Shores of Hazeron - Manufacture

Manufacture

Commodities are acquired from the environment or manufactured using other commodities.

Commodity production starts with the environment. Logs and stone are acquired readily from the environment using labor alone. Mines produce stone and other rock-borne commodities. Logging camps produce logs.

Environmental commodities are not limited in quantity. A mine that produces ore never runs out of ore and oil wells never run dry; the supply is limitless within the span of time represented by the game. Similarly, logging camps manage their renewable tree resources so they never run out of trees.

Farms and orchards produce many different agricultural resources from plants and animals, such as fruit, grain, eggs, cheese, vegetables, plant fiber, and live riding animals. The Animals section discusses the details of live animal production by farms; orchards do not produce animals or animal byproducts. Agricultural production is performed just like manufacturing.

Commodities that cannot be acquired directly from the environment must be manufactured. A commodity is manufactured by combining labor with one or more other commodities. For example, textiles can be manufactured from plant fiber; flags are manufactured using textiles. Some processes combine many commodities. An electronic part requires four different components and a special tool.

When a building can manufacture commodities, the Labor (F9) window shows manufacturing controls for the processes it can run. Not all building can manufacture commodities. The number of manufacturing consoles is based on the number of levels of the building. A four-level electronics factory will display four manufacturing consoles, each of which can be configured independently of the others. Therefore, a four-level factory can produce four commodities simultaneously. The figure at the right shows a typical manufacturing console.

A combo box shows the icon representation of the commodity that is produced and the name of the process. Most industries can run more than one process. Sometimes different processes are available to produce the same commodity. For example, a farm may grow crops using water from the environment or irrigate using purified water instead.
Far right is a list of commodities that affect the process but that are not directly consumed by the process; this example shows that a soldering iron and electricity are required and a computer increases the quantity produced by the circuit board process. The soldering iron and computer are not consumed but either one could wear out as a result of using it to run the process, thus reducing the city's inventory by one.
The list in the center shows the materials that are consumed to manufacture the commodity. No materials are listed when manufacturing a commodity that requires only labor, such as mining stone.
Press the Fetch button to acquire commodities from the city's inventory. When commodities are fetched the amount of labor needed is increased. The quality of the commodities available determines the failure rate when fetched. For example, when 20 units of metal are needed the Fetch button attempts to acquire all 20 units. The number of failures is determined based on the quality of the commodity. Those that fail are lost; the net result appears on the console.
An icon shows the status of the process: Ready, Running, or Not Ready. The estimated time required is displayed in minutes and seconds.
Press the Run button once to run the process one time. The estimated time remaining indicator will update in real time as the process runs.
Right of the status icon is shown the quality and quantity of the commodity that was produced when the process was last run. The figure shows three electronic parts of quality 134 were produced by the last run of the circuit board process.
Turn off the "Employ Citizen" check box to prevents the citizens of the town from working this job.

Manufactured commodities are added directly to the city's inventory. Electricity is added to the city's power reserve. Vehicles and spacecraft spawn in the environment.

The city's inventory has limited storage space. A process will not run if there is no room in the city's inventory for its output. Similarly, electrical power production must store the electricity it produces in the power reserve. A power production process cannot be run if there is no room in the city's power reserve.

Vehicles, ships and spacecraft are not stored in the city's inventory. Instead this equipment spawns into the game universe as tangible objects. There must be room for this to happen. An object cannot spawn if there is no room. The test for space is usually the mere presense of other large objects in the terrain tile used for spawning. When an object cannot spawn, the manufacturing process waits until there is room.

Space stations and large spacecraft spawn in space. A space station only spawns if there are no other friendly space stations in orbit around the planet, excluding space stations orbiting moons of the planet. Large spacecraft spawn in orbit near a friendly space station. At most, eight new space ships may be present next to a space station; no more ships may spawn until there is room.