Factory reviews and questions/suggestions/issues

[Sarsgamer]

It seems like everyone is a bit negative on the factories. Can they use improvement, sure, but they aren't completely useless.

Are they cost efficient... probably not, nice to not be affected by outages though. But making 5 to 7 million a day it doesn't matter that much haha. My cost of goods is lower, but I haven't really done the numbers on the cost of the workers needed (factory workers, purchasers, logistics managers, drivers and HR staff) and the cost of initial setup would definitely take awhile to get in the green.

I have 7 factories producing; cheap and expensive jewelry, expensive clothing, and all electronics. And other than cheap jewelry and expensive clothing the others are massively overproducing that I added expensive jewelry to all my stores that seemed suitable (gift shops florists and even book stores).

For electronics I did watches first and am producing more than I need but the setup isn't efficient due to not enough space in the chosen warehouse. It's 3 consumer machines where 4 would likely be perfect to fully be overproducing. As it is now I switch the machines to produce a different watches when one of them has stock in the 1000's and the other gets under a 1000. Same with expensive jewelry I'm selling them in other stores like bookstores, gift shops and florists. if it was more efficient setup I would sell them in other places as well (clothing stores), which I still might in the future.

Other electronics are similar as above. These are my latest factories so I'm still overproducing and slowly adding them to other stores to sell where they aren't primary or secondary products.

The factories, purchasers and warehouses ended up a pretty neat setup. Between the 7 factories I have 3 purchasers. All jewelry materials goes to one factory where they divide it up and split to 2 other jewelry factories. The same purchaser is also providing the clothing factory and 1 electronics factory then the other 2 purchasers supplying 2 electronic factories. I'm just now realizing I could cut this down to 1 purchaser due to my latest change. Which is previously the factories were all supplying multiple warehouses whereas now all factories ship to one warehouse where that warehouse then supplies all the other warehouses. It makes it easier to monitor where I'm over producing and under producing and also with all retails there's an off amount where you'd need a single warehouse to supply one store so that one single warehouse is supplying 15 warehouses and a single retail with my manufactured goods. I also decided to do all my paper bags from that warehouse, mostly cause of that one single retail store.

Questions/ Issues:

First in first out (FIFO) doesn't seem to be a thing in the game. For example, I've been producing my own expensive jewelry and expensive clothing long enough that my retails shouldn't be seeing negative numbers in the cost rows in Econoview. Though I'm also not sure if it should show complete zeros. I suppose the complete zeros make sense cause company accounting as a whole would account for that, we just don't see it.

Output machines - something seems off with them. While you're in the factory they seem to function fine with multiple products feeding to them and they look even better when a single product is feeding to them. Then you realize they aren't and need more output machines. It might be specific products, I've mostly experienced this with cheap jewelry and clothing. Cheap jewelry I've found ideal to 1 output per every input and don't think I should need that much. Clothing I've done 1 output for 4 inputs (2 different products, 8 sewing machines).

Input machines - when first setting up a factory you need a lot of raw materials to stock all the inputs that if you don't over order then some inputs will end up with none, depending on location of the input and shelving. First off the factory staff closest to the material shouldn't take it all and I'd like the input machines inventory to be split and able to hold two products (it can but you have to remove some raw material first)... they wouldn't dispense two different products but hold two different products. Sometimes I switch cheap to expensive production and would be much easier with the split inventory and not sure where you'd need 1600 stock for a single input.

Factory tab - ideally it should show "not running" if it's not running for more then just a few minutes, maybe like 30 minutes or something. Maybe it would be better to show the inputs production better, there could be a problem with a single input that you wouldn't know just based on the output. There's other issues with the factory tab but David mentioned in a previous post that it's being looked at.

F1 help - would be helpful if mentioned production times though I don't mind trial and error on this. Earbuds and headphones were the worst for me so far since all the secondary products have various times and the plastic molds have a much longer time then expected. This is a good example with the above statement, just cause a machine is missing product for a couple minutes, or less, it shouldn't show "not running".

[David Estes Creations]

Hello! That is some good feedback!

We definitely need a priority system for the deliveries - start with factory outputs, go to warehouse next, etc! I think that would address what you're talking about here!

For the clothing - the problem is 8 types of clothing with only 6 output/box spots on the output machine! Because of that, the line gets backed up when the 7th product type tries to go to the same output machine!

And some big UI updates will be coming in the future as well, which should help with some of these issues/questions!

[Sarsgamer]

Originally posted by David Estes Creations:

We definitely need a priority system for the deliveries - start with factory outputs, go to warehouse next, etc! I think that would address what you're talking about here!
/questions!

For FIFO? I'm not sure, at least not for me. Since my factories are sending to a single warehouse then that warehouse sends to another warehouse and that warehouse sends to final destination.

When I first setup this warehouse hub distribution setup it can take like 2 days to get retails stocked up. When I changed deliveries I forgot to send some products to some warehouses haha. I'm not sure what delivers first, factory, first warehouse or second warehouse but the goods to the second warehouse definitely comes in after that warehouse did their deliveries cause the warehouse is fully stocked while retails remain empty. This may be better solved by the player setting up their own priorities cause I don't know if in code you'd be able to determine in which order it should happen.

Originally posted by David Estes Creations:

For the clothing - the problem is 8 types of clothing with only 6 output/box spots on the output machine! Because of that, the line gets backed up when the 7th product type tries to go to the same output machine!

I just realized what I wrote up is not how I have things setup, I guess I was going off of memory of my first factories. You're definitely correct about the 8 outputs regarding clothing as clothing is where I saw the most issue in one of my first factories. I thought I had an issue with just cheap jewelry being the only thing going to an output and I needed more outputs then expected. I just tested this on an existing factory where I saw this initially and I wonder if when I was testing it previously if maybe I had some raw material on a wrong conveyor belt blocking some production. I would have mentioned the raw material issue in the post but I've seen elsewhere where you mentioned it's a known bug and being looked at. I'd say it's currently my number one issue. It's also why I suggested the factory tab shouldn't say "not running" if it's just been idle for a few minutes. It would be easier to know if I need to go remove raw material from a conveyor belt or if it's just a short delay.

The funny thing is I have 2 other jewelry factories with literally only one output, which is split between cheap and expensive (off the top of my head like 16 inputs in total), so not sure why I didn't put two to two together lol. I also have a clothing factory that is just 4 different products with more accurate amount of outputs. I run it as expensive most of the time unless I get overstocked and change it to cheap, which doesn't happen too often.

Another thing I didn't mention cause I know it's being looked at is the factory tab not being accurate which would make some of the above easier to analyze. Currently have to wait and see how much inventory you have in stock at the end of the day then compare it the next day.

Hopefully the next update has a way to not require extra input machines when final product needs 5 different goods, watches for example. I currently don't see a way to use splitters for all inputs without trapping staff in. So like batteries, glass and plastic need two inputs each when 1 input each would be enough. It was interesting setting it up cause it was difficult to visualize how it should be setup.

Now off to see what I can do with my first cheap jewelry factory cause I can definitely eliminate a lot of outputs.