Question about deliveries (demand/supply)

[ByeByeTango]

Hey,

I checked the map and saw that Santa Cabin needed pallets.
So I checked on the map yellow icons with the indication "supply : pallets".
I found one, went to it with a truck, but there was no delivery route available to Santa Cabin.

Is there a way to know where I should go to find deliveries to Santa Cabin ?
Is there a way to load pallets anyway, and to take them to Santa Cabin ?
I don't really understand how it works.

Thanks.

[Pheex]

Places generate produce and orders over time. Maybe a route to Santa would pop up after a while, orders time out and new produce is added (if resources needed are met).

You can take out a temporary contract with a place to see from the map what jobs are available. You can find this at the place under 'contracts' tab next to deliveries.

[ByeByeTango]

Ok thanks.

So let's say I decide to do deliveries to Santa Cabin (I've seen people on this forum saying they do that cause it gives a lot of $$$).

What's the best way to do it ?
Go to the Cabin and check the contracts ?

[ByeByeTango]

Ok I give up.

I took a contract at Santa Cabin, which asked me to deliver 5 pallet of toys.
I saw on the map a factory with pallets of toys (supply), so I went there, but there was nothing to take.

[s7v7n]

the deliveries are on a time and rotate out... sometimes they are there and sometimes not.

[ByeByeTango]

I must be out of luck :D
Cause I decided to take a contract for this toy factory, that requires plastic.
I went to a factory with plastic supply, at the other side of the island.
Guess what ? There is no plastic available here.

Is there a way to check available ressources of a factory without going there ?
Cause I can't see myself doing that again, I just spent money on contracts, and lost almost one hour, for absolutely nothing.

[DiegoKevin]

Originally posted by ByeByeTango:

I must be out of luck :D
Cause I decided to take a contract for this toy factory, that requires plastic.
I went to a factory with plastic supply, at the other side of the island.
Guess what ? There is no plastic available here.

Is there a way to check available ressources of a factory without going there ?
Cause I can't see myself doing that again, I just spent money on contracts, and lost almost one hour, for absolutely nothing.

you can buy the online acess contract to let you see the production on places through the map, otherwise you have to go there

for santas cabin production chain its oil drilling (crude oil) > sanho refinery (oil) > plastic factory (plastic pallet) > toy factory (toy pallet) > santas cabin (gifts) > residents
santas cabin also needs either containers (closest producer is overseas imports) or/and pallets which are produced by warehouses if they are supplied containers

[LeoSolis]

Originally posted by DiegoKevin:

[
you can buy the online acess contract to let you see the production on places through the map, otherwise you have to go there

where do you buy that online access contract?

[Skorj]

Deliveries offered cycle pretty quickly, though. I typically only need to wait a few minutes for the one I'm looking for to spawn. The only exception I've seen is where both 40' and 20' containers go to where you want, sometimes it seems like only 40' containers will spawn if I bring a 20' container truck.

[Your weakness is your own]

The way resources work is goofy, and as you've discovered, there's no solution for discovering routes in reverse by starting with what you want to deliver and finding sources. I hope we see some big improvements to this, between stuff just not appearing/disappearing, not offering complete supply to fill capacity, not being able to compensate for expected capacity after time passes, and general lack of filtering and information access, it's the weakest part of the game right now.

The best way to use contracts is to "just know" what's available, and take them when you're completing the delivery. Unless you're running bots to fill them, in which case they're probably a more sensible mechanic.

[Able Archer]

This is really confusing, and I feel like I hear different things at different times. If I set up a route from a site that provides something (pallets), to a place that needs pallets (rice farm), will my NPC running that route actually deliver stuff, or is it completely dependent on if there are any "orders" when they get to the source location for the destination?

[Pheex]

Okay so a few key points to address here

1) You took a contract for delivering toys to Santa. This can make good money BUUUUT you need the toy factory to actually produce toys first or there will be no toys to deliver.
So for that you need plastic delivered to the toy factory, but for plastic you need oil delivered to the plastic factory. This is where AI drivers come into play, to sustain a supply chain like that so you can reap the rewards from delivering the end product, toys, for big money. AI drivers do not count toward contracts, only player deliveries count towards this.

2) The big money people talk about are multiple things.

1) you can deliver random supplies to Santa, for example from a random warehouse there might be orders to be delivered to Santa for more money than other deliveries. This takes no other supply chain prerequisites. Random places will just have some deliveries to Santa's cabin for good money.

2) You can fulfill the contracts and deliver toys to santa at the end of a big supply chain mentioned above

3) If you fulfill the entire supply chain for Santa he will start generating 'gifts' to be deliverd. This takes 3-6 AI drivers (and their vehicles) so a big startup cost but you can end up with endless gift deliveries that can generate up to 300k coins every 20 minutes.

More info on that here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ig99oSMmwk

[Moses]

Originally posted by ByeByeTango:

Ok I give up.

I took a contract at Santa Cabin, which asked me to deliver 5 pallet of toys.
I saw on the map a factory with pallets of toys (supply), so I went there, but there was nothing to take.

Exactly the experience I had yesterday, but with water pallets to a supermarket. I'm a newer player and assumed that if there's a contract at any given company to provide x number of items, that you'd just look at the world map, find the place that produces that thing, go there and get what's needed.

But, as both of us found out, that's not how it works. I went to the water plant and it did have a delivery to the supermarket that I had the contract with, but it only had 4 available pallets instead of the 5 that I needed. I drove all the way back across the map to deliver the 4 pallets, and then all the way back to the water plant. No new delivery ever popped up and the contract was never completed.

It's a 100 percent chance based system and I can't for the life of me figure out why a system such as this would be implemented in the game.

If there's a contract for x number of items, you should simply have to find the company that produces that item and then go and get however many you need. It really should be that simple, but it's not, so essentially it's much better off avoiding contracts to begin with. All it leads to is your time being wasted. If the game had a system where you could view available deliveries by looking at the map (permanently, I know you can buy this temporarily per company), then this system would make sense.

It very much has the feel of junk, filler content, and I'll definitely be avoiding it permanently.

[Chaezaa]

Originally posted by Moses:

Originally posted by ByeByeTango:

Ok I give up.

I took a contract at Santa Cabin, which asked me to deliver 5 pallet of toys.
I saw on the map a factory with pallets of toys (supply), so I went there, but there was nothing to take.

Exactly the experience I had yesterday, but with water pallets to a supermarket. I'm a newer player and assumed that if there's a contract at any given company to provide x number of items, that you'd just look at the world map, find the place that produces that thing, go there and get what's needed.

But, as both of us found out, that's not how it works. I went to the water plant and it did have a delivery to the supermarket that I had the contract with, but it only had 4 available pallets instead of the 5 that I needed. I drove all the way back across the map to deliver the 4 pallets, and then all the way back to the water plant. No new delivery ever popped up and the contract was never completed.

It's a 100 percent chance based system and I can't for the life of me figure out why a system such as this would be implemented in the game.

If there's a contract for x number of items, you should simply have to find the company that produces that item and then go and get however many you need. It really should be that simple, but it's not, so essentially it's much better off avoiding contracts to begin with. All it leads to is your time being wasted. If the game had a system where you could view available deliveries by looking at the map (permanently, I know you can buy this temporarily per company), then this system would make sense.

It very much has the feel of junk, filler content, and I'll definitely be avoiding it permanently.

Factories need resources to produce stuff. The water place needs containers. You can sit there and wait for deliveries as much as you want. Farms like rice are pumping out stuff without input. Factories need raw material.

[Moses]

Originally posted by Chaezaa:

Originally posted by Moses:

Exactly the experience I had yesterday, but with water pallets to a supermarket. I'm a newer player and assumed that if there's a contract at any given company to provide x number of items, that you'd just look at the world map, find the place that produces that thing, go there and get what's needed.

But, as both of us found out, that's not how it works. I went to the water plant and it did have a delivery to the supermarket that I had the contract with, but it only had 4 available pallets instead of the 5 that I needed. I drove all the way back across the map to deliver the 4 pallets, and then all the way back to the water plant. No new delivery ever popped up and the contract was never completed.

It's a 100 percent chance based system and I can't for the life of me figure out why a system such as this would be implemented in the game.

If there's a contract for x number of items, you should simply have to find the company that produces that item and then go and get however many you need. It really should be that simple, but it's not, so essentially it's much better off avoiding contracts to begin with. All it leads to is your time being wasted. If the game had a system where you could view available deliveries by looking at the map (permanently, I know you can buy this temporarily per company), then this system would make sense.

It very much has the feel of junk, filler content, and I'll definitely be avoiding it permanently.

Factories need resources to produce stuff. The water place needs containers. You can sit there and wait for deliveries as much as you want. Farms like rice are pumping out stuff without input. Factories need raw material.

But I've never provided resources to the water factory, so how does it have water at all then? And if it has water without me providing resources, why do I need to now provide resources? This also doesn't address the issue of a delivery being available to the place you need the items to go. Even if the appropriate amount of water, or whatever, is there, you have no control over where the deliveries are set to go.

It's a very confusing system, maybe you're just used to it, but it's not well designed at all. I've never seen so many threads where people are confused about basic game play mechanics than I've seen with this game. Nothing is really explained and everything seems very arbitrary.

[Chaezaa]

Originally posted by Moses:

Originally posted by Chaezaa:

Factories need resources to produce stuff. The water place needs containers. You can sit there and wait for deliveries as much as you want. Farms like rice are pumping out stuff without input. Factories need raw material.

But I've never provided resources to the water factory, so how does it have water at all then? And if it has water without me providing resources, why do I need to now provide resources? This also doesn't address the issue of a delivery being available to the place you need the items to go. Even if the appropriate amount of water, or whatever, is there, you have no control over where the deliveries are set to go.

It's a very confusing system, maybe you're just used to it, but it's not well designed at all. I've never seen so many threads where people are confused about basic game play mechanics than I've seen with this game. Nothing is really explained and everything seems very arbitrary.

Based on what i have seen sources like factories are offering deliveries to places that are short of something. If the destination has what it needs it won't pop back on the load board until it has a new shortage. I like to use warehouses as "distribution center". You can dump stuff in there and use it as a hub.