Industry import/export broken?

[Glenn H.]

Trying a second attempt on farming indystry, but the animal pastures do not receive any crops from my crop fields. The crop fields only exports crops or sends it to the silos (the silos seeems to only ecport too), while the pastures only import, all of which kinda breaks the raw material chain. And of course I am loosing money from this.

I've got two medium crop fields, two small silos and one animal pasture.

Not sure what I am doing wrong. Any help is apprechiated!

[kristofburger]

Originally posted by GL-H:

I've got two medium crop fields, two small silos and one animal pasture.

To me this feels like you need more of both raw storage and processing. I suspect you have all storage trucks exporting most of the time which makes a mess.

[Prometheus]

You are massively overproducing crops. Since you aren't consuming it fast enough all the trucks your storage have available are being tied up in exporting. Exporting takes a long time and is crap profit at the base material tier.

This applies to all the industries. You need to balance your materials creation with refineries and have enough storage so that there are enough trucks to move materials around as needed. This is important. Storage is about available trucks, not actual storage. The available trucks are the most important thing to track with your storage.

[Glenn H.]

Thanks for the feedback!

Well I did start out with just one crop field and just one animal pasture, but the pasture was complaining about no raw material most of the time while the crop field kept exporting.

I thought a silo would balance things, but it didn't.

I have tried various approaches now and is struggling to make it all work together.

[scpool1986]

Originally posted by GL-H:

Thanks for the feedback!

Well I did start out with just one crop field and just one animal pasture, but the pasture was complaining about no raw material most of the time while the crop field kept exporting.

I thought a silo would balance things, but it didn't.

I have tried various approaches now and is struggling to make it all work together.

Because the animal pasture is a processor it has to first be supplied from the extractor, in this case the crops field. Any time you build a processor it’ll show the “not enough raw materials” until they receive their first shipment and are established in the supply chain. It’s the same for any processor in any of the industry types, they’ll have the same delay.

[Glenn H.]

Ok, so after having tested this thoroughly in a sandbox, I have come to the conclusion that the production chain is actually broken.

While the animal production facilities are complaining about empty crop storage, which they do often BTW, the crop fields are calmly and steadily exporting instead of delivering to the production facilities. And yes, there are available trucks and storage.

This is very sad because I love the idea behind this expansion pack. And now I have to basically get rid of all my new industry assets and go back to playing like before. I hope it gets fixed or that some hero out there creates a mod to fix it.

I will definitely be more cautious next time there's an expansion to this game!

Thanks for the help!

[kristofburger]

Originally posted by GL-H:

Ok, so after having tested this thoroughly in a sandbox, I have come to the conclusion that the production chain is actually broken.

While the animal production facilities are complaining about empty crop storage, which they do often BTW, the crop fields are calmly and steadily exporting instead of delivering to the production facilities. And yes, there are available trucks and storage.

I'm pretty convinced you're still not doing something right. Could also be the industrial roads messing things up in case you use them.

[Prometheus]

It definitely isn't broken. I have created full supply chains from the start of all 4 resource types down to every unique factory and got it to run smoothly. Kristof is right. You are doing something wrong or have a mod conflict.

[BlackAeronaut]

Originally posted by Promethian:

It definitely isn't broken. I have created full supply chains from the start of all 4 resource types down to every unique factory and got it to run smoothly. Kristof is right. You are doing something wrong or have a mod conflict.

Chiming in here. I'm sorry, but there is DEFINITELY SOMETHING BROKEN. It's just really damn subtle. I've done everythingI could - deactivated all mods, running only vanilla assets, settin extractor,m warehouse, and processing units all on the same road.

And each time it's all the same.

Extractors do nothing except export.

Warehouses seem to do nothging but fill up and MAYBE export something every great now and then.

Procesor never order local materials - they import all raw materials.

The only thing I haven't done is build up a citry from scratch with mods turned off, but even there I think the results would be the same.

Promethian: how are you setting your city up? Mine is very straight-forward - Thouroughfars tied into highways as a backbone and small roads tied into those with roundabouts. Traffic is there, but not onerous. And I keep my industry areas 'self-containedf' - that is, they don't need to jump between thouroughfares to get prodect where it needs to go. Everything is practically next-door to each other.

[Prometheus]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1571413784

[BlackAeronaut]

I FIGURED IT OUT!!!!

The issue actualky IS in the supply chain itself! But it's legitimately not a bug, but a feature!

Simply put:your industry areas are always gonna want to try and export as much as they can get away with. That's how you make money, right? Right.

So what happens when your warehouses dispatch all of their trucks to export goods? You suddenly have no trucks to deliver goods to your processing plants or specialized factories!!!

So here's how you get around this issue: you build enough storage buildings that you have a surpluss number of frieght trucks that they will dispatch the moment a processing plant or factory is in need of goods. And this means you will want to use the storage facilites that have the most frieght trucks per map-square said asset uses. The whole point is that you need to maximize the number of trucks your special industries can put on the road at once.

I know, it seems ridiculously counter-intuitive, and for this reason Collosal SHOULD have included a walkthrough/tutorial mode. But them's the breaks. At least we now know why some people are having terrible difficulties and some are not.

[Stealthy]

Good for you. Now scroll up and see the second post up there, by Promethian on 17th of november ;)

[Son of the Red Earth]

Originally posted by GL-H:

Thanks for the feedback!

Well I did start out with just one crop field and just one animal pasture, but the pasture was complaining about no raw material most of the time while the crop field kept exporting.

I thought a silo would balance things, but it didn't.

I have tried various approaches now and is struggling to make it all work together.

If you need your stocks to supply your city put FILL in your wharehouse, and leave it near the places that need them.
If you need your stocks to be exported put EMPTY.

FILL will only import if your production isn't enough!

Only use BALANCED if you have a way to export without loosing time in traffic or highways. Like a cargo port/train/airport nearby.

[Pops]

Only use balance ever, forget fill and empty on warehouses.

[MarkJohnson]

Here's a wiki of everything you'll ever want to know about the supply chain.

https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Supply_chain

Scroll down to the Industries DLC section.

[BlackAeronaut]

Originally posted by Stealthy:

Good for you. Now scroll up and see the second post up there, by Promethian on 17th of november ;)

Oh no no no no no. What Promethian said had nothing to do with how the warehouses figure into the equation.

Here's the thing: you can have as many extractors as you like. You can have as many processors as you like.

But storage is CRITICAL because apparently it acts as the middle-man between your extractors and your processors.

Yes, you can try to do without them - I have - and I found that in the supply chain thw window for when a processor needs materials times out VERY QUICKLY - after which it just orders the raw materials from out of town. And the same applies to your extractors: the window for when they want to ship out raw materials times out very quickly as well, and after that the extractor will just opt to export instead.

Enter your storage assets because they'll act as a buffer between your extractors and processors.

Now, this would seem obvious, for sure. That's how it works in real life, right? But what I've found lately from playing this game is that not everything is as obvious as it would seem. Real life, warehouses order more trucks to handle more business. In Cities, though, your storage assets have a fixed number of trucks to draw from, and THAT is the magic number you need to pay attention to.

So, in conclusion, the number of extractor and processor units only count for how much goods you want to produce. But if you want anything to ACTUALLY WORK? You need storage assets. Or rather, you need the Freight Trucks those storage assets come with. Not enough trucks, nothing gets done. And really, as long as your budget road network supports it, there's no such thing as too many trucks to handle the business.