Oil Rigs Production and profits

[extreme007]

Hi. First time poster here, and only recently got "addicted" to this game.

Game setup:
Single-player temperate climate game.
NewGRF: 2cc tram set 1, roadhog 1.4.1, Industrial Stations Renewal 1.0.2, Total Town Replacement Set 3.14, FISH 0.9.2, RIMS Set 1.6, OpenGFX+ Trains 0.3.0
I am not playing with FIRS or those other newgrfs which I have read are super-popular.

What I have read/know so far:
I have read on wiki and this forum, that if you have a 60+ and 80+ station rating (at the oil rig?) then you have a certain % chance of increase/decrease. I see that the station rating is based on a few items - the biggest of which are "last cargo pickup time", speed/age of last vehicle and cargo waiting.
The farther you send cargo, the more money you make.
Production level takes several years (hours IRL) to double.

Question
I am trying to raise the oil rig production levels and am failing to do so. What am I doing wrong? How can I improve this production level?

My transportation network
I have all but one oil rigs connected to my network.
Each oil rig has its own dedicated port that is located within 10 squares or so. A ship ("provider") is set to take oil from rig and transfer to the dock.
A combination of trains/trams then take that oil from the dock to a single refinery, ensuring that the last leg is via my speediest train.

What is happening:
Each of the player created stations in the network above has a station rating of 80+%. An outbound train/tram is always present to take the cargo off the incoming leg.
Either a ship is always present at the rig to load any oil produced, or the time delay between cargo pickups is less than 30 seconds (since the dock is very close).
The oil rigs themselves, I start off with 80% rating year 0 of the ship. By ship age 3, the rating drops to 67%. And yet, the production levels barely change over the 3 year period.

What I have tried
1. Changing the ship from full load to Load if available. This only changes the amount of money that first leg ends up making each run, and barely changes the rating.
2. Let's say the oil rig is producing 100 units, and giving me 80 units (rating of 80%), I use a ship that can handle 75 units (full load). I have tried replacing that ship with 2 ships that use 40 units in hopes of staying at 80+%.

Limitations:
I am not playing with the strategy of terraforming the coast such that I can build a train station right next to the oil rig. I know I can do that and easily bump up production, as I have done that with other industries.

[odisseus]

Even if you keep the station rating at 100%, the production increase is not guaranteed — in fact, it may even drop despite the excellent service! Also, three years may be too short a period to spot the difference. However, if you keep the ratings above 60% for 10–20 years, the overall production will increase dramatically.

Now, keeping the station rating at oil platforms (and ports) may be difficult, because there will be no additional rating boost from being serviced by a fast vehicle (ships that carry oil tend to be slow). However, if you make sure that every oil rig has a loading ship at all times, you will eventually get into high production levels.

[extreme007]

Thanks for your response.

I did infact wait at least 15 years, but all 10 oil rigs have not shown even an increase of 20% over the time period. They may have raised 10-15% (seen through those summary messages) but also dropped by roughly equal % a few years later or so. Either ways, I'll keep waiting and seeing.


I am curious, is there a purpose to having a ship waiting to take the cargo at all times as high as having them return quickly to pick up next load ?
Put it this way, using actual numbers, I see that the top tier for station rating for last cargo pickup time gives 130 points if last cargo picked up was less than 60 seconds ago (15 seconds for all non-ship modes). I see top tier for cargo waiting gives +40 points if less than 100 units remaining.
That means, if a ship returns to an oil rig within 60 seconds, and oil rig only has 99,000 barrels of oil (99 units) in it at that moment, then it would still get the full points towards station rating.

So, why would you still need a ship to be present at the oil rig at all times?

I am using https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Game ... ion-rating as my source for numbers. Hopefully its accurate and up to date for vanilla game.

[jfs]

You can also try running advertising in the town the oil rig belongs to. Advertising temporarily boosts the station ratings, but I don't remember if there is a maximum range from the town center where it has any effect. It might not work if the oil rigs are far from the towns. You would also need to repeatedly re-run the advertising (manually) to keep the rating boosted.

[extreme007]

Even if you keep the station rating at 100%, the production increase is not guaranteed — in fact, it may even drop despite the excellent service! Also, three years may be too short a period to spot the difference. However, if you keep the ratings above 60% for 10–20 years, the overall production will increase dramatically.

Now, keeping the station rating at oil platforms (and ports) may be difficult, because there will be no additional rating boost from being serviced by a fast vehicle (ships that carry oil tend to be slow). However, if you make sure that every oil rig has a loading ship at all times, you will eventually get into high production levels.

I know I mentioned 3 years in my post, but that's since I started paying attention to details. I have been servicing the oil rigs for about 20-30 years or so. I had to replace my oil trams at some point cause they got old. At all times, my rating would have been 67% at its worst throughout those 20-30 years.
Anyways, here's what I have found so far in last 5 years of running. I have been doing the following:

• Keeping a ship loading at the oil rig at all times.
• Keeping the same ship-speed at the oil rig. No mixing speeds of ships that service an oil rig. Mixing of cargo sizes is fine as I don't want the ship sitting around for too long.
• Replacing all ships that service the oil rigs every 2 years, so that I keep getting the age bonus.

(no tables allowed? )

• Port Name - April Year 0 - April Year 1 - April Year 2 - April Year 3 - April Year 4 (Total Difference over 5 years)
• Columbia - 122 - 120 - 123 - 123 - 124 (2)
• Peru - 207 - 230 - 289 - 342 - 357 (150)
• Argentina - 91 - 97 - 103 - 101 - 103 (12)
• Senegal - 41 - 45 - 46 - 45 - 45 (4)
• South Africa - 105 - 98 - 92 - 98 - 102 (-3)
• Kenya - 341 - 335 - 357 - 393 - 421 (80)
• Australia - 35 - 36 - 38 - 37 - 41 (6)
• Japan - 20 - 25 - 29 - 29 - 29 (9)
• Russia - 43 - 42 - 43 - 47 - 48 (5)

Based on that, it looks like some of them (Peru, Kenya) got significant boost, while the others barely changed. And also, I noticed they take a bigger jump when you swap the ships to newer ones. You get sort of like an immediate (within a year) boost.

Maybe my understanding is broken, but shouldn't each of them increase roughly similarly? I remember reading that smaller industries got a bigger bump than larger ones.

You can also try running advertising in the town the oil rig belongs to. Advertising temporarily boosts the station ratings, but I don't remember if there is a maximum range from the town center where it has any effect. It might not work if the oil rigs are far from the towns. You would also need to repeatedly re-run the advertising (manually) to keep the rating boosted.

I tried that. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to change the ratings of an oil rig. The oil rigs I tested on were close enough to the city center (name of city on screen). I could see everything nearby go to 100% rating, except the oil rigs.

[extreme007]

I’ve noticed that oil rigs can be incredibly profitable, but their production rates can fluctuate a lot. Does anyone have tips on how to maximize production and profits from oil rigs?

The first part seems true. Just look at the few stats I posted above from my game. One oil rig nearly doubled in just 5 years (from 207k to 357k), while many others moved +/- 5k only.

For maximizing OIL production, I am still searching for tips. Or at least better understanding of how that works. I am able to consistently increase production for instance of iron ore/wood/farm easily by simply having a 80+% station rating through the following:

• Have the fastest vehicle servicing the station.
• The time between two vehicles arriving to pick up cargo should be less than 15 seconds (which is why I suspect people say to keep a vehicle always loading cause its harder to time things down properly).
• Statue in city gives you a permanent increase

For profits, my two cents based on my game so far - it depends on what you are considering as profits. My network has a ship that takes oil from rigs to a dock. Then a train/tram that takes it to a transfer/feeder station. And finally another train that takes it to a refinery. Depending upon the quantity and distance, all 3 legs of mine are making profits. Since money in openttd is based on distance and quantity, those are the values you need to play with. The last leg of mine is short distance, but the quantity moved is huge = profits. The middle legs are smaller quantity, but very long distances = profits. For ships leg, all my distances are short. So those ships with large quantity make more money than those with smaller quantities. In fact, from the oil rigs I posted above, 3-4 of the oil rigs (those under 50) I am actually losing money on the ships leg because the quantity isn't high enough. My hope is to increase production such that the quantity can rise and I can make profits on those legs too.

[odisseus]

In fact, from the oil rigs I posted above, 3-4 of the oil rigs (those under 50) I am actually losing money on the ships leg because the quantity isn't high enough. My hope is to increase production such that the quantity can rise and I can make profits on those legs too.

The only leg that results in a net income to your company is the final leg of the delivery. After the completion of each transfer leg you can see a "transfer income" pop up, but this is just an estimate calculated by a very simple formula. This estimate is very often incorrect, but it doesn't matter in summary, because it is deducted from your final income once the cargo is delivered. As a result, with a transfer route you will usually see vehicles that make enormous profits or enormous losses, but in the end you get paid precisely the same amount as you would have with a direct route (assuming the same time and distance).

[mauried]

I dont know if all Oil Rigs are the same , but Ive been playing with the Oil Rigs in the ECS Industry set, and if you take passengers to and from the Oil Rigs this produces a noticeable increase in the production rates of the Oil.
I use helicopters to move the passengers as they are quicker than passenger carrying ships.

[odisseus]

ECS has completely different rules for production changes, which are much more complicated in the general case. In the default economy, however, the production of oil is totally unrelated to the supply of passengers.

[extreme007]

So, for a few years, the oil rigs kept going up at various speeds. Now, most of them are starting to go down (dropping by nearly 20% or so year on year), despite the oil rig's rating being at 67% (ship age 2) to 80% (ship age 0) rating and a ship being present at the oil rig at all times.

That got me looking at the station rating once again.
Based on https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Game ... ion-rating, the rating comes from:

• Max speed of vehicle - All (available) ships are below 85, so 0 points from this category.
• Age of vehicle - All ships are new. So max points of 33.
• Seconds since last pickup - Most points are 130 and awarded when ship picks up cargo with 60 seconds. Since a ship is always present, that's 130.
• Statue in town - Built. Additional 26 points.
• Units of cargo at station

Based on above math, that's a total of 189 points, which is roughly 75% without taking into account cargo waiting. After taking account the different values possible for the units of cargo waiting, I should be able to see a max of 90% rating (0 to 100 units of cargo waiting) or 40% (more than 4096 units of cargo waiting).

The best I ever see at an oil rig is 80%. Is this hard-coded or my network is causing this ? Maybe a unit of oil is 1 barrel, rather than 1000 barrels?
There are times, when my trains are heading to maintenance, that some of the feeder/transfer stations enroute to refinery have sometimes 300k-500k barrels of oil sitting at the station. But it does get picked up within a month immediately after.

The main reason for asking is cause I am trying to improve the efficiency and just want to know what is causing the drag.

I have the same setup for other industries, but do not face this problem. The only difference is the presence of oil rigs/ships.

[LaChupacabra]

• Statue in town - Built. Additional 26 points.

But the statue only works for stations owned by your company. Shared stations, such as oil rigs or fishing grounds, are unaffected. If you want, you can build a port next to the platform - this will allow you to use the power of the statue. Sometimes this way you can also cover several platforms with the station.

You can also try running advertising in the town the oil rig belongs to. Advertising temporarily boosts the station ratings, but I don't remember if there is a maximum range from the town center where it has any effect. It might not work if the oil rigs are far from the towns. You would also need to repeatedly re-run the advertising (manually) to keep the rating boosted.

The advertising range is very limited and at best only 20 tiles from the city center. In addition, here, too, they will only apply to stations belonging to the player who paid for these ads. Yes, in the regular version of the game you have to repeat the ads from time to time, but...

You can see the ad reach and detailed station ratings above in the slightly expanded version of CityMania, which you can download here. It is fully compatible with the regular version of the game.
There's also an option for a self-repeating ad when a station's rating drops below a level you specify.

Btw. The speed for ships for rating is calculated slightly differently - it is multiplied x2