to simplify things. They need about 3500 tons of food in a year which needs to be imported. I you would import that regularly then you would be paying about 22% extra for imported food because you exceeded the threshold by 300%. But if you would be importing the same amount of food by ships or planes you would pay only about 7% extra due to raised threshold for those.

If you wish you are free to use the calculator which is available here: https://1drv.ms/x/s!AupeI3t5EG4EgotdseHuyye7DeUXlg?e=6Y2vE3 You can change values in orange cells and the spreadsheet does the math for you.

Hopefully, this gives you a clue how it works. The main change was to add scalability to the system and the impact of trade was lowered because with the calculation going exponential the number can become extremely high and that can be game breaking. Another thing which many of you may not be aware is the inflation. Currently the inflation for RUB and USD differs. RUB has average inflation up to 10% and USD has average inflation up to 3%. Because of that you may see the prices in both currencies diverging over time, the longer you play the game. The inflation is calculated each 5 days so there is little chance you will get too far from the median in a year with 73 calculation cycles each year but there may be some deviations because there is random change added each time to the price. Inflation is calculated from base price not actual trade price so you do not need to be afraid of hyper inflation over time.

If you have further questions or you are not able to fully understand this price change mechanic there is a thread in Steam Discussion where we can discuss details as it cannot be sufficiently and thoroughly explained through these Reports. Here is the link: https://steamcommunity.com/app/784150/discussions/0/3428948355379393613/

So that was a lot of additional explanation which made this report quite long to read, and we hope it helps you to understand what is happening with prices. These trade price changes are just temporary and if you would not export/import anything in 75 days or your trade would be neutral, trade prices reset to base prices, so it may be better to send one train twice a year to load at the border than doing it regularly with trucks. You do not need to worry about these changes for trade price calculations because now the overall conditions for players will be better than were before, and if you were able to succeed before, you will do just better after the change, because these changes were made to address extreme price changes, and those should not occur that easily anymore. Now back to internal testing and timely public test release. Hopefully, we will be able to fix everything critical and there will not be any unexpected delay this month. Until then enjoy the summer, have fun, and stay tuned for the next report.

Thank You for Your Support

3Divison Team</poem>