Why no tool production

[jafri]

I have set up a train that delivers planks to a production facality and it do so. This facality should produce tools but that does not happen. I have a train line that should pick up tools an deliver it to a city that requires tools. And yes the train station is connected to the area that requires tools. And the wagons can carry tools. Why does this not work. Other similar chains does work

[numbat]

The simple answer.... there is something wrong with the setup of the line that delivers tools to the city.

You need to double check everything on this line.

At the tools factory, is it the same station that receives the planks? If not, double check it's "connected" to the tools factory. If you click on it, does the tools factory highlight?

Are you using line filters? Make sure you have selected to load tools. I have found that sometimes when you add trains after setting up the line, the line filters can be blanked out, and are not picking up everything.

Double check your wagons can carry tools. You need boxcars, not stakes cars.

Double check that the station at the town end is still connected to the area that requires tools. Sometimes, town growth can cause a station to become disconnected. It might help to add a truck terminal and dropoffs and use a truck to deliver tools across the demand area.

Cheers,
Chris.

[nordstern]

The game mechanic is here a bit strange.

A raw material producer (grain, stone, ore, oil) will always produce as many products as possible in this stage. No matter the connected industries.

But this changes than. The halfproduct factories and endfactories will only produce what is demanded. So the steelfactory will not produce steel unless you connect a factory who demands steel (machine, goods) and then only the amount they need.

And also the endproduct... in your case the toolsfactory. If the toolfactory has nobody to send the tools, it will not produce anything. But it will delivered with planks, because they demand it. But not like raw materials as much as possible. Only as much as the stage of the industry max. needs.

So making the tools to work, you must connect them to a city were it is demanded and the goods must reach the area were it is demanded if not in the radius of the station (use trucks for this) and their must be vehicles on these lines and these vehicles must carry these products. For example setting an oilwaggon on a toolline the factory will produce nothing.


In Short:
raw will always produce 400t of goods... midindustries will only produce 100 goods if they are connected to a stage 1 factory. And these factory will only produce if their is a demand in a connected city and the goods can reach the region were the city demands them and only the amount they can reach in the city. If the industry levels up to demand more then 100, it will produce 200 or lvl up and 300/400.
If a city needs 200 tools but the trucks can only reach 150.. it will produce 150.

[Gregorovitch]

The best way to figure out what's wrong her is to learn to use the information provided in the industry details tabs, specifically the production, consumers and suppliers tabs.

In the consumers tab your tool factory should list the town and, if all is well, the number listed under "shipping" should match the town's demand for tools. In theory that's what shipping means - "town demands 45 tools so I ship 45 tools".

However shipping is actually a very slippery number. It can be affected by a) lack of transport throughput down stream (which is reflected in the transport % number) and b) insufficient upstream supplies (in this case planks) to produce enough tools to meet town demand. In the latter case the tools factory shipping number will be reduced to the maximum the factory can currently produce.

Anyway you can use this information to determine initially whether your problem is upstream or downstream. If you are certain the factory is getting plenty of planks (which from your post I assume it is) problem must be downstream so you need to check if

a) tools factory shipping number is zero. This means that your lines have not in fact successfully connected the factory to actual tools customer buildings in the town (for whatever reason, there could be many).

b) the shipping number reflects the town demand but the transport % is zero. This means there is a problem with one or more of the delivery lines, connectivity is established in theory but not in practice for whatever reason, they could be many. For example the wrong wagon/truck type is being used somewhere.

Understanding how the consumers, suppliers and production tabs for industries work is very useful for debugging problems like this. I think most folk start by trying to eyeball it but it's actually much quicker to get down and dirty with the stats first, it massively helps narrow down the source of the problem. Later in the game one of your main problems will be trying to increase industry production levels and balance vehicle allocation to complex supply chains. The stats are especially useful for that.