Fixing Money Laundering micro-managing ?

[Sid]

Is there ever going to be a change to how money laundering actually works in this game, or are we stuck with random breaks in the chain causing a bottom-breaking amount of snowball issues ?

I get that money laundering buildings shouldn't always be at 100% money capacity and why residences should always have some dirty money lying around; But, when my Residence is completely full for 20 minutes while my Casino, Bank and Circus are all at less than 20% capacity requiring me to manually deliver cash every 2 second because the initial issue has now created a feedback loop of late cash deliveries that's only fixable by stopping all production and flushing all my dirty cash; How do you expect me to engage in any other aspect of this game whenever i'm getting punished for trying to get the most out of my production lines ?

Seriously disappointed because i was having fun until i realized min maxing was this severely punished. This is a management sim, let us set the % of max storage of laundering buildings or get rid of the invisible dumb limit.

TLDR : Let us set a max % of storage capacity for laundering buildings or get rid of the invisible limit. There's absolutely 0 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason for trucks to idle in a full residence while 20+ laundering business have the bare minimum to launder. This has been an issue since day one. FTFG

[Arl Eamon]

While I support a setting for %max and %low cap for laundering (also needed in other buildings like farms, workshops etc.), your real problem is logistics that you fail to handle well.
In your case; as far as I understand; your residence has so many links or so far links that trucks can't catch up. You should diversify where dirty money is collected and distributed. Extra trucks research help this, but, you should really check how far and how much is coming and how far and how much is going out.

[Sid]

Originally posted by Arl Eamon:

While I support a setting for %max and %low cap for laundering (also needed in other buildings like farms, workshops etc.), your real problem is logistics that you fail to handle well.
In your case; as far as I understand; your residence has so many links or so far links that trucks can't catch up. You should diversify where dirty money is collected and distributed. Extra trucks research help this, but, you should really check how far and how much is coming and how far and how much is going out.

There is 0 logistic issues, all the trucks are idle because my 12 different laundering business are just barely above their collection treshhold. So residences fill up, export stops because the buildings are filled with cash that can't be collected by the residence, and the snowball starts until you turn off production and let the money flush.

It's a logic problem, in the envisioned perfect scenario, once a laundering business has below its threshold, the game will send trucks with enough money to fill the laundering business to its max, and wait for the threshold to be crossed once again. Seems smart and straightforward

The issues the game faces currently is that it's unrealistic to expect that the number of trucks sent will always match the number of trucks required to fill up businesses : This is less of an issue early game AND with quick revenue, but it gets way worse late game and makes the game virtually impossible to play with slow and bulky strategies..

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It's like this : One business is below its threshold, game sends enough trucks to fill it to its max ( A single row of 4 trucks filled with 5k+5k+5k+3k, for example )

Meanwhile, another business goes below the threshold, so to fill it, the game sends the trucks left over, except there's not a lot, maybe two, so it's only filled 10k over its threshold, but it can't be refilled until it drops below again AND trucks are available.

Now imagine there's a third business, it hit below it's threshhold just as 1 of the inital trucks came back, the game, seeing that only a single truck is available, sends a single meager truck ( 5k ), putting the business just above the threshold;

Let's say business 2 is a little further away than all the others, nothing dramatic, just a little bit. So two trucks haven't returned just yet. We have 5 trucks available

Business 1 has laundered again, it's still above the threshold, nothing is sent

Business 2 Launders a whole lot quicker, more than 10k, so it's already below the
threshold, to resolve that, the game sends enough trucks to fill it again, we need 5 trucks to fill, so it's sent.

Business 3 Is also below the threshold; so the game tries to send a truck, except there's none because the initial truck from the first run is still in transit; The game waits for a truck to be available. It will send the one that is currently coming back from its initial move

B1 Laundered again, it's below the threshold, it will send 3 of 5 trucks that were sent to Business 2 in the second loop

B2 Laundered, It hit below the threshold again due to bonuses, it will send the last 2 trucks, but it won't be enough to go above the threshold. One truck arrives later, and is sent with 5k just has the other two trucks are leaving the business. The business will be just barely above the threshold so next proc it will need to be ressuplied again

B3 Laundered, it hit below the threshold because only a single truck supplied it last proc, no trucks are available, and they'll only be available after Business 1 and 2 Proc again.
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The next proc will already a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, with single trucks being sent everywhere at anytime due to the number of available trucks being too low due to timing.

Now remember that residences need to PICK UP money too, also with a max of 5K per truck. This is how the loop begins, there's enough trucks to achieve the tasks, but it's done in such a broken order that there's never enough trucks to realistically complete them. If you let it evolve on its own, your exports will start to stockpile more money than it can handle, and most residences will be stuck due to either being unable to send out money OR pick it up.

To fix it properly, you flush your dirty money, and hope to not have another one of these occurencies.

If you CAN add residences, you're still not safe from being snowballed again unless you have only single links residences. If you're planning on actually playing the game properly, this is a bad money pit.

If you don't, it's eventually going to happen again.

This can be alleviated with implementing % parameters for your launder businesses and upgradable capacity of trucks to ease this issue into late game, but the logic of the system itself is broken and it's unavoidable. This is on top of bugs stopping certain residences from sending money to laundering businesses in range. The game is virtually unable to be played correctly up to a certain point, ridiculous that this is considered out of early access.

[Lamiosa]

One common issue people do, if they have too much dirty money and not enoug clean money, is paying everything with clean money. As long as you have a resident in range, you can pay your buildings and your people with dirty money. You can also pay stuff you buy in villages with dirty money. Just spend more dirty money and you will get rid of it.

[Sid]

Originally posted by Lamiosa:

One common issue people do, if they have too much dirty money and not enoug clean money, is paying everything with clean money. As long as you have a resident in range, you can pay your buildings and your people with dirty money. You can also pay stuff you buy in villages with dirty money. Just spend more dirty money and you will get rid of it.

Everything that can be paid with dirty money is being paid, This is a 300/180k revenue /week setup. Again, this is not a "Things aren't being laundered quick enough" post, this is "Money truck transit is absolutely broken past early game"

[Baneslave]

I have also noticed that Residents are not taking Dirty Money forwards (their storages are full and vehicles idle) while Launderers don't have even full cycle's worth of money.

And when Residents sent money out they don't keep enough Dirty Money to pay for any Dirty Money consuming buildings inside the radius.

[Mampelpalm]

I've had a similar issue with trucks being kind of braindead... Maybe I'm doing something wrong here but the idea, that a truck has to pick up cannabis from the plantation, bring it to a warehouse and then take it to the dryer seems really dumb. Not only does it take a lot of time to get from A to B via truck, they also transport around one or two pieces most of the time, wasting even more resources. To me it would be far more logical to have each building be equipped with their own truck or two. This way we dont have to place another building to simply add trucks. Transport Companies make the game unnecessarily complicated and they dont seem to work right now.

[Under Andr]

Hey, we're talking about this with the devs right now, but because there's much different ways buildings can be set up, can you please send a screenshot or a save, so we can check it out?

[Chewie]

You can send your save file via our Discord server, Discord DM - AndrewChewie#3326 / UnderAndr#9391 or upload it and post a link here. Thank you!

Save files can be found here - C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\CartelTycoon\Saved\SaveGames

[Omega_The_III]

I dont know if this is necroposting but i have the exact same issue and i can't find any posts abt it anywhere. The help manual says residences should be able to transport dirty money to businesses. I have aerodomes and ports filling up with cash because its not getting picked up because residences and hotels are full because they have max idling trucks and completely empty businesses!
any update on when there will be a fix for this?

[Under Andr]

Originally posted by Omega_The_III:

I dont know if this is necroposting but i have the exact same issue and i can't find any posts abt it anywhere. The help manual says residences should be able to transport dirty money to businesses. I have aerodomes and ports filling up with cash because its not getting picked up because residences and hotels are full because they have max idling trucks and completely empty businesses!
any update on when there will be a fix for this?

Hello! Okay, I have to ask - are your Smuggling Points connected to Residencies (You can check in the 'Connections' Tab of either building).
If they're all connected, can you please send a save file my way through Steam DMs or through Discord - underandr?

Save files can be found here - C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\CartelTycoon\Saved\SaveGames

Would love to help you out!

[clayffo]

it's somewhat of an issue .

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995191621
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995192650

this is a lot of cash for 1 plane

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995193329

[felmari]

it does not mater how much the laundering holds if you can not get rid of it to keep the flow going. it is a balance issue you need more laundering buildings to match your operation. late game it gets to where you can not balance it reasonably as you just make to much. the stashes help but i might as well be throwing it away for it does not take long to just make more to capacity. i try to limit to one workshop for each product i want to make and balance everything to making that efficient. usually only 2 products though have some others in small operations for things like army base and prison. this can be done usually without have to own the entire map.

[Steven]

Originally posted by Under Andr:

Originally posted by Omega_The_III:

I dont know if this is necroposting but i have the exact same issue and i can't find any posts abt it anywhere. The help manual says residences should be able to transport dirty money to businesses. I have aerodomes and ports filling up with cash because its not getting picked up because residences and hotels are full because they have max idling trucks and completely empty businesses!
any update on when there will be a fix for this?

Hello! Okay, I have to ask - are your Smuggling Points connected to Residencies (You can check in the 'Connections' Tab of either building).
If they're all connected, can you please send a save file my way through Steam DMs or through Discord - underandr?

Save files can be found here - C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\CartelTycoon\Saved\SaveGames

Would love to help you out!

it be nice no building came with transports but transport building and we could manly setup how transports work.

example you build transport building and it comes with 10 trucks by defualt.

you setup truck 1 and truck 2 to move items between building A and build B and that is all those trucks do nothing elese they just move form A to B and back and forth.

then you take trucks 3 and set them up to move between B and C and thats all that truck does.

then you decide trucks 4 and 5 will move goods between building C and D and thats all those two trucks do.

then you have truck 6 go between building D and B and so forth - instead of the logical system that code uses for deciding what trucks work where why not just let player decide and remove the Radius crape and instead just add a maintenance fee for each truck and make them have to get repaired on the transport hub.

this way we player can just setup trucks to make logic runs we want.

if we turn off building then those trucks just get turned off with that building they end up being attached as part of building there setup assigned to.

transport hub be like a maintenance hub to repair trucks and maintain them, with no silly radius stuff.

games hard enough with out broken logistics system that in place with radius and some weird logic code that player has no control over.

[M@dG@m3s]

Hola capos,
"it does not mater how much the laundering holds"
Yes it does because if the residences or hotel do not fill the laundering baskets asap, they attrack police attention very soon, and that's a thing that can be solved by keeping the laundering basket fully filled (depending the cash flow, see below).
But the residence or hotel has also to hold enouth money to run the buildings relying on dirty cash to run.
I'm ok to say that the laundering rate has to match the dirty cash flow but actually the way the laundering system work is not OK (to my opinion).
The maximum dirty cash has to be secured automatically (as it's the role of the residence or hotel) into the laundering baskets (with enougth dirty money stored in the residence to run the buildings that need cash).
It's up to the laundering baskets to have the dirty cash buffer role and thus they have to store the most cash as possible not up to the residence.
The residence should begin to store cash only if the laudering baskets are full and to run the buildings for x days (could be set by a cursor by the way) within its area.
Please dev, could you look at the laundering baskets filling system behaviour please.
Thank you !

[Dietre]

I am running into the same problem, one level 3 fishing port, full of opium, there is like 4 freaking residence collecting the money, two cities full of banks and everything sits very low money in the banks, level 2 or special residences are full of cash and then the port will fill up with cash and stop. add in one air port with one slot max cocaine and the system ♥♥♥♥♥ itself and you have to micro $20k runs into each bank to them near capacity. i have nearly 2mil in clean cash, and 800k ish in dirty money. two of the residence have bosses with added trucks perks for more trucks too.
The other problem with alot of money such as the banks with high storage, once it meets the low% trigger, so many trucks will transport money it goes over the max limit while the other 2 banks sit at 5k