I need to understand how cargo hubs work, please help

[mvfoley1215]

I am sure that this question has been asked and answered before among the 1,000's upon 1,000's of discussion threads here. I have searched and have not found the type (detail) of answer I am needing.

I would love to start using cargo hubs but there are a couple of questions that I am not at all clear on regarding how Cargo Hubs work within the constraints of the game. For example, if I connect a forest with with a Saw Mill with a train line the forest produces logs for only that particular Saw Mill. Then when I connect the Saw Mill to say a Tool plant the Saw Mill will produce Planks for only that Plank Factory and the Saw Mill will keep producing planks for that plant far in excess of the required amount. There is no way of reassigning any of the excess plank inventory sitting on the dock at the Saw Mill to another Plank factory. When you connect another Plank factory to that Saw Mill the saw mill will eventually start producing planks for the second plant but that can take awhile. And the game will only allow for production to start once a producer is connected to a consumer. So How exactly does a cargo hub help here?

I can see one situation where a hub would be helpful. That is where you connect two or more producers who can or are only able to supply a smaller quantity to the consumer, using a hub to collect these smaller quantities into one larger supply where one longer train can supply the consumer. But the quantities being supplied by the producers that are going to the hub are still directly connected to the one consumer. So stockpiling a product at a hub does not allow for any flexibility in distributing product going to hub to other consumers.

Am I missing something here.

[numbat]

I use cargo hubs all the time. You are correct that producers will only start producing/shipping once there is a consumer, so if you want many producers you will also need many consumers.

The game will also try to balance everything, so that primary producers will share their output between processing facilities, and processing facilities will share their supply between primary producers. This can get very messy and can often lead to unexpected results. Recovering from these is part of the fun, but it would be nice if there were some way to manage this part of the chain.

In the middle game, I start to move all product to regional hubs. Depending upon the layout, I may (or may not) ship all primary produce (grain, crude, logs etc) to a hub, then from there to a production facility. In every game so far, at least some of the primary produce goes to a hub.

The hub then ships product to a producer, and picks up the finished product and delivers back to the regional hub. From the regional hub, I then have "town delivery trains", which take 2 or 3 or 4 products from the hub to each town, and I also have "inter hub" transfer trains, which take products from one hub to another.

I can only setup like this once I get into the middle game where I've connected a good number of towns, primary producers and processing plants. It doesn't make sense to do this for one producer / one consumer (although I may often lay the framework early in the game). In the late game, I make use of some cargo mods (DMA mods and niffy's universal stake cars) so that I can build trains capable of transporting many products. These are very useful when I start delivering all 4 cargo types to a town. The DMA one is pretty nice when it changes the container based upon the contents.

Cheers,
Chris.

[Vimpster]

Another kind of hub setup is to have a main rail network that circles the map and have various hubs along that network where all the local industries and towns get their cargo taken to/from via shorter local lines (truck or rail).

In this setup if we, say, have a particular hub with a food factory nearby, it will draw a portion of grain from all farms on the map via the nearby hub while also dispersing it's food back to the nearby hub to be evenly distributed to all connected towns that demand food.

This isn't the way I normally play, but I was inspired to try this out and it was actually a lot of fun and surprisingly profitable. A lot of the fun came from trying to calculate exactly how many of each type of wagon I needed on my trains in order to keep up with the supply. A lot of math was needed.

Here is what my Mainline network looked like:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2670750028
My mainline is not a single line, but broken up into legs. So for instance I have the green line in the middle ground which is the NW leg. The magenta line (upper right of picture) is the SW leg, which connects to the red leg in the south (top of the picture), which connects to the blue eastern leg (upper left of the picture), then to the mustard north leg (left side of picture) which then uses a boat line to connect the circle.

Everything connects into this main line with the exception of the yellow line you see in the upper middle of the screen which was my initial line I used for making money to fund my creation of the main line.

The reason for breaking up the mainline in to separate legs is 2 fold. For one, it allows for greater revenue efficiency since the distance between each end of the leg is more or less straight compared to a big circle. Secondly it allows me to customise the train composition for the particular volume of cargo that travels through each leg, minimising the amount of empty wagons the trains are pulling on any given stretch.

[mvfoley1215]

Originally posted by numbat:

I use cargo hubs all the time. You are correct that producers will only start producing/shipping once there is a consumer, so if you want many producers you will also need many consumers.

The game will also try to balance everything, so that primary producers will share their output between processing facilities, and processing facilities will share their supply between primary producers. This can get very messy and can often lead to unexpected results. Recovering from these is part of the fun, but it would be nice if there were some way to manage this part of the chain.

In the middle game, I start to move all product to regional hubs. Depending upon the layout, I may (or may not) ship all primary produce (grain, crude, logs etc) to a hub, then from there to a production facility. In every game so far, at least some of the primary produce goes to a hub.

The hub then ships product to a producer, and picks up the finished product and delivers back to the regional hub. From the regional hub, I then have "town delivery trains", which take 2 or 3 or 4 products from the hub to each town, and I also have "inter hub" transfer trains, which take products from one hub to another.

I can only setup like this once I get into the middle game where I've connected a good number of towns, primary producers and processing plants. It doesn't make sense to do this for one producer / one consumer (although I may often lay the framework early in the game). In the late game, I make use of some cargo mods (DMA mods and niffy's universal stake cars) so that I can build trains capable of transporting many products. These are very useful when I start delivering all 4 cargo types to a town. The DMA one is pretty nice when it changes the container based upon the contents.

Cheers,
Chris.

Would it be possible for you to post a screen shot of a hub and label the various components? If I am understanding you correctly the setup would have to be something like the diagram I have created below. I have used the following notations to identify the elements: PP (Producing Plant like Logs) CPP (Consuming and Producing Plant like Tools or Fuel) CC (Consuming City) CHW (Cargo Hub Warehouse either Truck or Rail), > transporting from point a to point b, + denotes that 2 points are connected by a transportation link (train, truck, ship or air etc), # denotes a particular Producer, Consumer or City

Step 1 setup for a Tools - PP#1 (logs) + CHW + CPP#1 (Saw mill needed for the forest to start producing logs) + CHW + CPP#2 (Tools factory needed for Saw mill to start processing logs) + CC#1 (final consumer need for Tool Factory to start making tools). So the CHW will accept the logs if and only if the link to CPP#1 is setup prior to transporting any logs Correct, so far?

PP1 > CHW + CPP1 Then CHW > CPP1 + CHW + CPP2 Then CPP1 > CHW > CPP2j+ CHW + CC1 Then CPP2 > CHW > CC1 correct?

If you have PP1 , PP2 producing logs for CPP1 with the final consumer is CC1 and PP3 is producing logs for CPP3 with the final consumer being CC2 and all shipping their logs to CHW the inventories are all kept separated based on who the final consumer is, is that correct?

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by mvfoley1215:

PP1 > CHW + CPP1 Then CHW > CPP1 + CHW + CPP2 Then CPP1 > CHW > CPP2j+ CHW + CC1 Then CPP2 > CHW > CC1 correct?

If you have PP1 , PP2 producing logs for CPP1 with the final consumer is CC1 and PP3 is producing logs for CPP3 with the final consumer being CC2 and all shipping their logs to CHW the inventories are all kept separated based on who the final consumer is, is that correct?

No it would not work like that. PP1, PP2, and PP3 would all be splitting their supply between CPP1 and CPP3 because they can all see and reach each other. However any cargo at the CHW would still have a specific destination. It would not be first come first serve. But you would not be able to isolate which destination the logs go to if their are multiple destinations reach able.

[numbat]

@mvfoley,

don't start with something as complex as that, start with something simple. Here is an outline of how the grain/food portion of one of my hubs works.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z76mvs8lm2g2babxvj6cl/grain-hub.PNG?rlkey=h3657gkgme66pqza022nkbka9&dl=0

There are three sources of grain coming into the hub (2 x truck, 1 x rail). The bottom "grain out food in" is where the grain is taken to the food processing plant, and returned as food. There are two lines of food going out. The top one goes direct to the town you can see at the top of the screen (along with some other produce), the bottom one is an inter-hub transfer where the majority of the food is going to another hub I have in a different part of the map.

Cheers,
Chris.