Warehauses and Factories

[some moron]

I've changed my mind about warehouses, and I also claim that chaney is mistaken about factories.

Once I've grown some cities and lain lots of track I see the value of warehouses, and it's NOT using them as warehouses, although that may come into play when the cities get really large, I haven't gotten that far.
But in the meantime, they serve an excellent source of "extra platforms per city" to reduce congestion. And also the wonderful teleportation of goods across competitor lines and natural obstructions. In the early game they are I would say not worth it, but by midgame the $100k to unload three much needed wares is much worth it, to me. Certainly it is simpler than trying to cram enough switches and tracks into those cramped areas around cities.

Chaney says factories are not worth it because more money can be made by transporting wares and that is true. But once the city is saturated and can grow no more, I believe it becomes OVERALL profitable to run a factory to #1 create one more demand for you to get paid for transporting and #2 send that to another city and get paid for that and also #3 grow cities so they require more of all wares, so you get paid more for ALL wares.
So, while it may be true that short term, a new resource delivered makes more money faster than a factory, I argue that by mid game, factories are necessary (to control which wares are produced) for the maximum income.

One thing I do notice is that I can buy a cattle and that will eventually return profit. But when it requires upgrade that is quite pricey and sets back my profit again. I think because of the costs of upgrade, it might be better to NOT own resources. Let the private sector pay for upgrade.
Unfortunately the same is not true for factory. I wish I could buy the first factory and then when time to upgrade, instead, give it to private sector (even for free) to keep that ware. But it seems I can only tear down the factory and then the private build may not be what I need to keep growing the nearby cities. So I think it may be necessary to choose and upgrade factories in order to keep the nearby cities growing.

[chaney]

I certainly have been known to be mistaken.

The only thing that stands out above as being in conflict with my usual mantra:

The implication that buying a factory (typically?) instead of continuing to expand to new Cities and existing rural industries will have better long term profit. Expand for a bit longer, and when money is no longer relevant, go ahead and buy industries as you like. I have also generally recognized that there are exceptions to my habit of not buying factories. There are always necessary times, sometimes even early.
" But once the city is saturated and can grow no more" I don't know what that means. Unless you are growing to several million population, more growth is readily possible. Making more goods will not saturate FoD beyond 100%.
If it means that you can increase FoD beyond what it currently is - at the host City and those connected to it - then there is value in building and/or expanding an industry. It seems unlikely to be a higher ROI than extending to new unserved Cities and convenient rural industries. By doing the latter, you will be rapidly growing THOSE Cities, so the opportunity cost of $1,000,000 in factory would be something like adding 2-3 new Cities with all the support that goes along with them. I stand by the expectation that growing a few new Cities will be better in terms of profit. After a couple of years it really doesn't matter any more.

With P2P, Warehouses are only a good value to add needed Platforms, accumulate distant sourced goods, and to reach across distance. Most Cities can be served fine with Stations, although there is nothing wrong with substituting a Warehouse for some of those Station Platforms at similar cost just to be clear. Again, once you don't care about money any more, go nuts!

[jhughes]

Well, I quite frequently use warehouses to grow cities in clusters. In a 3 city cluster is the normal method I use.

Attach the warehouse to the middle city.. Add 6 growth resources to the warehouse and fill it. Send trains from city 1 to city 3 and back via the warehouse. Adekyn uses this method in his videos.

Anyway, many different ways to play.

[chaney]

Pause mode bias here. Some generalization, too.

(In Trainiac, things are different since time management has high value and simplification of planning and execution are more important.)

Apart from the situations where:
You need (or will soon need) more than 8 Platforms to serve the City.
You want to avoid effects of terrain or other obstructions.
You want to bring in goods from a distant source.
(Any of those situations make a Warehouse worth considering.)

What is the *advantage* to using a Warehouse attached to the middle City?
(As opposed to using City Stations.)
It may not be worse in some situations, but is there an advantage?

Using a Warehouse for "distribution" will need more money because more trains will be needed to serve the same ultimate delivery of goods compared with direct service from source to consumer. Consumption is generally high enough that the notion of a single train delivering multiple goods is rarely something that makes sense for more than a brief growth time, and in those situations ABAC lines can keep the trains at least as efficient, until they are transitioned to dedicated AB or AC service.

The Warehouse Platforms are restricted in what they can service, unlike Station Platforms, so one for one Platform replacement has a potential disadvantage.
Loading times improve for larger buildings, so consolidating Platforms (4 together rather than 2 each in 2 buildings) has an advantage favoring Large Station over Station + Warehouse.

Unless you are in or anticipate one of the above situations soon, the Warehouse deserves a little skepticism. The distribution Warehouse (in the absence of the special situations) is a loser since engines are a bit expensive.

I'm looking forward to getting a new insight on the general functional advantage since the intuition in favor of warehouses is very strong. They can simplify thinking and planning, but planning here is not so difficult, and until you hit money-coming-in-faster-than-you-can-spend-it mode, opportunity cost is high so economizing the cost of a building and a few engines really makes the transition happen sooner. After that, burn money just to hear the sound of the crackling flames :)

[jhughes]

Well.. I like that the warehouse is outside the city. All the traffic bypasses the middle of the city.

It is really only 'required' if you need more than 8 platforms. And that is really only necessary if you have grown the city fairly large.

The thing with warehouses is it minimizes through traffic in the city. You can drop off items in the middle, so you don't have to take it all the way through several cities.

I fully admit it is really just a personal preference.. But the thing is.. You can gather 6 items in the warehouse in the middle. You can send one train from city A through the warehouse to city C. It picks up any of the 6 items needed. It puts all 3 cities in growth mode.

[chaney]

You can almost always do all that - better/faster/cheaper - with direct service.

Multi-stop routes, to me, are strictly for getting an area started in low demand situations, and even then are best avoided unless you really like to shave costs to bare minimum since they ought to be converted to dedicated direct service at some point soon for maximum efficiency in terms of starting and operating cost - and most importantly - in terms of Platform use.

Passing through a Station and then realizing that a Station is congested is an example of cause and effect. Fairly strict 2 stop routes only will keep the Stations moving pretty efficiently. Run bypasses around City B for the A-C connection. It saves building and engine costs ($$) for a little track (cheap) and has a quicker startup characteristic time.

Freight demands are generally high enough to support at least one train dedicated to a particular City for that demand. Use enough trains to keep up. If you have multiple goods on the same connection, use Prefer set differently on multiple trains to keep balance automatically.

I feel like the kid repeatedly declaring that The Emperor is barely wearing any clothes, but Warehouses are niche value in RE, despite strong and popular intuition. Distribution is uneconomical here compared with direct service.

[gussmed]

If a city is large enough that traffic congestion is a problem, it’s large enough to dedicate specific trains to service all its needs. Using a single train to service multiple cities only makes sense with the city is small, and the source is nearby.

If you’re removing goods from a warehouse to ship somewhere else, you’re doing it wrong. Yes, I know there are YouTube videos advocating exactly that, but they’re wrong. Trans-shipping is slow an inefficient, and effectively cuts the number of platforms in the warehouse station in half. One platform to drop off the goods, and one to pick them up with another train.

[chaney]

Right on, gussmed.

I had not thought about the point of effectively halving the number of Platforms when you use Warehouses for distribution, thanks for that gold nugget! I guess I stopped thinking when it became clear they had strong other drawbacks!

We've "done the math" on this many times. It's fine for style, but not gameyness efficient.

Do as you please of course; I provide supplies and maintenance for my trains, even though the game favors replacement when you run out of water, so I'm not going to even think about telling someone how they must play ... but pointing out the drawbacks of a practice, sure!