This new tech tree is all messed up.

[Wandering Mania]

Like the title says. Because to build something that uses basic materials, like the settlement decorations, you need a 'research lab 3'. Like shown:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2984979403

Then to even make cakes, you need to wait until you get sugar, which needs a 'research lab 4', while you have so many eggs and nothing to do with them while they backup your meat production. And to make sausages, you also need a 'research lab 4', all the while having nothing to do with meat trimmings. All shown below:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985210766
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985210769
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985210634
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985210642

And that's not even mentioning how late glass production is now. Which gives you ample time to not even need to make it as you can easily buy all the glass you need to upgrade your fleet of trucks with 'Construction parts 3'

[Peter34]

just replying to one point:

You can give Eggs directly to your people to eat.

And I sincerely wish I ever had your problem of having "too many Eggs". I always struggle with producing enough Eggs and Meat to meet demands.

Well, okay, two points:

The Glass thing is deliberate design. The devs want you to use the Trade system to trade tier-3 Construction Parts for Glass, if you want to upgrade some of your vehicles to tier-2. Or Trade a lot if you want to upgrade all of them (which I usually do) before you research and set up your own Glass production.

Meat Trimmings you do need to stockpile, yes, until you can use them.

[Nellvan]

The glass thing also isn't new, that's how it's always been.

[TLHeart]

And no you do not need to stockpile meat trimmings, can be converted in a digester to compost. Sausage is useless, takes too many resources, and people and power for a limited return.

[Wandering Mania]

Originally posted by Peter34:

You can give Eggs directly to your people to eat.

Yes I know. But I got about 1000 people. And 3 Storage 3's full of eggs, that only proliferates itself.

Originally posted by Peter34:

And I sincerely wish I ever had your problem of having "too many Eggs". I always struggle with producing enough Eggs and Meat to meet demands.

How many chicken farms did you build? How full are they? And how many people are you trying to feed?
I have 4 chicken farms. 250 chickens each, so room for growth. And as I said above about 1000 people.

Originally posted by TLHeart:

And no you do not need to stockpile meat trimmings, can be converted in a digester to compost.

Yes, I know. But that don't mean I want to do that.

Originally posted by TLHeart:

Sausage is useless, takes too many resources, and people and power for a limited return.

That's opinion, not fact. And if you think it takes too many resources, then you don't produce enough resources to survive.

The key to games like this; Build in excess. The moment you think you have enough, you have too little.

[Kaery]

Sounds to me like you need more people to solve your egg problem. ...Or less chicken farms, that would mitigate your meat trimmings problem as well. So go on, up you get. You have settlements to build.

[Peter34]

You're right about building in excess. Always build a bit more than you think you'll need. Or make sure there's space to expand.

[Wandering Mania]

Originally posted by Kaery:

Sounds to me like you need more people to solve your egg problem. ...Or less chicken farms, that would mitigate your meat trimmings problem as well. So go on, up you get. You have settlements to build.

Well I now have over 1600 people, and still far too many eggs. Also my meat trimmings has started to back things up... And my fuel gas production... And my naphtha production... And potatoes. And so many of my trucks are randomly picking up wood chips, while getting stuck inactive with 'No valid destination'.

I mean this patch really messed up the flow of this game. I swear it.

Originally posted by Peter34:

You're right about building in excess. Always build a bit more than you think you'll need. Or make sure there's space to expand.

Well this game being a mix of Banished, Factorieo, and Farming Sim... The only thing that's really missing is the hoarding of all the food in a single house, and random mass starvation die offs. Not saying I miss that, but that is where I got in the habit of over building everything, simply in order to prevent some random disaster caused by the 'Artificial Idiots'.

[ZakaryX]

Have you tried using balancers with priority inputs/outputs? If you place a pipe balancer on your naphtha line you can specify that all output should head one direction while the other leads to a flare that burns any excess gasses. You can do this with any burnable in the game to prevent your lines from backing up. I regularly use the same system on things like my snack factory so the biomass doesn't choke production. I just run a U-shape balancer with priority towards my storage and any excess goes into a solid burner for disposal.

As for your egg issue there shouldn't be a problem with eggs "backing up" Meat will continue to be produced in the chicken farm regardless of how many eggs are currently inside it. All you need to do is hook up your eggs to a storage/cake factory and the rest should take care of itself.

The way I handle trimmings is I have my food processor do both recipes at once.
Top recipe is chicken carcass to meat+trimmings
Bottom recipe is chicken carcass to meat trimmings
Factories will follow the order you place the recipes from top to bottom.
This way once my meat is full my food processor automatically starts making excess meat trimmings that lead into my sausage factory. This way I can never have too many meat trimmings.

Does this help at all? I would post a screenshot but my belt spaghetti is probably more confusing than just trying to explain it.

[Wanderer]

Even when you have sugar, it still won't cure your egg "problem". As mentioned, they don't go bad, just make sure you handle two lines to your storage until you're ready for food packs. Then you'll never have enough eggs.

Trimmings got balanced by being able to turn entire chickens into trimmings for sausages. You can properly keep flow if you've got enough chicken farming once you invest into the system. Assuming the balance hasn't been messed up it should still be 4 potato/corn farms into one mixer for feed to 4 chicken farms. As long as you've got the land (that's my usual issue) the rest usually sorts itself out for me with belt prioritizations.

Settlement decorations are are pushed backwards for a few reasons, but you'd have to actually ask a dev for the real answer. Here's my assumption:
1) It's next to Housing 3, which is when start finalizing your city. Up till then it was makeshift and mobile anyway.
2) For newer players that's a LOT of materials to make it work.
3) It adds in free unity which they don't want, balance wise, to happen until you've got other options for it as well. In this case, you're simply trading space for it.

Glass early for trucks is basically a way to keep allow for the slow application of more advanced technologies without hard gating it via construction. So, in this case, you trade for glass. The old Gold -> Chips trade was similar (might still be required, haven't gotten that far). I like the Medium Vehicles one because helps drive you towards your next objective (Make Glass) which you'll really want anyway for Household Goods.

Chip Production is a different story. Laptops have always been painful to make.

[Zero0n3]

send the extra meat trimmings to more storage or burn it.

The tools to make sure production lines don't get clogged are there for you to use. Just have to build it.

And 1600 people is still small. End game is closer to 10k than it is 2k; so overbuild like hell, especially if the process you are working on doesn't have any more upgrades (like chickens).

Also, don't forget - when you are giving your people more than one item in a category (so say you are doing bread and potatoes for carbs), its not one item per person, its 'one item per category per person'. the total consumption for that category is pooled. so adding bread will reduce your need of potatoes as it will use either/or to fill the carb need, and also balance based on what you give it (not sure how this works exactly)

[Wandering Mania]

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

Have you tried using balancers with priority inputs/outputs? If you place a pipe balancer on your naphtha line you can specify that all output should head one direction while the other leads to a flare that burns any excess gasses. You can do this with any burnable in the game to prevent your lines from backing up. I regularly use the same system on things like my snack factory so the biomass doesn't choke production. I just run a U-shape balancer with priority towards my storage and any excess goes into a solid burner for disposal.

Well the thing with the advanced refineries is that for some things, you produce too much, or too little; There is no exact balance or 1:1 scale to it.

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

As for your egg issue there shouldn't be a problem with eggs "backing up" Meat will continue to be produced in the chicken farm regardless of how many eggs are currently inside it. All you need to do is hook up your eggs to a storage/cake factory and the rest should take care of itself.

Well, cake can't be made until way late in the tree, as was the source of the problem, because it needs sugar. Something that isn't unlocked until after you get the 'Electronics 2' line set up.
But here's a picture of all my eggs anyway:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985777665

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

The way I handle trimmings is I have my food processor do both recipes at once.
Top recipe is chicken carcass to meat+trimmings
Bottom recipe is chicken carcass to meat trimmings
Factories will follow the order you place the recipes from top to bottom.
This way once my meat is full my food processor automatically starts making excess meat trimmings that lead into my sausage factory. This way I can never have too many meat trimmings.

Again, that is only unlocked AFTER the Electronics 2 is set up. And way late in the tree.

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

Does this help at all? I would post a screenshot but my belt spaghetti is probably more confusing than just trying to explain it.

Not really. Because most of what you said depends on the unlock times that are what I'm really criticizing.

And for a fun little extra, here's a picture of my refinery. You wanna talk spaghetti? Take a look at this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985779212

[ZakaryX]

Okay, you ignored everything I said about actually getting rid of excess materials. Why are you storing all your extra eggs? Just ignore any excess you produce since the chicken farm will never stop producing. Why are you saving all your meat trimmings? Just burn the extra until you can turn it into sausages.

I don't see a single flare anywhere in your refinery which is the reason things are "backing up" at all.
I have no idea what you mean about 1:1 balance for refineries. The only thing that matters is that if you're producing too much of something you need to flare it so it doesn't back up at all. If you're producing too little of X product then you obviously need to make more refineries.

[Wandering Mania]

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

Okay, you ignored everything I said about actually getting rid of excess materials. Why are you storing all your extra eggs?

Because to make cake, you need sugar. To grow sugar, you need to unlock the tech. To unlock the tech, you need to research 'Construction 4', 'Research Lab 4', THEN you can research sugar. And if you don't store 'em, they backup everything.

Yes, my people are eating them as well. But there is so many produced, there is nothing you can do but build more storage.

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

Why are you saving all your meat trimmings? Just burn the extra until you can turn it into sausages.

Because I don't want to burn them. Like I said before. I already have an excess of dumping material, I don't need, nor want to make more.

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

I don't see a single flare anywhere in your refinery which is the reason things are "backing up" at all.

Dose the concept of 'Not wanting to create extra air pollution' ring any bells? Maybe not to someone as wasteful as yourself. "Burn everything, that's the ticket!" Wasteful!

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

I have no idea what you mean about 1:1 balance for refineries.

I mean no matter what you end up with a +2 or -4 of Naphtha, Fuel Gas, and other produced products. It's never a 'produce 1 get 1 ratio'.

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

The only thing that matters is that if you're producing too much of something you need to flare it so it doesn't back up at all.

And some of us would rather not waste anything. So you build your thing... And I'll build mine.

[Xenomorph Kitty]

Originally posted by Wandering Mania:

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

Okay, you ignored everything I said about actually getting rid of excess materials. Why are you storing all your extra eggs?

Because to make cake, you need sugar. To grow sugar, you need to unlock the tech. To unlock the tech, you need to research 'Construction 4', 'Research Lab 4', THEN you can research sugar. And if you don't store 'em, they backup everything.

Yes, my people are eating them as well. But there is so many produced, there is nothing you can do but build more storage.

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

Why are you saving all your meat trimmings? Just burn the extra until you can turn it into sausages.

Because I don't want to burn them. Like I said before. I already have an excess of dumping material, I don't need, nor want to make more.

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

I don't see a single flare anywhere in your refinery which is the reason things are "backing up" at all.

Dose the concept of 'Not wanting to create extra air pollution' ring any bells? Maybe not to someone as wasteful as yourself. "Burn everything, that's the ticket!" Wasteful!

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

I have no idea what you mean about 1:1 balance for refineries.

I mean no matter what you end up with a +2 or -4 of Naphtha, Fuel Gas, and other produced products. It's never a 'produce 1 get 1 ratio'.

Originally posted by ZakaryX:

The only thing that matters is that if you're producing too much of something you need to flare it so it doesn't back up at all.

And some of us would rather not waste anything. So you build your thing... And I'll build mine.

Then don't complain when your way doesn't work and you get suggestions to fix it.

[Wandering Mania]

Originally posted by Seri:

Then don't complain when your way doesn't work and you get suggestions to fix it.

I complain because of:

Originally posted by Wandering Mania:

...to make cake, you need sugar. To grow sugar, you need to unlock the tech. To unlock the tech, you need to research 'Construction 4', 'Research Lab 4', THEN you can research sugar. And if you don't store 'em, they backup everything.

If you read....

The order of tech tree is all outta whack.

But if you, or anyone wants to provide suggestions on how you waste products, and turn your islands into smog ridden, waste filled, sewers, you can expect me to NOT want to do that.

Because it's:
A: Not helpful at all.
B: Not how I want to build MY island inMY game.
C: Not going to be on the topic of this discussion anyway.

The last patch messed up the ORDER OF THE TECH TREE. THAT is the topic of the discussion.