Industries DLC need to be balanced, BADLY!

[Eagleeye]

I decided to do a deep dive into the area efficiency, price efficiency, production efficiency, etc... of all of the industrial buildings that were introduced in the Industries DLC. What I found makes absolutely ZERO sense.

Example: Oil Pumps.

The SMALL OIL PUMP takes up only 2 squares on the map. It produces 4800 units per week. That's 2400 production per square occupied on the map.

Compare that to the MEDIUM OIL PUMP, which actually shows 4 oil pumps on the model. It only pumps out 8000 units per week, but it's a 3x3 square, so it takes up 9 total map squares. It only produces 8000 units of oil per week, so that's 888.89 units per square! The SMALL pump puts out 2.7x more oil per square than the medium one!

These balancing problems are throughout every single type of building, in every industry.

Here's a great example with farms.

Small fields are 4x8, so they have an area of 32 squares.
They produce 4800 units/week.
That's 150 production per square per week.
They cost 4000.

Medium fields are 8x8, 64 squares, 8000 units/week... 125 units/square/week.
They cost 8000.

So you're paying twice as much, to take up twice as much space, so you can produce... less... crops?

Not only that, the UPKEEP of a small field is 12 per week... it MIGHT be worth if to trade in 2 small fields for a medium field, even if you produce LESS... if the upkeep was less. But is the upkeep less? Is the upkeep THE SAME? NOPE!!! The upkeep on a MEDIUM field is 28/week...

So just to recap... you get a production factor of 125 instead of 150. You get to use the SAME map space. AND you get to pay 28/week instead of 24/week... so you're paying more to get less...

Just for the purposes of game play, you would think there would be a good progression from having to buy small fields to get started, then as you progress through the game, you would want to start upgrading your small fields to medium ones, and ultimately to LARGE ones... so you can become more efficient, as you have more space to expand in to, etc...

BUT NO!

If you think the small to medium field thing is bad, wait until you see just how SCREWED you get with LARGE fields!

A LARGE field is 8x16... twice that of a medium field, and 4x larger than a small field.

The PRODUCTION of a large field is 11200... which is only 87.5 units/square!

Remember, the SMALL field is 150 units/square, the MEDIUM field is 125 units/square... The large one is 70% of the medium field! If you were to use 4 small fields instead of ONE large one, you could have the very same space taken up, but be producing 4800x4 crops (19200) instead of only 11200!

This makes ZERO sense!

But don't even get me started about the trucks and workers...

A small field getting 5 trucks... that's just far too many. I would think maybe you'd have a game play mechanic in mind of "I'd really like more trucks so I could be transporting more things more often", so you would want to have an incentive to get a larger field, even if you can't produce as much per square... but with 5 trucks per SMALL field, and only 10 per large... this means you're actually given the incentive to have 4 small fields once again, so you have a total of 20 trucks for your 19200 per week, rather than only 10 for your 11200 per week!

NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE! I MEAN WHO DESIGNED THIS?!?

Just a quick rundown of what I found were the BEST (most efficient per square) buildings:

PRODUCERS

Farm: Small Field
Forest: Small Saplings
Ore: Small Underground Mine
Oil: Small Pump

PROCESSORS

Animal Products: Cattle Shed (BY FAR)
Flour: Flour Mill (The only option)
Planed Timber: Engineered Wood Plant
Paper: Pulp Mill (2x more than the Biomass Pellet plant)
Metals: Ore Grinding Mill (the Rotary Kiln Plant is literally 25 compared to 65.31... it's huge and horrible)
Glass: Fiberglass Plant (66.67 compared to 28.57 on the Glass Mfg Plant)
Petroleum: Waste Oil (2x better than Oil Sludge)
Plastics: Petrochemical plant

STORAGE

Crops: Small Silo (By a HUGE margin)
Forest Products: Saw Dust Storage
Ore: Raw Mineral Storage
Oil: Oil Industry Storage (by 2x more than the 2nd best, and 3x more than the other 2)

WAREHOUSES

These are the general/generic warehouses that can store any configured product type... This is ABSURD amounts of stupidity...

The YARD is 6x7, 42 squares... holds 100k. That's 2380.95 per square.
The SMALL warehouse (which is the best) is only 8x6, so 48 squares... holds 250k. 5208.33 per square
The MEDIUM warehouse is 8x14... 112 squares... holds 400k... 3571.43 per square.
The LARGE warehouse is a crying shame... it's FRICKING GIGANTIC... 24x13... 312 squares... Sure it holds 750k, but that's only 2403.85 per square!

Read that again... The super huge gigantic "large warehouse" is almost a wash when compared to a 7 Warehouse Yards...

"BUT WHAT ABOUT THE COST OF BUILDING THEM?" you ask?

That's another thing... the cost efficiency is best for the SMALL warehouse as well! It costs 8000 for 250,000 storage. That's 3.2 cents per unit of storage!

The LARGE warehouse costs 4.3, the Yard costs 4.0, and the medium costs a full 5.0!

Just to compare apples to apples...

You could buy 3 small warehouses to get 750k storage instead of buying a large warehouse.

You'd spend 24000 instead of 32000 to build. (A savings of 8k)
You'd take up 48x3 squares, totaling 144, to hold all 750k goods, instead of 312 squares. (a savings of 168 squares)
You'd get 60 trucks to move all those goods instead of only 40... making your supply chain more smooth.

So yeah, Small Warehouses are THE ABSOLUTE ROCK STAR warehouses in this DLC... all because someone didn't bother to do ANY balancing of the numbers to make them make any sense, or give us any opportunity to trade space for efficiency, or money for efficiency, etc...

I'm thinking I may have to learn how to make a mod just so I can put out a fixed rebalance of these numbers...

[Rena]

Those are pretty nuts. How do their other stats compare? Electricity/water usage, sewage production, pollution, noise, jobs?

Have you looked at the Rebalanced Industries and Cargo Hold Fix mods?

[antzkillr]

The developers were probably waiting for someone like you to figure it out and then tell the rest of us. People forget that this is a “game” — games are supposed to be challenging, not necessarily logical. Thanks for the analysis. People have issues with Industries DLC because they over-build or build the wrong assists along the supply chain, as you clearly illustrate. Refer, too, to the Industry charts in the Paradox Wiki.

[Eagleeye]

Looking in to it more here:

https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Supply_chain

[Eagleeye]

Originally posted by antzkillr:

The developers were probably waiting for someone like you to figure it out and then tell the rest of us. People forget that this is a “game” — games are supposed to be challenging, not necessarily logical. Thanks for the analysis. People have issues with Industries DLC because they over-build or build the wrong assists along the supply chain, as you clearly illustrate. Refer, too, to the Industry charts in the Paradox Wiki.

Some of us play the game for different types of entertainment. Some people play for aesthetics... I play to try to get things to be as efficient as possible... to make the numbers work.

Different strokes for different folks. Your "game" is not the same as my "game". I'm not forgetting it's a game... you're not realizing that it's a different TYPE of game for different people.

[antzkillr]

I get that. I'm just saying that is starts out as a game and if people want to play it differently (i.e. "paint" with it, etc.), it's just something to work around, not complain about (as I see a lot of on the forum). Cheers to you for figuring out what was going on and not just whining about the game being "broken" or "not working". Personally, I play for aesthetics, too, but the challenge for me is to work around what the game "grows" and not plop every single object. If you haven't yet, look here, too: https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Industry_Areas

[Eagleeye]

So looking further into it... something else that makes no sense...

The Sawmill takes 3.2 tons (3200 units) of raw forest products in, and produces 3.2 tons (3200 units) of planed timber.

The Engineered Wood Plant takes in 4.8 tons, but produces 6.4 tons?

In the wiki, it states: "Many processors create mass by taking in a smaller amount of raw materials to make a larger amount of processed materials."

THIS.
IS.
STUPID!

Unless you're combining something with maybe water that is being provided to the processing plant, so you are somehow "bulking up" the finished product... that's the only way I can see that working...

But you can't just create wood out of nothing!

(Edit: You can create wood out of nothing by growing trees of course... I meant at a processing plant ,where you come in with X tons of downed trees, and produce 1.5x finished material... )

[Evilappetite]

You certainly do live up to your name dont you lol. Thanks for figuring this all out for us. \m/

--- Mike

[Eagleeye]

My entire goal with all of this is to learn how to properly balance a single industry area, so I can have the proper ratios of producers to processors to unique factories...

I'm in the process of figuring out all the proper ratios now...

This post got me started:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/1748980761803176733/

[KG]

This stuff is one of the reasons I held off on buying Industries during the sale. Maybe there's a good gameplay reason for it or something but I can't figure out what that would be.

IMO as a general rule, small industrial facilities should be ~ most space-efficient but least efficient with respect to everything else except perhaps construction cost.

[grapplehoeker]

I'm much more of an aesthetics city painter than an efficiency micro manage builder. I like to make sure it functions and functions well, but ultimately it has to look good. Which is why I don't really worry about the numbers very much as long as at the end of the day it looks good and the end result brings home the bacon.
So, for example, this Campus DLC costs a heap to get up and running, but I figured that my Industries DLC could pay for it with ease when it's helping to bring in 175k per week!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1752559382
When it's that lucrative, I'm not too concerned about the cost comparisons between this building or that ;) So, if you ask me if I think Industries DLC is well balanced or not, I'd probably answer,
"It's very profitable."

[Eagleeye]

So to fully supply the unique factories with farm products, for example... you need 12800 animal products per week. You produce 3200 per cattle shed per week. This means you need 4 cattle sheds.

To fully supply all unique factories with flour, you need 8000 flour per week. Each flour mill produces 4000 per week. This means you need 2 flour mills.

Each cattle shed needs 4000 units of crops per week to produce their 3200 units of animal products. Because you need 4 cattle sheds, you need 4000*4 crops... 16000 there.

Each flour mill needs 2400 units of crops to produce 4000 units of flour (UGH! STUPID!)... so you need 4800 units of crops to make the flour you need.

So far that's 20800 units of crops... but the unique factories ALSO use crops... a total of 18400.

This means the total crops needed to produce everything is 39200.

Each small field produces 4800. This means you need 8.167 small fields to fully satisfy the needs of all of your unique factories.

Of course if you only have 8, you'll deplete any storage you have in silos... if you have 9, you'll end up exporting a tiny bit... which would be preferred.

So now I have the fundamental ratios needed for my new city plan. :)

9 small fields
4 cattle sheds
2 flour mills

[Eagleeye]

All of the unique factories require 18400 Paper, and 12800 Timber.

Each of our best paper producers (Pulp Mill) produces 6400 per week. 18400/6400 = 2.875... so we need 3 Pulp Mill.

Each of our best timber producers (Engineered Wood Plant) produces 6400 per week. 12800 / 6400 = 2.

Each of the the 5 buildings here require 4800 input to produce 6400 output... *(again, ugh!)... each of our small sapling plots produces 6400.

5 x 4800 = 24000.
24000 / 6400 = 3.75
So 4 sapling plots is all we need!

[Eagleeye]

Mining:

22400 metal required.
22400 / 3200 metal per Ore Grinding Mill = 7 Ore Grinding Mill

16000 glass required
16000 / 6400 glass per Fiberglass Plant = 2.5 Fiberglass Plant (3 then)

To supply the 7 Ore Grinding Mills and the 3 Fiberglass plants requires 36800 Ore.

36800 / 6400 (Small underground) = 5.75 ... so 6 small underground mines.

Oil:

12800 Petroleum required.
Waste Oil plant produces 8000 per week... 1.6 waste oil plants, so we need 2.

38400 Plastics required.
Petrochemical plants produce 4000 per... BUT... I hesitate to use them now. It takes 4800 input to produce 8000 output with the Naphta Cracker... so let's do the math.

Petrochemical plant is 4x7, 28 total squares... produces 4000... 142.86 per square.
Naphta Cracker is 12x6, 72 total squares... produces 8000... 111.11 per square.

BUT... if we need 38400 Plastics, we would need 38400 / 4000 = 9.6, or 10 Petrochemical plants.

38400 / 8000 for the Naphta crackers = 4.8 or 5 Naphta crackers.

But to SUPPLY those with oil? Each Naphta Cracker only needs 4800, so so 24,000 oil to supply those. The Petrochemical plant requires 3200, so it needs 32,000 oil to supply it. Hmmmm...

This means that we need 32,000 / 4800 = 6.67 (7) small oil pumps to supply the petrochemical plants... but we need 24,000 / 4800 = 5 to supply the Naphta plants...

Of course each of the small oil pumps is only 2 spaces...
so 14 spaces versus 10... a minor difference.

*shrug*... I'm going to stick with the Petrochemical plants.

So to recap...

2 waste oil plants require 4800 each, so 9600.
10 petrochemical plants require 3200, so 32,000
Total of 41600 oil required.
Divided by 4800 per small oil pump...
8.67 (9) required...

9 Small Oil Pumps
2 waste oil plants
10 petrochemical plants

[Eagleeye]

Final numbers: To supply ALL of your unique industry buildings with everything they need to keep producing:

Farms
9 small fields
4 cattle sheds
2 flour mills

Forests
4 sapling fields
3 pulp mills
2 engineered wood plants

Ore
6 Small Underground Mines
7 Ore Grinding Mills
3 Fiberglass Plants

Oil
9 small oil pumps
10 Petrochemical Plants
2 waste oil plants

[benny]

The developpers of this game don't make calculs, only graphic & animation design. They do whatever they want and count of mods to make it right. "Balance? Dunno: mods will do. Perfs? Don't care: mods will do. gameplay? Don't care, mods will do the job. Pathfinding? Too complicated: mods will do the job." + "Anyway we will find people loving this balance, gameplay and pathfinder, you know, in a game about realism you have to forget all what you know about reality and games. Let's design donuts." Not even fun enought to design donut factories. I think they don't even know what "balance" means. Let alone "pathfinder". Even the choise of the game engine is bad. This sounds like beginners programmers deciding to make a game... "Is there a game engine running PHP" ?

Now the sources are stucked in the darkness of beginners programming. No way to make the game better but rewriting it (by pros?).

And after that they take sucessful mods and integrate it in the game. Sure it'e not stealing u know. As it's basic functions. 5 years to have vanilla 2x4 roads, lol. But you can buy a DLC for cyclable lanes.

Overrated game, due to its graphism. Or it's a graphic tool. But then why so bad graphic management...?