Warehouse concerns.

[Issac Brock]

I think I have warehouses figured out but I'm hoping someone could confirm that my understanding is correct.

I will refer to the warehouse as the warehouse station and the station inside the city as the city station.

A city connected to a warehouse can use the goods from the warehouse but if you want the goods in that warehouse delivered to another city you can not use the City train station to deliver them to another City train station. You must use the Warehouse station to deliver to the City station.

If I have the concept right does that mean that your Warehouses are really your freight centres whose purpose is to collect freight from resources and deliver those resources to the warehouse and to take goods from the warehouse and move them to another warehouse or to the city.

Now here is what I'm unsure of. When I deliver to a warehouse do I make any income for moving the freight? When the city uses the item from the warehouse are they paying for the cost of the material only or the cost of the material and transportation costs to the warehouse?

When I deliver from warehouse to warehouse are the transportation costs incurred added to the cost of raw materials when the destination warehouse's attached city uses the goods or does it just pay for the raw materials?

When I deliver from Warehouse to another city do I realize two sets of profits, one from selling the goods from the warehouse to the train and one for delivering the goods to the city?

Do I have this idea right? It just seems so strange to me I can't believe it actually works this way and I must have something mixed up.

Would that not mean that your city stations are only doing three things, producing passengers, accepting passengers and accepting freight. That you would never actually send freight out from your station that it would always depart via warehouse?

[chaney]

You don't "own" anything you transport in general, you just own goods produced at industries that you own. I think you get paid for goods you produce when they go on a train but I'm not sure to be honest. You don't otherwise buy or sell goods per se. You get paid for freight when a City takes them, either from unloading them from your train at a Station in a City, or when the City takes them from your Warehouse (I use a capital "W" to denote a company built Warehouse building where trains can load/unload freight. This has been my public standard for years, so I'll be lazy and stay with it.)

Transportation costs (train operation, personnel costs for that train) are paid by you, and you receive nothing directly. You get paid only the flat freight fee (plus any modifiers) when you deliver freight IN a City, or when a City takes it FROM your attached Warehouse (you lose any train specific modifiers in that case.)

Hope this helps. Please see
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1293183195
for more

[Issac Brock]

Originally posted by chaney:

You don't "own" anything you transport in general, you just own goods produced at industries that you own. I think you get paid for goods you produce when they go on a train but I'm not sure to be honest. You don't otherwise buy or sell goods per se. You get paid for freight when a City takes them, either from unloading them from your train at a Station in a City, or when the City takes them from your Warehouse (I use a capital "W" to denote a company built Warehouse building where trains can load/unload freight. This has been my public standard for years, so I'll be lazy and stay with it.)

Transportation costs (train operation, personnel costs for that train) are paid by you, and you receive nothing directly. You get paid only the flat freight fee (plus any modifiers) when you deliver freight IN a City, or when a City takes it FROM your attached Warehouse (you lose any train specific modifiers in that case.)

Hope this helps. Please see
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1293183195
for more

Thanks for trying to clear things up for me. The thing is that I own a ranch and I understand if I were to move the cows directly from my ranch to the city I would collect money for both the sale of the cows and the transportation of the cows but if I move the cows to a warehouse I know I'm paid when the cows are removed from the warehouse. What I wonder is there any revenue difference between taking goods from a warehouse and delivering them to a city and taking goods from a warehouse and delivering them to another warehouse. That's what I don't clearly understand.

I guess what is really making it hard to understand is that you collect nothing for delivering to a warehouse so warehouse to warehouse delivery sounds like a loss.

[chaney]

I don't believe you get paid anything "extra" for moving between Warehouses.

I usually don't think delivering to a Warehouse and then to a different Warehouse is effective. This may be termed as using the early Warehouse for "distribution." Delivering between two Warehouses attached to different Cities is fine in order to exchange goods manufactured at the two Cities for example.

I advocate delivery as direct as possible in almost every case. I go into some detail in the above guide, and am happy to discuss any details not handled there.

[Issac Brock]

Originally posted by chaney:

I don't believe you get paid anything "extra" for moving between Warehouses.

I usually don't think delivering to a Warehouse and then to a different Warehouse is effective. This may be termed as using the early Warehouse for "distribution." Delivering between two Warehouses attached to different Cities is fine in order to exchange goods manufactured at the two Cities for example.

I advocate delivery as direct as possible in almost every case. I go into some detail in the above guide, and am happy to discuss any details not handled there.

I will definately give your guide a look, thanks. Appreciate the help.

[Thineboot]

Just a few adds since chaney wasn't sure - despite that, take a closer look at his guide!

Everything in RE will be transported by horse wagons. You offer faster transportation and trains can reach more distant cities, too.

You get paid for everything a city buys.
As long as you can transport goods they are like cows on a ranch - possible future profits.
You don't own goods - unless you're produced them in one of your rurals/industries. The only reason for producing goods yourself is when there is a demand the private investors can't or won't satisfy by themselves. Industries are a long term investment and most of the time you've completed a scenario before you really start making profits that way. Keep in mind that money generates much more profits when invested in your primary objective, running a railway empire. At some point you're getting paid for produced goods. Since I have never taken a closer look at when exactly I don't know for sure. There are many private producers that struggle and thus they end auctioning their rural or industry. So my guess is that producers get paid when goods are loaded. We're running a railway empire, production is only a necessity in certain situations.
That said, any of your Warehouses is just another location you can store goods in - or another pastureland for your cows. No profits. Your Warehouse, your investment, goods you've taken the responsibility to transport and were not able to deliver to a city, yet.
Whatever goods you shovel around between your Warehouses is your logistical daycare or nightmare, whatever fits better :) You don't get paid. Rolling stock costs money, especially when rolling ;)
When a city buys goods out of your train cars you'll get extra boni for using refrigerator cars (food only, including all those sweating cows before they're turned into meat - early animal care ;)) and guards plus any R&D-boni.
When a city buys goods out of your Warehouses you'll get extra for any R&D-boni only.

Using of Warehouses is a player decision. Some like them, some don't. Use them when suitable. When possible use direct delivery, see extra boni. When eight Station tracks get clogged add four more Warehouse tracks.
Keep in mind that there has to be a green connection bar between city and Warehouse. Otherwise it's just another storage in the middle of somewhere ;)

[Issac Brock]

Originally posted by Thineboot:

Just a few adds since chaney wasn't sure - despite that, take a closer look at his guide!

Everything in RE will be transported by horse wagons. You offer faster transportation and trains can reach more distant cities, too.

You get paid for everything a city buys.
As long as you can transport goods they are like cows on a ranch - possible future profits.
You don't own goods - unless you're produced them in one of your rurals/industries. The only reason for producing goods yourself is when there is a demand the private investors can't or won't satisfy by themselves. Industries are a long term investment and most of the time you've completed a scenario before you really start making profits that way. Keep in mind that money generates much more profits when invested in your primary objective, running a railway empire. At some point you're getting paid for produced goods. Since I have never taken a closer look at when exactly I don't know for sure. There are many private producers that struggle and thus they end auctioning their rural or industry. So my guess is that producers get paid when goods are loaded. We're running a railway empire, production is only a necessity in certain situations.
That said, any of your Warehouses is just another location you can store goods in - or another pastureland for your cows. No profits. Your Warehouse, your investment, goods you've taken the responsibility to transport and were not able to deliver to a city, yet.
Whatever goods you shovel around between your Warehouses is your logistical daycare or nightmare, whatever fits better :) You don't get paid. Rolling stock costs money, especially when rolling ;)
When a city buys goods out of your train cars you'll get extra boni for using refrigerator cars (food only, including all those sweating cows before they're turned into meat - early animal care ;)) and guards plus any R&D-boni.
When a city buys goods out of your Warehouses you'll get extra for any R&D-boni only.

Using of Warehouses is a player decision. Some like them, some don't. Use them when suitable. When possible use direct delivery, see extra boni. When eight Station tracks get clogged add four more Warehouse tracks.
Keep in mind that there has to be a green connection bar between city and Warehouse. Otherwise it's just another storage in the middle of somewhere ;)

Thanks for the viewpoint on the ownership of raw resources and the manufacturing plants that produce finished goods in respects to profits generated. I was approaching the game thinking that owning the raw resources, owning the manufacturing plants and owning the rail that transports these raw and manufactured goods would make money from every aspect of the rail operation but I didn't actually consider leaving the raw resources and manufacturing and warehousing alone till later in the game.

I guess maybe I'm trying to play Tropico in Railway Empire.

[Thineboot]

It's tempting to own everything but buying production sites (rural/industry) is a big investment. And expanding them costs again.
Other than Tropico RE focuses on transportation, not production. There are scenario tasks which demand production, not only delivery - too many threads deal with players not making this distinction. In these cases you have to buy and even upgrade certain production sites. You may run in a shortage which hinders your city growth or fulfilling other tasks. That's when you have to invest in immobile structures other than railway structures.
Since money is the limiting factor in the early game you have to make sure that you make as much money as possible as soon as possible and debt is your friend, not your enemy. Rotate bonds and invest in expansion on rails asap.

[Issac Brock]

Originally posted by Thineboot:

It's tempting to own everything but buying production sites (rural/industry) is a big investment. And expanding them costs again.
Other than Tropico RE focuses on transportation, not production. There are scenario tasks which demand production, not only delivery - too many threads deal with players not making this distinction. In these cases you have to buy and even upgrade certain production sites. You may run in a shortage which hinders your city growth or fulfilling other tasks. That's when you have to invest in immobile structures other than railway structures.
Since money is the limiting factor in the early game you have to make sure that you make as much money as possible as soon as possible and debt is your friend, not your enemy. Rotate bonds and invest in expansion on rails asap.

Thanks again for the tips. I really like this game but having nagging doubts about your strategy is somewhat of an immersion breaker for me. I think now I'm probably going to enjoy the game more.

[start214]

So in short:

When you deliver goods by train to a city
- you get paid

When you deliver goods by train to a warehouse
- you get not paid

When you deliver goods by train to a warehouse ATTACHED/LINKED to a city
- you get ONLY paid, for the goods the city needed, otherwise the attached
warehouse will keep and stock the goods, for later need.

My 2 cents :)

[Thineboot]

The beauty of RE is there is no single one strategy. You can solve all those tasks (puzzles) by various approaches. There are a variety of top notch strategies and they can differ in many aspects. If you don't care about ratings (El Presidente is calling ;)) there is no need to rush for golden ticks (finish a task in half the time between becoming available and New Year's Eve of the target year). Keep in mind that you have to finish every non optional task until New Year's Eve of the target year or you'll lose the game.

Many of the experienced players have finished scenarios using different strategies on each approach. So don't ask for the perfect strategy, explore the game and test different angles. Don't stick with one strategy as you have to adopt new ones with different scenarios.

You can enjoy building an empire besides your railway company, too. Just don't go for it in early game. Get rich before buying all ranches ;) You'll probably enjoy Cattle drive the most :D

[Issac Brock]

Originally posted by start214:

So in short:

When you deliver goods by train to a city
- you get paid

When you deliver goods by train to a warehouse
- you get not paid

When you deliver goods by train to a warehouse ATTACHED/LINKED to a city
- you get ONLY paid, for the goods the city needed, otherwise the attached
warehouse will keep and stock the goods, for later need.

My 2 cents :)

Your two cents have been acknowledged. Thanks for chipping in.

This whole interaction has helped in not only answering my questions that I had about the mechanics of the game but it's also helped me to formulate business models and strategies for both early and late game.

Thanks everyone, I appreciate everyone's time in giving me some real useful feedback.

[Sarsgamer]

I've only played the base game, so can't say in other DLC scenarios. I've got president on all campaigns and all the scenarios, started playing free mode now... anyway, I've decided i just don't like the warehouses.

Warehouses require more micro managing then just setting up a station at a farm for direct routes. You can have multiple resources going to it, but then realize what's getting delivered to cities isn't sufficient... IE only delivering corn when other resources are available, then you spam more trains and they are all corn...lol.

When just setting up direct routes with farms i feel i have better control and feel of how many trains i need and direct them to less used tracks. And less micro managing.

[chaney]

I use Warehouses sparingly in general, typically to:

-Add Platforms to a busy City (only needed for pretty large Cities)
-Accumulate stock from distant sources to keep a constant supply available or build up for a rush
-Reach across terrain so you don't have to build expensive Bridges/Tunnels or jam a Station into a crowded area.

As far as the trains taking only one good, if you leave the trains fully automatic, they will attempt to fill a Warehouse one good at a time e.g. only Corn until Corn is full. To avoid problems, don't always set the Warehouse to 99 capacities, and set supply preferences on trains. For one train only, that probably means manual loading (ugh) but with more than one train, set one to prefer one good, the other to prefer another good, and you'll get both delivered fairly well balanced with little effort in managing.

[The_10th_Man]

I use warehouses all of the time. They are an important component of the game and mastering the use of warehouses is essential for attaining many of the game's more demanding achievements.

If you have a cluster of farms/mines that are located a distance from the nearest city, it is often useful to set up a large warehouse as a distribution hub and have services running from the farm to the warehouse gathering the goods in a central place where services delivering goods to multiple cities can come and pick them up. Then you have a selection of six goods in one place for services to deliver to multiple cities in the region instead of running multiple services from each city to each farm.

Example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2521800246

In this example, I have six trains supplying the warehouse from small stations and eight trains supplying five cities (two for each of 4 cities, the fifth city is connected to the warehouse), all making short journeys. If I was using all farm direct to city services to deliver those goods to the same five cities from those six farms, it would take 30 services making long journeys to large stations to do the same job much less efficiently, much less effectively and for a much larger set up cost. Even worse, when those additional trains arrive at each farm, they would regularly find that one or more of the trains delivering to another city has already been there recently and taken most of the available stock (if not all), it then has to make the return journey to the city with empty carriages.

Instead, I have six trains zipping into the warehouse constantly topping up the available stock to 99 of each good from that region and other trains running from the warehouse to the other four cities constantly full of goods that are needed in each of those cities.

Additionally, if you have a production task for a manufactured good, you can set up a warehouse to clear that good out of the city stock to keep the factory producing beyond the city's stock capacity (don't attach this warehouse to the city, it won't take goods from the city, it only delivers goods to the city). If you also assign the raw materials for manufacturing that good to that same warehouse (and deliver those raw materials there), your services running between the city and warehouse will take out the manufactured good and bring back the raw materials to help you meet the manufacturing task.

If you would like to transport goods from warehouse to warehouse, you have to turn off that good for the return trip. Otherwise, the service will just come back with the same goods it took there and achieve nothing.

My opinion is that you were on the right track when you were looking to own the whole supply chain. Don't give up on that strategy, it does work and it is very rewarding when you persevere and work out more effective ways of playing this marvellous game.

[Issac Brock]

Originally posted by The_10th_Man:

I use warehouses all of the time. They are an important component of the game and mastering the use of warehouses is essential for attaining many of the game's more demanding achievements.

If you have a cluster of farms/mines that are located a distance from the nearest city, it is often useful to set up a large warehouse as a distribution hub and have services running from the farm to the warehouse gathering the goods in a central place where services delivering goods to multiple cities can come and pick them up. Then you have a selection of six goods in one place for services to deliver to multiple cities in the region instead of running multiple services from each city to each farm.

Example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2521800246

In this example, I have six trains supplying the warehouse from small stations and eight trains supplying five cities (two for each of 4 cities, the fifth city is connected to the warehouse), all making short journeys. If I was using all farm direct to city services to deliver those goods to the same five cities from those six farms, it would take 30 services making long journeys to large stations to do the same job much less efficiently, much less effectively and for a much larger set up cost. Even worse, when those additional trains arrive at each farm, they would regularly find that one or more of the trains delivering to another city has already been there recently and taken most of the available stock (if not all), it then has to make the return journey to the city with empty carriages.

Instead, I have six trains zipping into the warehouse constantly topping up the available stock to 99 of each good from that region and other trains running from the warehouse to the other four cities constantly full of goods that are needed in each of those cities.

Additionally, if you have a production task for a manufactured good, you can set up a warehouse to clear that good out of the city stock to keep the factory producing beyond the city's stock capacity (don't attach this warehouse to the city, it won't take goods from the city, it only delivers goods to the city). If you also assign the raw materials for manufacturing that good to that same warehouse (and deliver those raw materials there), your services running between the city and warehouse will take out the manufactured good and bring back the raw materials to help you meet the manufacturing task.

If you would like to transport goods from warehouse to warehouse, you have to turn off that good for the return trip. Otherwise, the service will just come back with the same goods it took there and achieve nothing.

My opinion is that you were on the right track when you were looking to own the whole supply chain. Don't give up on that strategy, it does work and it is very rewarding when you persevere and work out more effective ways of playing this marvellous game.

Take my extra helpful award! Thanks for the strategy tip. During my current play-through I'm avoiding the use of warehouses and using extra stations in their stead. I will give central warehousing a try on my next play-through.

As to your last opinion, I get a lot of satisfaction doing a ride along, taking goods from a farm or ranch that the company owns and delivering them to a factory that the company owns on a railway that the company owns .