Warehouse mechanics?

[Charles]

I was wandering if anybody knows how the warehouses work exactly. To be specific I am referring to more complex systems. I know about crates, fetching, ect. What I don't know is an explanation to some unexpected behavior I observed. I have a warehouse near an eatery. In that warehouse I have crates that allow veggies and fruit, no fetch options are enabled. However it has stocked both veggies and fruit despite being far away from the farms. I find it hard to believe that the 2 workers were able to span the gap and scoop up some of the harvest before the other, closer, warehouses grabbed it. Do the warehouses have a sort of light fetching behavior by default? I am intrigued by this possibility, and would love to know more about the specifics of warehouse behavior.

[Gamatron]

It must have come from the warehouse workers. When a resource is put on the ground, like when harvesting, all warehouse workers will try to grab it, if it's within their radius. And if they do that they "reserve" the pile, meaning no other worker can grab it. This blocks other, potentially closer, workers from grabbing that pile. So it doesn't matter the distance, your far away workers will probably reserve a pile each at least during the harvest.

[Charles]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

It must have come from the warehouse workers. When a resource is put on the ground, like when harvesting, all warehouse workers will try to grab it, if it's within their radius. And if they do that they "reserve" the pile, meaning no other worker can grab it. This blocks other, potentially closer, workers from grabbing that pile. So it doesn't matter the distance, your far away workers will probably reserve a pile each at least during the harvest.

Excellent! It is actually helpful that they do that, and that makes perfect sense. Thank you for taking the time to reply. I have one additional question if you don't mind. How do you envision the logistics system to work? I am currently trying to set up my warehouses so that they can transfer goods effectively when I reach a large population that spans the map. The issue is most of my productions tend to be located in a district like cluster. For example my stone cutters are near stone mines ect. I am pondering how to deal with that. Hearing how you intended the system to work would help me wrap my brain around it.

[fortydayweekend]

Originally posted by Charles:

Excellent! It is actually helpful that they do that, and that makes perfect sense. Thank you for taking the time to reply. I have one additional question if you don't mind. How do you envision the logistics system to work? I am currently trying to set up my warehouses so that they can transfer goods effectively when I reach a large population that spans the map. The issue is most of my productions tend to be located in a district like cluster. For example my stone cutters are near stone mines ect. I am pondering how to deal with that. Hearing how you intended the system to work would help me wrap my brain around it.

You basically have 2 kinds of warehouses, "collectors" and "fetchers".

Collectors sit near your industry and accept goods. They need to be close to production buildings so that your industry workers don't have to work far to deliver, and they need to have enough capacity to take all the goods being produced (so industry workers don't have to walk to a faraway warehouse if the closest one is full).

Fetcher warehouses sit near to where you need the goods delivered, e.g. eateries and the next steps in your production chain. They're set to 'fetch', often just one box of each good. If they're close to your eateries and other industry then those workers don't have far to walk to get their goods.

Warehouse workers carry more than normal workers so using warehouses to move goods as much as possible is more efficient.

You can't set up a "chain" without micromanagement, so just have one warehouse near the production and another where the goods need to get to. If they're pulling across a lot of the map they'll need more workers (and/or more warehouses).

Obviously a single warehouse can do both roles, collecting some local goods and fetching others. E.g. a warehouse next to a coal mine and a smelter might be accepting a lot of coal and fetching 255 ore.

Reducing the radius can be a good idea in bigger cities to stop the workers going out to collect random harvested goods on the other side of the map.

[Gamatron]

NF = warehouse without fetch
F = warehouse with fetch
P = producer of resource
C = consumer of resource
--- = distance
P -> NF ------------------------> F -> C

Possibly, if the producer has a large internal storage capacity, you can skip the NF.
For large quantities, it is more efficient to use the transport room, T. Set it to deliver to F.
P -> T ----------------------------> F -> C

You can have several consumers all over town

C <-F <------------------ P -> T ------------------> F -> C

You can also use the empty to function in the F warehouse, and have that deliver to a particular warehouse. I'll call that E.
<---------------F <- C
C <- E ---------------------> NF <---------------F <- C
<---------------F <- C

[Charles]

Thank you both for the excellent responses. It will certainly help with planning my logistics! I have been following that idea and its working well. I recall having some issues with my logistics last time I played. That was a few patches back, right before the nursery/religion update. I don't recall what the issue was exactly. I think it pertained to trying to evenly distribute goods throughout my city. I was using a production warehouse to both ship out goods and to supply some bakeries. The issue I ran into was having the production storage hold onto some grain while shipping out the vast majority to clear it up for the next harvest. With that majority being to multiple locations in differing quantities. I will try to illustrate it below.

DS= District storage
MS = Mass storage
CW = Consumer with tiny attached fetching Warehouse
Step 1

P -> NF -> Bakeries & --------------> DS 1

Step 2

DS 1 ---> CW & ------------> DS 2

Step 3

DS 2 ---> CW & ------------> MS

Step 4

MS ----> DS 1 (Repeat steps 2-4)

The Idea was to keep the stock circulating with only what is needed being kept by the warehouses with the rest moving on. The mass storage was intended to hold onto what could not be sent back into the chain. I was trying to keep my warehouse workers traveling in a predictable pattern so I could more efficiently supply them with services ect. I also was intending to be able to set my warehouses up once and not need to periodically increase the accepted grain amount as production grows. I was attempting to make the logistics as efficient, and robust as I could. I could never get that system to work quite right, and I was never quite sure if I was missing something obvious about the logistics. However hearing it's intended use does give me some ideas to mess around with. So again, thank you!