Weird how the Food Processing plants work???

[Marcus]

Noob here been trying to get this right after many re-starts! Currently not doing bad making nice regular money but by no means outa the woods yet!!

I have this food processing plant which I supply with livestock from two different farms which then allows the food processing plant to supply food to three surrounding towns.

What I find strange though is that it goes well supplying a town but then the town seems to get saturated although the town info says the food supply is just on mediocre like only 33%, then suddenly the processing plant's production drops thus all trains on that line start loosing money running empty or half full.

This same pattern has continued now with 3 towns!!!
Is this how the whole supply & demand works or am I missing something here???

Thanks

[maculator]

Food gets distributed to the commercial districts. If you don't cover those with your stations they cant consume food and your numbers get wrong.
Edit:
It just happens that I started a new game a few minutes ago:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1185331138
See the few blue houses to the left? Thats why I got a second busstop to drop of food. Otherwise I would only cover like 90% of the commercial houses and therefore would have to take my fooddemand *0.9 to get the correct number.

[SBGaming]

Production swings especially early game when demand is relatively low is common, and my experience is that it's very easy to hit a saturation point where demand drops to 0 for a few months when trains are used. Trucks less so, but does happen.

What happens is that there is a bit of over production that occurs at the Farm, and to a degree the Food Processor, though with that said, this is something that applies to all the industries, not just the Food chain. The Food Processor will see upwards of 130% of the actual demand, whereas the Farm will see up to 130% of that in demand, allowing industries to be more free to produce to get product to your stations, and to keep up initial production. Part of this extra demand is for extra production to be stored in the factories internal storage so that it can start kicking out product when demand does return, rather than having nothing in the internal storage and then having to wait for the industry to ramp up production once again just to get a bit of product.

Prior to the patch back in December (last year), it was sometimes hard to get and keep a factory producing and so you'd have situations where by the time the Livestock reached the Food Processor, the Farm Production would have crashed, and for a short time you'd have nothing showing up for pickup at the Farm until the Farm started to see demand. Before you had a chance to transport more Grain or Livestock to the Food Processor, the Food Processor's production would crash, etc.

Essentially, if you are very effective in hauling the Grain or Livestock that the farm produces away you'll saturate the Food Processor with enough Grain or Livestock that the Farm no longer sees demand, until the Food Processor has had a chance to eat through what is being supplied. You want to transport enough Livestock (or Crude Oil or Stone, etc) to the Food Processor to keep it producing, but not to saturate it. It's tempting to put a ton of capacity on your lines to transport everything that shows up, but that simply results in Production crashing, and resources drying up for a short time then you start losing money.

In my Train Fever Achievement Mini-series, I had an initial Oil line that I was sure at the time was going to crash, and even though I had a ton of Crude Oil accumulating at the Oil Well, I had just enough capacity and frequency on my line to keep things going, even though I could have seriously ramped things up, but as I was only at the time supplying to one town, I had to avoid doing so.

[Marcus]

Yeah thanks i get that I have 4 truckstops covering every commercial building in the town. There are food piling up at the truck station right accross from the freight station and I have 10 carts but somehow the pile up of food does not reduce!

Also the processing plant has now stopped producing food for this town and as I mentioned this pattern has reapet with 3 different towns now!

Initially boom town then suddenly production slows down and stop although the town info says food supply mediocre at 33%!

I dont understand it???

[maculator]

If it piles up at a station it probably got reserved by a line. Check where it wants to go.

Edit:
In Transport Fever trucks and trains can't just take cargo and haul it, the cargo gets ordered and assigned to a combination of lines that leads to the destination, it will only be taken by a line that got chosen in the initial planing of the route!

[Marcus]

Thanks SBGaming it seems clearer now my last response was posted after yours thanks.

[Marcus]

So why are the breads(food) piling up at the truck stop by the freight station?
Is it cause I dont have enough carts to distribute it around town to the other four truck stops or what am I missing here?

[maculator]

Click on the stop and hover over the breads, the tooltip then should show you the destination of those breads.

[Marcus]

Ok thanks I just checked it out the 91 breads is lined up to go to 3 other stops in that town.

I have 10 carts on this line do they distribute the food automatically between the 3 stops or does it require 3 different lines with sets of carts to supply the 3 stops?

[maculator]

They'll do it automatically.

However if you got more than one line thats capable of delivering those breads it gets tricky. Because I don't know a way to tell wich line is supposed to do it. You can open the lineoverview in the bottom left of your screen and check if your line is fully loaded that may indicate if you need more vehicles.