Major problem with Warehouses

[bitsaul]

After extensive troubleshooting I think I've discovered a major flaw (or feature?) of the Warehouses in the Industries DLC. The TL;DR: warehouses that are placed outside of industrial zones (districts) will incur massive expenses and hinder industrial profit and production chains. This is almost certainly not how they are intended to work, since warehouses are meant to be placed outside industrial zones close to commercial districts to help with supply/demand. Below I will share my findings. First, I need mention that this was all done on a vanilla DLC map with absolutely no assets, themes, styles, or mods (except for Move It!) so this is not a mod conflict causing this behavior.

To test I started by building a small city with a farming industrial zone. I waited until all the supply chain had time to establish itself and the profit/expenses settled. At this point there are NO WAREHOUSES anywhere on the map.
https://ibb.co/g1Q5C0

Next I added two warehouses, both located inside of the industrial farming zoned area and set them to balance resources for meat and flours.
https://ibb.co/mJoTzf

After waiting for the warehouses to fill their storages to the balance point and the profit has now settled we can see that I am earning a good profit and the expenses for the warehouses seem to match the stated costs for maintenance on their respective thumbnails.
https://ibb.co/iyAGKf

So far, seems normal. However, let's try relocating one of our warehouses outside of the established farming industrial zone. We wait a long time to make sure everything has settled. As you can see, the expenses shoot up dramatically (into the 100s of 1000s range sometimes).
https://ibb.co/nrhih0

This simple act of relocating a warehouse from inside a industrial district to outside (or likewise, erasing the district space from around warehouse location) creates pure havoc in the industrial production chain. You will notice as well that my industrial base profits have shot up once the warehouses were relocated across the street and out of the district. This is because a large portion of my extractors and processors begin shipping outside of the city directly instead of delivering to warehouses nearby.

There is more to this still. This kind of behavior does NOT occur if you set the warehouses to store products from the regular zoned industrial districts that come with the vanilla game. For example, setting a warehouse outside of an industrial zone and choosing "Zoned Industry - Farming" does not cause the expenses of a warehouse to climb like it would if it were set to "Meats".

This seems like a pretty big problem to me. I cannot be the only one who has noticed this yet. I'd love to hear from others.

[Avanya]

This is really important to post over on the official support and bug forums[forum.paradoxplaza.com] so the devs can see it. I'm not sure they come here much, but I know they check the forums. It definitely doesn't sound like something that's intended.

[Detail]

I always put them in the industrial zone, basically if I move them outside my feeling was it would screw up the supply chain or break something else, and your I think onto something. I'll see if I can try it also.

This was the worst rollout that I can remember, I spend some much time everyday just fixing broken stuff and trying to figure out why things are gone, don't work etc etc

[bitsaul]

Originally posted by Avanya:

This is really important to post over on the official support and bug forums[forum.paradoxplaza.com] so the devs can see it. I'm not sure they come here much, but I know they check the forums. It definitely doesn't sound like something that's intended.

Thanks Avanya, I'll do that!

[grapplehoeker]

In my vanilla Industries playthrough, I did not even begin to layout the special industries foundations until I had a mature city of at least 50k pop established. This allowed me the space, time and bank roll to invest in what is an expensive intial investment that I would never recommend for a 4k pop hamlet such as yours.
I used warehouses all over, but none within the specialised industry zones. The specialised industry zones each have their own storage buildings and warehouses are therefore redundant there. The warehouses were instead in their own centralised district as a hub between all four specilised industry districts and had access to commercial, the highway and three cargo rail terminals which were independently linked to their own dedicated outside connections (3 distinct sources of export revenue). This location allowed them to serve the commercial and export to the outside via 4 seperate options, and be able to supply the factories district which is where the money is really made! Each factory had their own smaller warehouses too to ensure a consistent supply.
You can see this here,
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1565032287

[bitsaul]

Very cool city but I don't think it has anything to do with the topic being discussed. Have you had any experience such as I stated in the post? I'm focused specifically on trying to figure out why warehouse expenses glitch out when placed outside of designated DLC iundustrial districts.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by bitsaul:

Very cool city but I don't think it has anything to do with the topic being discussed. Have you had any experience such as I stated in the post? I'm focused specifically on trying to figure out why warehouse expenses glitch out when placed outside of designated DLC iundustrial districts.

No, I haven't experienced any glitching out as you describe because as I said I never placed any warehouses within the specialised districts since they had no good reason to be there.

The specialised industries have their own storage buildings, and transport surplus when they are full to the warehouses, which I intentionally placed to act as a logistical storage and distribution hub where they serve a function they are designed for. They feed the factories! As you can see, the revenue generated is substantial, even with overhead costs for transport between industrial zones and the factories and onwards.
I don't believe there is any glitching, but rather you are unprepared for the rather expensive but normal costs of logistics transport which is probably more than your 4k pop city can bear. These costs are eventually offset by both the revenue a larger city can earn and by a successful production of finished special goods from the factories. The special products the factories make and sell is where the real profit is made ;)
Do not expect any significant returns of investment on export revenue of what is essentially intermediate product chain commodities such as flours and animal products. You should be storing these for factory production, not export.

[bitsaul]

Originally posted by grapplehoeker:

I don't believe there is any glitching, but rather you are unprepared for the rather expensive but normal costs of logistics transport which is probably more than your 4k pop city can bear. These costs are eventually offset by both the revenue a larger city can earn and by a successful production of finished special goods from the factories. The special products the factories make and sell is where the real profit is made ;)
Do not expect any significant returns of investment on export revenue of what is essentially intermediate product chain commodities such as flours and animal products. You should be storing these for factory production, not export.

Ahh, I think I understand what you suspect to be the cause. However, this is just a demonstration city to prove a point and create the post. This behavior was discovered on my city of 150K populace. It has nothing to do with the population. You can creaate it yourself on any city of your choosing of any size. I'm sure you will see it occur if you only test it yourself

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by bitsaul:

Ahh, I think I understand what you suspect to be the cause. However, this is just a demonstration city to prove a point and create the post. This behavior was discovered on my city of 150K populace. It has nothing to do with the population. You can creaate it yourself on any city of your choosing of any size. I'm sure you will see it occur if you only test it yourself

Oh I see...
Heh well, this vanilla city of mine was my test city for industries too and I'll try investigating your issue but, TBH I don't see any good reason why I would place any warehouses within the specialised Industries zones since they would still be shipping out along the highways to the factories zone - wasted time and distance = poor logistics.
I had planned on editing the map a little more and was going to build a modded city in order to fully explore the money making potential of both parks and Industries.
Still... for the sake of experimentation I'll give it a look over the weekend ;)

[Hempman]

my warehoue is in the zone and costs are very high everthing makes money except storage,but from what iam reading it sounds like the game wants everything coming in or out of the city,and raw products have no use in the city,so trucks unload and load the same products over and over and go no where,so hugh traffic problem it seems the trucks want to use roads to leave the city,and the warehouses are buying goods from outside the city i have 4 ports with trains so my warehouse cost 1000s of dollars and fills up very fast,then goes no where untill you build the factories now everything can go to the factory once the factory makes a product your city will use the finished product now your making money,so it is a different level of game play and is really not part of the game,but rather on its own,so more late game play,and traffic is always a issue,cant control prices on buses,or taxi,and make no money off ports all the tourists take regular buses not the tour buses toll roads create more problems too many ships stacked,too many planes,and the ballons sink in the water parks dont make money,and the parks i make in assets draw more people,and are free the space elevator creates hugh traffic problems no matter what you do,so really the money still comes from taxes with no control over pricing just parks,and tour bus,so i was hoping this new dlc would allow me too set prices,but no ,and warehouses are buying products,that you have no control over,so to get it to work you have to create a chain from raw to finish place your warehouses in all the right places,and have a large commerical areas,and 4 roads leading in and out of the city,it may work well,if all the right conditions are met.

[Apples]

The Ore industries will export the goods directly or send to storage (which will then export the goods), and then the processing buildings will import them. Wood is definately OK. But there are issues with the Industries DLC.

Eitherway though i make a profit, even on hard with a 4k city, it's fairly easy, you certainly don't need a 50k city to handle Industries DLC, i have all the specialised industry going with all the unique factories on a 16k pop.

The only issue is getting to the resources, as i use custom milestones and moved the area grants around a bit.

Originally posted by grapplehoeker:

I don't believe there is any glitching, but rather you are unprepared for the rather expensive but normal costs of logistics transport which is probably more than your 4k pop city can bear. These costs are eventually offset by both the revenue a larger city can earn and by a successful production of finished special goods from the factories. The special products the factories make and sell is where the real profit is made ;)

Industries DLC is all profit.. his 4k city won't have a problem handling it.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Apples:

The Ore industries will export the goods directly or send to storage, and then the processing buildings will import them. Wood is definately OK. But there are issues with the Industries DLC.

Eitherway though i make a profit, even on hard with a 4k city, it's fairly easy, you certainly don't need a 50k city to handle Industries DLC, i have all the specialised industry going with all the unique factories on a 16k pop.

The only issue is getting to the resources, as i use custom milestones and moved the area grants around a bit.

I was specifically playing strictly vanilla and for that reason I wanted a stable economy first before the huge capital investment to develop 4 full Industries, plus the fact that while 50k is still small, at least it can provide plenty of commercial for my factories to sell to rather than export, which is a better result.

[Apples]

Originally posted by grapplehoeker:

Originally posted by Apples:

The Ore industries will export the goods directly or send to storage, and then the processing buildings will import them. Wood is definately OK. But there are issues with the Industries DLC.

Eitherway though i make a profit, even on hard with a 4k city, it's fairly easy, you certainly don't need a 50k city to handle Industries DLC, i have all the specialised industry going with all the unique factories on a 16k pop.

The only issue is getting to the resources, as i use custom milestones and moved the area grants around a bit.

I was specifically playing strictly vanilla and for that reason I wanted a stable economy first before the huge capital investment to develop 4 full Industries, plus the fact that while 50k is still small, at least it can provide plenty of commercial for my factories to sell to rather than export, which is a better result.

It's easily doable, and you make plenty from it. I even lowered the bonus income from the milestones as it find it too easy.


Eitherway 4k is plenty for testing purposes.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Hempman:

my warehoue is in the zone and costs are very high everthing makes money except storage,but from what iam reading it sounds like the game wants everything coming in or out of the city,and raw products have no use in the city,so trucks unload and load the same products over and over and go no where,so hugh traffic problem it seems the trucks want to use roads to leave the city,and the warehouses are buying goods from outside the city i have 4 ports with trains so my warehouse cost 1000s of dollars and fills up very fast,then goes no where untill you build the factories now everything can go to the factory once the factory makes a product your city will use the finished product now your making money,so it is a different level of game play and is really not part of the game,but rather on its own,so more late game play,and traffic is always a issue,cant control prices on buses,or taxi,and make no money off ports all the tourists take regular buses not the tour buses toll roads create more problems too many ships stacked,too many planes,and the ballons sink in the water parks dont make money,and the parks i make in assets draw more people,and are free the space elevator creates hugh traffic problems no matter what you do,so really the money still comes from taxes with no control over pricing just parks,and tour bus,so i was hoping this new dlc would allow me too set prices,but no ,and warehouses are buying products,that you have no control over,so to get it to work you have to create a chain from raw to finish place your warehouses in all the right places,and have a large commerical areas,and 4 roads leading in and out of the city,it may work well,if all the right conditions are met.

You're right, the Industries DLC is a kind of an extra game in itself ;)
However you mention these:
Space Elevator
Multiple ports and stations = overspawning
Taxis
Warehouses in the Industries zones
All of this suggest to me you haven't yet mastered the game. I mean that in the nicest way ;)
The Space Elevator requires a sound mass transit setup and plenty of leisure/commercial to keep the tourists occupied.
Multiple intercity terminals and sharing of outside connections is a no, no. This generates over spawning and inefficient loads per vehicle spawned. Use a single intercity terminal with dedicated link to a single outside connection that is not shared with any other.
Taxis are horrible. They're inefficient, make little to no income and only add to road traffic which is something you should try to avoid. Use them only for appearances, otherwise there are far more efficient mass transit options available.
The purpose of warehouses are to store and supply the factories and so have no business being in the Industries production zones, which have their own storage buildings.
As for traffic, read some guides. There are plenty in the workshop which will improve your traffic management skills.
I hope that helps.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Apples:

It's easily doable, and you make plenty from it. I even lowered the bonus income from the milestones as it find it too easy.

Eitherway 4k is plenty for testing purposes.

How much is 'plenty'?
Once I'm done with my vanilla testing and achievement trawling, I'm planning on a proper modded playthrough to fully exploit the Parks and Industries. I hope to at least double the revenue my vanilla city has achieved so far ;)

[Phoenix C64]

Originally posted by grapplehoeker:

The specialised industry zones each have their own storage buildings and warehouses are therefore redundant there. The warehouses were instead in their own centralised district as a hub between all four specilised industry districts and had access to commercial, the highway and three cargo rail terminals which were independently linked to their own dedicated outside connections (3 distinct sources of export revenue).

This is not a good idea mate.
the raw storage units within each specialisation store just that: raw material.
let's say you have a farm.
you make some plantations, you use some silos. fine. but then you make a slaughterhause or milk parlour or flour mill. BOOM. now you have produced goods. not luxury goods, but normal goods that are needed for luxury factories.

the raw plantations and producers like a flour mill have very limited trucks available. if you put the warehouses too far off, those limited (like 5 or 6) trucks will be traveling a long time. too long. meanwhile the flour mill (example) will fill up again (assuming your production chain works properly) and then complain with the message "not enough buyers"... which BTW is a stupid message that should actually read "i ran out of trucks"

this is where warehouses come in. you should place at least a few warehouses close to your specialised industry because it's them that have a lot of trucks that can deliver stuff anywhere without interrupting your manufacturing chain because the lack of trucks available.

THE REASON why a far away warehouse would create money loss, is because if it's set to BALANCED it will export above 50% (more or less) and then, instead of getting filled up again by your industry, it decides to IMPORT (which costs money) because your import route has better traffic access and might be closer than your industry.
hence why I always suggest to set "out of districts warehouses" to FILL instead. it might do some expenses in the beginning, to fill the warehouse up... but once normalised, it seems to work better this way. and looks cooler too with all the boxes that dynamically show on the asset ;)

PS: you can check my stream VODs for all the learning curve on this. i have tested the DLC throughly in vanilla and currently in a modded playthrough