I think the team is asleep. It's almost 2AM here, same as another one of us; 1AM at one person's locale and 3AM at the other twos.

One of us has been working on coding the systems, one on UI, one person on music, one doing graphics and I'm working on the system formulas and have been stuck (and of course) distracted.

But inspiration just stroke me, unsurprisingly, during bio-break.

I was trying to calculate energy and material requirements for buildings and stuff and trying to figure how to balance that.

Instead, I decided to start from a different perspective. I divided the day (Cycle/C) into 4 periods (P), divided those into time units (T) and decide how many seconds that unit is. I'm going to measure everything with that in mind. For example Digging 1 block = 1T Mining 1 time = 1T Moving across 1 block = 1T Unloading bag = 1T 1 C = 4 P 1 P = 10T 1 T = 3 Seconds 1 C = 4103= 120 seconds Workers spend 1P to sleep and 1P to eat and have fun. So they have 20T to use every cycle.

I still haven't fully figured it, kinda feeling like Skeleton Jack from NMBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrwTy6ZlwPg

Or have I found the answer? I'm so close! I know it.

Okay, I'm gonna think out loud. ...I may or may not have taken a break to sing some NMBC songs pretending I'm in Karaoke.

I'm back now.

So, let's consider the size of the map. We haven't decided, so I'm going to start with an arbitrary 20 units. Let's say we have to move half of that between an ore vein and the storage. For ease of calculation, I'm going to assume the distance is 9 units. 1. Storage to ore: 9T 2. Digging: 1T 3. Return trip: 9T 4. Unload: 1T That's a total of 20T! So one worker can make one full trip with that kind of distance. Of course the worker may start from the mess hall or something which may complicate calculations. This sounds a bit too much for me - unless the output is good.

Let's try a closer and farther one. The formula is basically 2*(Distance+1). 4 Distance will be 10 units. In fact, I'm not trying a farther one because time won't be enough.

Question: What happens when workers are tired? Do they fall asleep? Stop what they are doing? Finish it then sleep extra?

Honestly, I don't like this. Traveling takes too much time. 9 block may not be a small difference but it's also not that much, we should be able to do better. Let's try halving it, so moving across 1 block is 1/2T.

The formula will be 1+D0.5+1+D0.5=D+2 So 9 block distance=11 T 4 block distance = 6T 18 block distance=20T -which is the maximum distance. I like this more.

Another variation: moving between levels. This will require walking through the stairs. Let's say these take double distance. So if you just move 1 floor, you count as walking 2 blocs instead 1 and if you move 2 floors that counts as 4 instead of 2. Basically, each floor adds +1. But since we are thinking about going back and forth, for our calculation we are going to add +2

So if we are a total of 9 block distance, including 1 floor change=13T, 2 floor change=14T 4 Block distance with 1 floor change=8T, 2 floor change= 9T 12 block distance, regular is 14T with 1 floor=16T, 2 floor distance=18T, which is maximum distance. I think this is fine.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I think we can decrease it even more but let's take this for now. It's not super punishing but it makes a difference. It discourages from counting on far away storages and encourages building closer to veins. We want this.

SO let's do a quick recap. Moving across 1 block takes 1/2T (1.5 seconds) and moving up or down the stairs take 1T per floor.

Now comes an equally important question - how much ore we carry. But first, some sleep.