[TIPS] Moving Resources Around Efficiently And Avoiding Roadblocks

[codebyfire]

Hi everyone,

There are a couple of strategies that are important for keeping your resources flowing quickly and smoothly and for maintaining a high level of productivity.

1. Use paths to allow direct delivery of resources. If a building shares the same path as another building then the stackbots will be able to directly deliver to the other building, therefore keeping the resource off your road network altogether. Here's an example: https://trello-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/5a7c5423bc34979b0db57ad3/5aa7fed817842a03a59c5f40/9a108d1a02359ca2eed146e0f4652a41/Screenshot_650.png

2. Use Road Post Rules to control how resources move about. When a building requests a resource it will search outwards continually until it finds the resource, however far away it may be. But if you apply rule to a road post, it can stop the search at that point based on the rule. A good example is if you have a Mine far away from your Residences. You can ensure your Mine maintains full productivity by placing a Storage Yard nearby to create an Energy resource buffer, and then to ensure those Energy are then requested by other building, you can place a "Blacklist Excluding Storage" rule on the appropriate road post. Here's an example:
https://trello-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/5bd06489473dd15d969f4eb1/600x363/ed6a9f5bc4bcfb1063f557a48d58196d/Screenshot_651.png

3. For busy roads use the shortest length of the road. Make it a priority to upgrade your busy roads using the Road Layer building. Provide alternative routes if possible - the quickest route will be calculated based on the current busyness and amount of blocked carrybots.

If you want further info check out the main Trello board:
https://trello.com/b/d4Sc7iZk

Or if you have any questions or suggestions, jump into the Discord Server:
https://discord.gg/3xD3BCe

Thanks!

[VinWij]

Excellent tips, especially the buffer in combination with the Blacklist excluding storage option. I often try to cluster everything for residences close together to prevent water and fish from travelling huge distances with the road-post options, and it works very well. I have never seen a gridlock yet and completed all maps already.
I must say you provided some very clever options for routing resources through the world, as well as some very useful information displays. Very well done!

[codebyfire]

@VinWij thank you, that is great to hear :)

[Mr W]

Putting too many things on a path actually seems slower in a non-congested situation. This is because the stackbot for the source is running around trying to fulfill all the local orders while the sink stackbots are sitting idle. It may work better if the the sink 'bots grabbed to resources (like they do on the road) rather than the the current way. A tangible example is putting a sheep farm on a path with 8 houses.

[GronkJuice]

Since people seem to not even pay attention (and the site seems to not have it either) you can do two basic things with roads that you cannot do without

1) mulit lane highway systems
- All you need is one square between the system and on offset for the hubs, this lets you setup (whereever you want) a 3 tile road link to both road systems. Also you can assign the road with different white/black lists to increase throughput with min size restraints
2) using a road segment outside main road line to filter pickup/dropoff locations
- Simple, all you do is build a road from one industry to another, lets say cider to houses
-- Have your cider presses on a pathway group (paths lets your hauler in the building travel to pickup/dropoff
-- Now build your road along this pathway to your houses and have another segment from the last hub in a dirrection outside the pathing to both the presses and houses
-- Delete all road segment but that offshoot leading to a 3 tile road that is alone and no longer on the road system
-- Run a path from all presses to that hub, and a path from all houses to that hub (make sure to not overlap the paths or allow for the road line to be use by both)

This will lead your presses to drop off all cider to the hub (one hauler per press) and allow your houses to pickup that cider from that hub (one hauler per house) leading to a faster distribution of cider

Also depending on distance traveled a single hauler can haul anywhere from ~0-Max resources a day
~0 for max path size and max for a hub right next to building exit

Last advanced tip is building to building delivery can be done over a road without entering any hubs
Lets do same example (but lets say you added a road to travel through the middle of the presses and houses)
you can have your cider press on one side of the road and your houses on the other side, since it is a building to building connection you can ignore the road you will be pathing through (as long as you do not path through any hubs) however all building to road pathing will stop it's pathing upon hitting a road and will no longer look farther (this includes pickups)
- However the advanced system is using storage
-- Have your presses travel accross a road (without hitting a hub) to a storage building
-- Have the Storage travel to the road segment you created above
- This will make the presses cross the road with the building to building pathing, and now your storage will drop off to the road segment for the houses to pickup
This system is best used for large industries, as unless you will be either traveling across many tiles or feeding too many locations it is not recomended

(Cider presses may produce 4 a day with only 2 pickups, however if the path distances are too vast you could limit the production speeds as there will be downtimes due to not having the time to both drop off and pickup within that day)

[Naraweziz]

@GronkJuice: Can you please upload a screeshot of what you explain ? It would be easier for me to understand.

And if everybody else have a good road setup to show post it here it will help alot of people like me

[itsune9tl]

Leave room for a warehouse, or place one to be built on the path next to the Sheep Farm, and wells or other High use Resource, It comes with two Stackbots once built. You will have to set the rules to/for the warehouse from the sheepfarm and wells.

The warehouse Stacker will make deliveries, and the sheep farm and wells won't pause in production until the warehouse is full, and still make the occasional delivery.

Interesting note, The sheep farm, and one well can produce faster than eight residences can consume.

Should also note, stack bots can and will cross a road via a pathway to place deliveries, as long as you avoid the road posts when laying your pathway.

[gussmed]

I’ve been struggling with how poorly roads perform, routinely getting backed up or blocked.

I’ve learned that, up to a point, it’s better to connect buildings via paths. This lets the buildings use their stack bots move objects directly from one building to another. Roads are kind of awful because there’s only one carry bot per road segment, whereas any number of building-based stack bots can use one path.

Roads do help for long-distance moves, but quickly get overloaded if there’s regular traffic.

Mostly the solution is “don’t move things.” That is, use a lot of white lists and black lists to prevent objects from moving long distances unless absolutely necessary. This is required because buildings often request objects from long distances, even when there are local resource adjacent.

Some long-distance moves are unavoidable. Mostly energy, but sometimes there are multiple-object recipes where the sources are a long distance apart. I.e. coal + iron ore for iron, and the coal and iron mines aren’t adjacent.

I’ve found no solutions for the road problem for major traffic. I’ve read GronkJuice’s post several times, and I can’t make heads or tails of what he’s trying to say.

[Tube Alloy]

Are there updated links to these screenshots on notion?