Positioning of unique factories/warehouses

[Louise]

Hi, I wonder if anyone could give me any best practise tips for unique factories and warehouses. Is it better to have them all clustered together for easy transference of products, or spread across the map, closer to industry areas? I am thinking of moving everything to one area, close to the airport, but then having warehouses in the zones themselves too. Does this sound okay?

[MaxFX]

I like to have the Level 2 unique factories, that only require materials from one industry type, to be placed in or near the industry area's of that type.

So the Bakery near my farm area.
The Furniture Factory near my forestry area.
The Industrial Steel Plant near my ore industry area.
The Household Plastics Factory near my oil industry area.

[markg]

I have built cities using both methods. Most often i like to spread them around a bit.. I make little company towns surrounding the biggest ones, seems more realistic to me and also spreads out the cargo traffic via train and truck.

I also place small warehouses all over the map close to my commercial areas, and manufacturing. The factories that are real resource hogs, get their own dedicated warehouse for input materials and output.

I use Transfer Manager CE to assign everything so i don't have trucks wandering all over the map to deliver supplies..

[WhiteKnight77]

I use a bit of both, depending on how many processed materials are used by a factory. If I have a faming industry near an ore industry, I might place the Yaxu Energy Drink factory between the two so it is fed both crops and glass so trucks do not have to drive so far.

I also do just like Max does with single material factories.

[Free1]

Originally posted by MaxFX:

I like to have the Level 2 unique factories, that only require materials from one industry type, to be placed in or near the industry area's of that type.

So the Bakery near my farm area.
The Furniture Factory near my forestry area.
The Industrial Steel Plant near my ore industry area.
The Household Plastics Factory near my oil industry area.

+1

I place warehouse for unique factory products close to or within commercial areas as it improves their happiness.

[Sixeyeco]

Sorry if anyone's bothered by the necro...

It's best to keep factories (and industry in general) near freeways. Rails, harbor and airport access is also highly recommended. There is a hierarchy to zoning, a topic that has been covered ad nauseam on YouTube so I won't go into that.

But, I recently did a deep dive on Unique Factories and their demand. I feel it really helped me significantly reduce unnecessary cargo traffic. This base info is readily available at the CS Wiki https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Unique_Factories

There are four factories that only require a single industry. Those are the Industrial Steel Plant, the Furniture Factory, the Household Plastic Factory and the Bakery. So, it makes sense to place these factories between their respective industry and a highway. This is very beneficial because you can nearly eliminate the traffic between those two points.

Next up were factories requiring only two industries... they are Lemonade Factory (place between Farming and Ore), Printing Press (place between Farming and Oil), Seafood Factory (place between Oil and Fishing) and the Petroleum Refinery (place between Ore and Oil). My takeaway from that info is that Ore should be somewhat centralized. Beyond that, placement becomes less of an issue as the remaining unique factories draw from more than two industries.

However, for bonus points I determined how much demand there was from each factory. What I found was that products from the Oil industry accounts for a full 35% of all products needed by Unique Factories with Plastic being highest in demand, far surpassing all other industry products. This jives with my game play experience (it seems I'm always adding plastic manufacturing capacity).

Other analysis led to the following information:

If you have all Unique Factories up and running:

Oil - Demand: 17 - Two thirds of your production needs to be Plastic.
Ore - Demand: 11 - Somewhat balanced between Metal and Glass.
Forestry - Demand: 10 - Somewhat balanced between Planed Timber and Paper.
Farming - Demand: 10 - 40% each of Crops and Animal Products. Flour is just 20%.
Fish - Demand: 1 - All fishing and seafood products.

Once you've dialed in your industries and factories be sure to set up dedicated warehouses to even out the inevitable supply chain spikes and dips.

[Haystack]

A matter of personal preference really. Handled properly, it makes little to no difference how or where they are placed.

To keep noise and city traffic down, I prefer to place factories, warehouses, and what little commercial I allow, all well out beyond the city limit boundary. In my games, All cargo leaving the industrial area is moved via a one way rail system that surrounds and exits the city. No cargo, rail, or large trucks ever need enter the city. No large trucks are ever allowed to exit the industrial areas. Makes traffic, cargo rail, shipping and distribution ALL run MUCH smoother and issue free. Makes Industrial "overproduction" and "exporting" for profit a complete no-brainer.