Shipping Port too Truck Depot

[Robbyroy]

I am having trouble getting the lumber yard to produce lumber. My Idea was to truck lumber to a another depot that is right beside a ship port. The other port is next to a machine factory ,which has already accepted a lot of Iron. The ship runs the route empty and a truck runs from the lumber depot to the depot by the first ship yard. So there is no problem there. I think the problem is the depot junction with the ship port. What am I missing?

[Pak0tac]

I think there is a bug with sea paths, I hade the exact same problem as you do, but with tools and machinery, a factory was filled with raw resources, and all it had to do is to start producing the tools so that my trucks can move them to the port where my ship will take them to some distant town, yet for some reson the factory didnt do anything. its like it wont recongize a path or something.

[pat]

The mechanics of the game are complex, so it's important to get your terminology correct. There is no lumber or lumber yard. I'll assume you mean a saw mill and planks. Forests produce logs.

You've got to have every step of the production chain complete and correct. All vehicles must be configured to carry the correct type of goods. If you're trying to get planks to the machine factory, you've got to be delivering logs to the saw mill. You've also got to have transportation set up to ship tools (I assume plastic isn't in the mix at this point) to commercial buildings in a city.

If any part of the chain is set up improperly, the entire production line will do nothing. It's like an old string of christmas lights. If one bulb is out, the entire string is out.

[Robbyroy]

Yea Pat Iv'e got all that. This is not my first game . I can see how you can be confused with the lumber and not the planks terminology, since there are so many types of wood used in the game. Sorry

[chrisasnyder]

The other thing to watch for is line frequency. If one component of a multi-component factory has a frequency much higher than the other parts, it may not produce.

For example: in a map I am in currently playing, I worked on getting a goods factory up using plastic. The plastic plant was close, grain from the farm and a forest are a short distance away at about the same location. However, all the saw mills, litterly all of them, were at the other end of the map in a tight group. I seeded the lines with a few trucks, short grain train, short stake train, and the long distance log/plank train.

The problem was the forest never showed line usage. grain flowed, plastic made, delivered to goods factory, but no logs from forest, thus no planks. The problem was the frequency of the long plank train was way to high compared to the rest of the paths. It was at 33 minutes, where the grain and logs were about 10 minutes. Once I added two more trains to the planks line, which dropped the frequency to about 12 minutes, The forest joined the line and logs shipped.

Even still, that long distance caused some problems because once the requested logs were out, the forest shutdown. Those first logs needed to get turned into planks, then brought back to the goods factory then goods delivered. Only then did line usage start up again to ship the next batch. Once I had enough stock rolling, then the factories upgraded and the lines started running near full.

Ships have a real hard time with travel times and frequency and cause the supply chain to bounce when trying to get the industry started.

[Robbyroy]

I found in my above scenario That when I ran the plank trucks directly to the Machine Co. The planks were made. When I tried to go to the Depot postioned beside the Port It would not produce planks.The question I really should of asked is " Will the planks automatically go from the depot to the port just because the depot is close to the port?"

[chrisasnyder]

Originally posted by Robbyroy:

Will the planks automatically go from the depot to the port just because the depot is close to the port?

No it won't. What you do is put a truck station in the between the planks factory and boat dock so that both are in the truck station's cachement area. Then assign one truck to that station with the station listed twice in the line. The truck will loop in the station moving planks from the factory to the dock.

[Robbyroy]

Thanks for the reply. The first ship cargo yard is not located next to anything but a road along with the truck depot beside it. There is nothing else like a processing plant or factory. The other Ship yard is in a cachement area at the final destination.