Keeping resources from instantly draining away

[Gremlin [GWJ]]

I thought I should check if I'm approaching this the wrong way.

I've built several pretty extensive rail networks but the problem I keep running into is that eventually my upkeep is so high that the lumber and cut stone pretty much vanishes as soon as it reaches the warehouse.

I kind of expect that this isn't the expected experience and I'm doing something wrong, but I figured I should ask. So far I've thought of some possible things I might be doing wrong:

1. Maybe I'm not running enough trains? Cargo does seem to pile up at the industry stations, maybe I'm underestimating how many trains I should be running for each station?
2. Maybe I'm overbuilding on infrastructure and need to figure out a more efficient way to lay out cities or something? I've been prioritizing maximum houses around the station, which sometimes means I need an extra market to cover the edges, etc.
3. Maybe I'm building too many industries? Or not enough? Worker availability seems to be the sticking point.
4. Maybe I should be building a lot more basic towns, instead of developing a couple?
5. Something else?

[Edmera]

What ive learned so far from this game try not overbuilding anything that costs resources its better to plan for multiple buildings but build them as needed then building them all and those building draining your resources while not usefull.

Try to plan expansion a bit, before expanding estimate if the additional resource drain fits within your income, if not work on expanding resources before the actual expansion. The warehouse is very tiny and can drain no time.

[Rawrey]

I have a population of around 5K people now. And a drain of around 300 wood. Also 6 Lumberjacks on one place.
The Lumberjacks station has 4 rails (1 for worker - 3 for cargo)
And i have 5 Trains with 5 wood cargo waggons each.

Its ...enough, for now, but stuff is constantly being eaten up. Or like you said, vanishing right after it entered the warehouse. Small Tip here, once you reached the Cut Stone Tech, you are able to build more "warehouses" to the warehouse. A build menu opens if you click the main warhouse. But beware, each addition costs you 2 cut stone upkeep ... YAY

Anyways. My warehouse has 12 rails now .. and all ar busy ... constantly.
I feer how this will turn out in the end. And i think it needs polishing aswell ...
Cant imagine that its "on purpose" that you need to have tons of trains moving in there one by one, second after second. Thats not Train management. Besides the fact that any possible building / Tech is hidden in a seperate Building Menu is crazy .....
:O

[JJWolf]

I always take it slow and it doesn't matter, in my latest game I popped 5k people with two towns which continue to grow. I have stone, coal mines, and running 10 sawmills with about 5 trains each and I am still running short of wood. I have expanded my primary warehouse as much as the stone has allowed but the lack of throughput is killing me. I'm in the process of trying to build flyovers with stone bridges to reduce congestion but it's not enough and costs are extreme, the upkeep needs to be halved and there needs to be the ability to build flyovers from the start else it just becomes an upgrade nightmare for junctions once you hit cut stone.

The Transport Fever series whilst different is still my favourite for building rail networks on for how complex yet elegant you can design the junctions. I'll probably restart for the third time with my latest knowledge but if it still bottlenecks when I reach about 30 trains I might just walk away for a while.

What this game desperately needs are:
1. More warehouses to lessen the burden the single warehouse has being the focal point, you have to balance more expansion to the warehouse with how many lines you build for the station attached...
2. Flyovers, there's no terrain height and no tunnels so the only way to make an intersection not come to a grinding halt is flyovers but they can't be unlocked until cut stone and this is a serious bottleneck. At the point I unlock it I already have express rails and everything just to reduce congestion.
3. Halve the upkeep costs and remove some of the resource upkeep costs!
4. Make workers still go to work even if they become unhappy, once I built my second town and because I wasn't able to make a line fast enough for travellers (distracted making a second sawmill hub) they became unhappy and stopped working which then led to a domino effect of potato farms stopping then wood stopping then coal stopping. Without coal I couldn't build a train, without the wood I couldn't build houses/infrastructure, so I started deleting houses out of the old town and laying them in the new town which allowed me to have enough workers to get production moving again.

[Undecillion]

I don't know if the stone/wood consumption is part of the challenge, or a miscalculated burden for the player, but I sympathize either way. I may start over and would have to plan specifically around getting a steady supply of wood and stone with a city (for laborers) near the warehouse to transport it to. Maybe that's all the first town would do?

[Seedy]

I've definitely noticed a trend, in youtubers at least, for people to say "I need 1 of these now, but I will probably need 10 later, so build 15." I don't know if it's a factorio thing or what but it is so frustrating to watch folks build 10x more than they need, and complain about how they are running out of resources, right?

[Leisen]

I agree that building maintenance cost should be reduced. In this game, people eat more woods than potato and wheat combine. To support the insane consumption of wood, I build the sawmill right next to the warehouse and assign the wood transport route to dedicated station and railway.

[JJWolf]

If I figure out the correct way to edit a mod I'll make up game-rules that reduces/removes the wood/stone upkeep so it's manageable.

[orbops]

Has anyone solved the wood and stone consumption issue? I'm stuck at 2 towns with 5K people, and my warehouse station is already congested. I can't get enough wood and stone to be able to build anything more. I really don't want to start over just to optimize wood and stone production.

[-VG- Napster]

Originally posted by Gremlin GWJ:

I thought I should check if I'm approaching this the wrong way.

I've built several pretty extensive rail networks but the problem I keep running into is that eventually my upkeep is so high that the lumber and cut stone pretty much vanishes as soon as it reaches the warehouse.

I kind of expect that this isn't the expected experience and I'm doing something wrong, but I figured I should ask. So far I've thought of some possible things I might be doing wrong:

1. Maybe I'm not running enough trains? Cargo does seem to pile up at the industry stations, maybe I'm underestimating how many trains I should be running for each station?
2. Maybe I'm overbuilding on infrastructure and need to figure out a more efficient way to lay out cities or something? I've been prioritizing maximum houses around the station, which sometimes means I need an extra market to cover the edges, etc.
3. Maybe I'm building too many industries? Or not enough? Worker availability seems to be the sticking point.
4. Maybe I should be building a lot more basic towns, instead of developing a couple?
5. Something else?

Originally posted by orbops:

Has anyone solved the wood and stone consumption issue? I'm stuck at 2 towns with 5K people, and my warehouse station is already congested. I can't get enough wood and stone to be able to build anything more. I really don't want to start over just to optimize wood and stone production.

for wood just build more fields you do not need wood to build them and you should be able to easily recover as long as you have positive income (coins/money) in this game you cannot get game over.

once you have enough supply of wood you can upgrade your stoneworks production.
( i try to have more stoneworks building than any other production building in a city for a bonus in production of probably around +50% wich means in total around 150%)


at 5k people 1 town
4 wood trains with 8 waggons (tinder waggon not counted)
i run 2 station with 8 wood fields in total (2 trains per station 2 stations 4 fields per station
( this is still not optimized you can cramp a lot of fields into one station with the help of distribution center )

BIG TIPP build your stations that way
platform-rail-platform-rail-platform
It will double your load/unload speed
(works for passengers and cargo)

get longer trains with more waggons helps a lot.
as this reduces the total amount of trains and increase amount of goods transported at the same time as bonus you reduce overall traffic.
depending on your rail network less trains usualy better because less traffic less jams more fluent.

if you have a lot of traffic in your towns station build a 2nd one
use 1 station for cargo only and one station for passengers only
(make sure the station that does passengers has enough reach)

Build a lot of "small parks" in your town AREA and make your city reach 20 stars
this will make your people 150% happy
(NOTE: you can build them anywhere in your towns reach you do not need to plant them inside your town.
It has a bonus tho if you do for example some buildings in your town may create "bad zones" for people to live in let´s call them "dirty zones" they can also be mitigated by placing parks as a "barrier" to reduce dirt zones.

i got told it is possible to even get 44 waggon long trains by placing 2 stations right next to each other aslong as they share they same name ( i did not test that yet myself tho )

[-VG- Napster]

Originally posted by orbops:

Has anyone solved the wood and stone consumption issue? I'm stuck at 2 towns with 5K people, and my warehouse station is already congested. I can't get enough wood and stone to be able to build anything more. I really don't want to start over just to optimize wood and stone production.

also saw that there seems to be a craftsmen stoneworks did not unlock that yet but probably more efficient? i think you need to build a bar and 200 road tiles to unlock.
should be visible in your town progression when you click on "stamp upgrades in the left ui

[orbops]

Originally posted by -VG- Napster:

for wood just build more fields you do not need wood to build them and you should be able to easily recover as long as you have positive income (coins/money) in this game you cannot get game over.

once you have enough supply of wood you can upgrade your stoneworks production.
( i try to have more stoneworks building than any other production building in a city for a bonus in production of probably around +50% wich means in total around 150%)


at 5k people 1 town
4 wood trains with 8 waggons (tinder waggon not counted)
i run 2 station with 8 wood fields in total (2 trains per station 2 stations 4 fields per station
( this is still not optimized you can cramp a lot of fields into one station with the help of distribution center )

get longer trains with more waggons helps a lot.
as this reduces the total amount of trains and increase amount of goods transported at the same time as bonus you reduce overall traffic.
depending on your rail network less trains usualy better because less traffic less jams more fluent.

i got told it is possible to even get 44 waggon long trains by placing 2 stations right next to each other aslong as they share they same name ( i did not test that yet myself tho )

The root of my problem is that my train size is 3 wagons for all my trains. Bumping them to 8 wagons means I have to redo every single train station and tracks to account for an 8 wagon train. Looks like I have to start a new game with much larger stations and trains.

[EMAPhil]

Originally posted by orbops:

Originally posted by -VG- Napster:

for wood just build more fields you do not need wood to build them and you should be able to easily recover as long as you have positive income (coins/money) in this game you cannot get game over.

once you have enough supply of wood you can upgrade your stoneworks production.
( i try to have more stoneworks building than any other production building in a city for a bonus in production of probably around +50% wich means in total around 150%)


at 5k people 1 town
4 wood trains with 8 waggons (tinder waggon not counted)
i run 2 station with 8 wood fields in total (2 trains per station 2 stations 4 fields per station
( this is still not optimized you can cramp a lot of fields into one station with the help of distribution center )

get longer trains with more waggons helps a lot.
as this reduces the total amount of trains and increase amount of goods transported at the same time as bonus you reduce overall traffic.
depending on your rail network less trains usualy better because less traffic less jams more fluent.

i got told it is possible to even get 44 waggon long trains by placing 2 stations right next to each other aslong as they share they same name ( i did not test that yet myself tho )

The root of my problem is that my train size is 3 wagons for all my trains. Bumping them to 8 wagons means I have to redo every single train station and tracks to account for an 8 wagon train. Looks like I have to start a new game with much larger stations and trains.

I learnt early on to use the longer station blueprint from day one. (2 track only ) you can upgrade later. This save a lot of trouble. Expand slowly and do not overspend.

[therber2]

Originally posted by Gremlin GWJ:

I thought I should check if I'm approaching this the wrong way.

I've built several pretty extensive rail networks but the problem I keep running into is that eventually my upkeep is so high that the lumber and cut stone pretty much vanishes as soon as it reaches the warehouse.

I kind of expect that this isn't the expected experience and I'm doing something wrong, but I figured I should ask. So far I've thought of some possible things I might be doing wrong:

1. Maybe I'm not running enough trains? Cargo does seem to pile up at the industry stations, maybe I'm underestimating how many trains I should be running for each station?
2. Maybe I'm overbuilding on infrastructure and need to figure out a more efficient way to lay out cities or something? I've been prioritizing maximum houses around the station, which sometimes means I need an extra market to cover the edges, etc.
3. Maybe I'm building too many industries? Or not enough? Worker availability seems to be the sticking point.
4. Maybe I should be building a lot more basic towns, instead of developing a couple?
5. Something else?

Just spam the 4x4 park in a corner or wherever till you have 20.0+ attractiveness, and you'll be doing much better on income.

[Morocka]

If you hover over shops that make items it will tell you how much you make and how much you are consuming. Every town needs bread, fish, shirts, and potatoes. If you pay close attention to the "numbers" you won't overbuild. Every item you make gives + people to your houses. Its better to bring in goods then build more houses. The only long distance shipping is to the warehouse for their main items.

Anything shipped to the town needs to be as close as you can with minimal travel time. Once you figure out the game play loop it's pretty simple.

Map generation at the beginning can be painful as well with resource nodes being either obsolete or just not clumped enough. So reroll the map if need be.

[PowerZiege]

Well - upkeep is one of the challenges in this game. I like it!
With two towns (one ~32k People, one with 2k) i need to start to build a second Lumber-Location (or provide tools/books) since i maxed out the first.
Key is: start not too far from the Warehouse and establish a steady stream. At least one or later 2-3 trains should always be laoding/unloading to don't run out.
In this run i build 4 (expaned to six) one-way-ring-tracks with 3 trains each.
Double-engine to have some better acceleration.

https://imgur.com/a/vwGFgrp