Grain/Livestock ratio when producing food?

[Paikia]

Up until now, the only type of cargo I've been dealing with is food. At first I tried using one train to transform livestock and grain from the farm to the factory, and then have that same train transport food from the factory to a nearby city (using the same wagons it used to transport livestock, therefore traveling at partial capacity). After some trial and error, as the quantities started to get much larger, I decided to separate the two parts of the route and have one train transport grain and livestock to the factory, and another to transport food from the factory to the destination (which is usually now a couple of much larger cities). With time, the number of trains had to go up, as one train per part of the route wasn't enough, which brings us to my reason for starting this topic.

I noticed that while producing food requires both livestock and grain, there's a difference in the needed quantities over time. I'm not sure what's the initial ratio (might be 50%-50% or something similar), but soon enough, the factory lowers its demand for livestock for quite a long while and demands mostly grain. After a while, the demand for livestock goes up again. Maybe the idea is that animals produce stuff like eggs and milk, and only after a while they're processed into meat. I'm not really sure, but the fact is, that if I want to keep the supply to the cities steady, I have to either keep changing the setup of my trains to meet the changes, or settle for an inefficient setup (trains going back and forth with their livestock wagons empty for long periods of time).

While both of those options work and let me run profitable routes, I've been wondering if anyone might have a better idea for a generic, efficient, cost-effective setup that handles those changes without too much needed micromanagement.

Would love to get your insights about that.

Thanks. :)

[Saint Landwalker]

The reason that happens is that, for any facility that can process more than one type of input (e.g. a food factory can process either grain or livestock), it will always process whatever "comes first" in its input list. For a food processing plant, grain comes first, so the factory processes the grain before it processes the livestock.

(Edit: This is also true for facilities with multiple processed outputs, which is why an oil refinery that you want to use to produce fuel has a "delay" at the start of the process; it wants to fill up its internal storage with refined oil first, and only then will start producing fuel.)

Initially this doesn't really matter, because the volumes are lower and it ends up processing all of both of them (or near enough) if it's being supplied with both in equal quantities. But over time, because it ultimately spends more time processing grain, the farm recognizes this and starts to produce more grain and less livestock to match the apparent demand. I've found this to be much, much more pronounced when dealing with trains than with trucks, since trains deliver large quantities of goods at once (in effect, flooding the factory with grain and causing it to spend more time on a large amount of grain before it "reaches" the livestock). With trucks, the flow of cargo is steadier and in smaller "chunks", so the grain and livestock get processed more evenly.

Of course, remember (or get ready to find out) that a food processing plant doesn't even need both grain and livestock in the first place. If you want to be able to use the same train to move cargo in both directions, switch the train to 100% boxcars; it'll move livestock in one direction and food in the other. Over time (not even that much time), the farm will pick up on this and stop producing grain altogether, focusing on livestock (and yes, it will still upgrade even if it's only producing one of its possible outputs).

[Paikia]

O.o
I had no idea that it worked like that. And yep, I also thought I needed both grain *and* livestock to produce food. Now I know it can be handled in a much simpler way. Thanks for clearing that up for me. :)

[Voice From Beyond]

Look for the "OR" symbol (vertical bar |) as in "GRAIN | LIVESTOCK".

Steel mill requires both coal AND iron and appears as "COAL IRON" with no vertical bar between.

[peterhoepfner]

The answer is to only supply one type and forget about the other. The obvious choice is to only ship livestock as the same wagons can be used to ship food also, so no wagons are empty.

[Paikia]

Originally posted by Voice From Beyond:

Look for the "OR" symbol (vertical bar |) as in "GRAIN | LIVESTOCK".

Steel mill requires both coal AND iron and appears as "COAL IRON" with no vertical bar between.

Yep, as someone who learned some computer programming, I should've definitely noticed that. I'm not sure how the average person should know that, though, as most people don't bother learning to code.

Originally posted by peterhoepfner:

The answer is to only supply one type and forget about the other. The obvious choice is to only ship livestock as the same wagons can be used to ship food also, so no wagons are empty.

Yup, that's the new plan. :)