What is the best way to sell a product to the market?

[ministro do supremo]

I'm a little lost, is it better to let the products leave directly from my factory and go to the market (remembering that it will always be sent 1-1) or better to send them to a warehouse that I enable the function of always sending to maximum quantity (this results in many vehicles in the warehouse and causes a lot of congestion) I can make 2 warehouses, one just for raw materials (water, wood, sand...) and the other just for what was produced (apple, grapes...) and from this warehouse I send it to the trade.

[failsafe]

It has been a while since I've played this game, but nobody is answering, so I will try. If I remember correct both options are okay. It depends on scale of your company, distances ect. With more everything you may need to use warehouses - and at some point you will spam warehouses wherever possible, since they work as buffors for both supply and sale.

On the other hand, when you are using simple chain not using warehouse may save you some bucks.

[Wat]

I try sending the products directly to stores first (1-1). Only if traffic congestion or lack of trucks becomes a problem, then I build warehouses to accumulate products and send them in batches with bigger trucks.

With all upgrades, a single building can have up to 9 different destinations, which is pretty much all the stores in the map.

[frabac]

If I am looking at it from the right perspective, sending via warehouses is more costly, because the overall distance is greater (or as far as it is). As soon as a truck leaves any building you pay a cost (red number flying in the air) that (unless I am mistaken) depends on the distance to travel.
Therefore, unless the warehouse is on the road between the producer (harvester, farm, factory...) and the consumer (shop) the cost will be higher using the warehouse.
The problem with direct destinations is that you have only three per source, and then you have to research to get more.
That means, if you have only one or two places where to send your products, and the rest to a warehouse to make a good use of the excess, you are better off with direct. If what you produce needs to go "everywhere", like water that goes to a couple of factories and a couple of air purifier, and a warehouse, and who knows where else, then you may be happier with a warehouse.
Does that make sense, or help?

[SirChaos77]

Originally posted by frabac:

If I am looking at it from the right perspective, sending via warehouses is more costly, because the overall distance is greater (or as far as it is). As soon as a truck leaves any building you pay a cost (red number flying in the air) that (unless I am mistaken) depends on the distance to travel.
Therefore, unless the warehouse is on the road between the producer (harvester, farm, factory...) and the consumer (shop) the cost will be higher using the warehouse.
The problem with direct destinations is that you have only three per source, and then you have to research to get more.
That means, if you have only one or two places where to send your products, and the rest to a warehouse to make a good use of the excess, you are better off with direct. If what you produce needs to go "everywhere", like water that goes to a couple of factories and a couple of air purifier, and a warehouse, and who knows where else, then you may be happier with a warehouse.
Does that make sense, or help?

You do realize that warehouse trucks can carry two (three with the right tech) goods at once for more or less the same price as a regular truck carrying one good?

Personally I send goods to somewhere in the same region directly from a production building, to avoid the extra congestion around the warehouse, and only use the warehouse to send goods to other regions, where the decrease in shipping cost *really* makes a difference.

Another advantage of a warehouse is that it has an unlimited number of destination slots; that can come in really handy if you are supplying a couple of factories with raw materials and also send the excess to various shops.

[some moron]

You don't want to send infinite products to a city because that drives the price down. Sadly, it seems to me that a warehouse can ONLY "all available goods", which drives the price down, you cannot only "fulfill demand". So for max profit, I would not send for sale from warehouse. Which makes warehouse kinda lame.

Note the best thing about warehouse is that it pulls resources for free from supplying buildings, saving one direction of shipping costs. If you research the larger reach of warehouses, you can get good savings by pulling goods toward the city for free. Though I would send to city from production building so you can limit to demand.

If you have trouble with traffic, I end up building one way streets so that traffic is never crossing near the warehouse, it just goes in a big loop, only right hand turns.

In short, based on the above mentioned calculations, I believe it's best to use warehouse for all intermediate tiers, but to send to city only using factories set to only fulfill demand.

PS research irrigation and use it to send water, not warehouse. This skips traffic and time. Irrigation is unreasonably better.

[SirChaos77]

When you send goods, even by warehouse, you can specify what level of stock you want to maintain, including stuff still on its way to the destination. So yes, you can fulfill demand, if a bit indirectly.

[some moron]

Originally posted by SirChaos77:

When you send goods, even by warehouse, you can specify what level of stock you want to maintain, including stuff still on its way to the destination. So yes, you can fulfill demand, if a bit indirectly.

If I understand you correctly, I'd have to check every item for every warehouse every few minutes. If I retain 3, it could still send 15, more than the city need. No, I don't think that works without massive micromanage.

It is true the warehouse can be turned off for a particular item, and that item sent manually, to the level of need. But IMO this is too much micromanaging, and should be the default behavior.

[SirChaos77]

Originally posted by some moron:

Originally posted by SirChaos77:

When you send goods, even by warehouse, you can specify what level of stock you want to maintain, including stuff still on its way to the destination. So yes, you can fulfill demand, if a bit indirectly.

If I understand you correctly, I'd have to check every item for every warehouse every few minutes. If I retain 3, it could still send 15, more than the city need. No, I don't think that works without massive micromanage.

It is true the warehouse can be turned off for a particular item, and that item sent manually, to the level of need. But IMO this is too much micromanaging, and should be the default behavior.

Uh... no. For every delivery route you set, you can set the desired number at the destination, and how many, if any, you want to retain at the point of origin. The fields are right there, and the whole thing is completely automated. If you enter a "10" into the "desired number at destination" field, the game will automatically sent goods once the desired number (lncluding all goods currently en route to the destination) is below 10. If you enter any number above 0 in the "retain at point of origin" field, it´ll only send goods on that route if there are more than that number available.

[some moron]

Originally posted by SirChaos77:

Originally posted by some moron:

If I understand you correctly, I'd have to check every item for every warehouse every few minutes. If I retain 3, it could still send 15, more than the city need. No, I don't think that works without massive micromanage.

It is true the warehouse can be turned off for a particular item, and that item sent manually, to the level of need. But IMO this is too much micromanaging, and should be the default behavior.

Uh... no. For every delivery route you set, you can set the desired number at the destination, and how many, if any, you want to retain at the point of origin. The fields are right there, and the whole thing is completely automated. If you enter a "10" into the "desired number at destination" field, the game will automatically sent goods once the desired number (lncluding all goods currently en route to the destination) is below 10. If you enter any number above 0 in the "retain at point of origin" field, it´ll only send goods on that route if there are more than that number available.

While what you are saying is true, that is not the default action. So what you are saying is not true (without a lot of work). Since warehouse by default already comes with a route that sends infinite goods to sale (if selling building is in range).
A warehouse defaults to sucking in all materials and exporting them all including for sale. And when they send them for sale it is unlimited and you cannot control it.
So what you are saying is not true.

Not without turning off the automation for each item, then manually making sale routes, and changing them to the fulfill limit. As I have already said, this is a lot of work and counterproductive to the automated nature of warehouse. I think it is stupid default behavior of the warehouse.

Now, I suppose what you are saying might be true if the warehouse is not in range of any market buildings.

Maybe I will try to avoid placing my warehouses in range of market buildings. This may be difficult to avoid, so I wish I could turn off all market buildings, instead of one by one.

You should try your opposite as well - place a warehouse in range of a market building and you should see the behavior I am describing - sending all available goods for sale.

[SirChaos77]

That is the exact reason why I don´t set my warehouses within range of market buildings... which is a very easy precaution to take. So I still don´t see how what I say takes "a lot of work".

[some moron]

Ah I just discovered there is an option in settings to turn off warehouse->shop. If that works as named, excellent!

I still think warehouse should only sell enough to fulfill demand...

[Ralean]

There's a setting to automatically set the "sell only to meet demand" in the options so that any new line to a store will have it set automatically. You can also set warehouses to supply only to stores, or ignore stores as necessary.

Warehouses are also necessary for any long distance transport of resources, or to split/merge product lines.