Another Farm Connection question

[FPStewy]

After reading several posts on this I still have questions to understand if this is normal or not.

I have a farm - factory

The situation is this.

1) If my Factory doesn't have auto purchase, once it gets emptied it will draw from my Farm via direct connection.

2) If my Factory empties because my Farm empties my Stores will then auto purchase food.

3) Food is more expensive than crops.

4) But then if I set my Factory to auto purchase because it's cheaper to make food then it will not draw from my Farm which still has 50 tons

My solutions seems to just have a truck going from Farm to Factory which is next door in order to move the 50 tons to prevent my Factory to auto purchase.

My question is that, is this normal ?

Should the Farm be the one having the minimum auto purchase, if so then it would not be an issue. since if my Factory and Farm would empty only then would it auto purchase crops.

[bballjo]

Industries have imports and exports... You can only buy imports, buying exports seems strange, doesn't it?

In your case, I would suggest putting a storage in between farm and food factory, grain silo or warehouse both work. The farm can then push crops to the warehouse, and the food factory can pull crops, and if desired push food to the warehouse. In your scenario you can auto purchase crops in the storage and thus eliminate the need of trucks.

Good luck!

[joeball123]

I would suggest that you are making a mistake in attaching the factory directly to the farm - the farm only holds 136 tons of crops while a food factory can consume up to 42 tons of crops per workday, so even if the factory is operating at something like a tenth of capacity on average you only have crops for a month of operation. You're going to need a lot more storage for crops than the farm has if you want to keep the factory operating year-round, so you may as well build yourself at least one grain silo or warehouse attached to the factory, set a minimal autopurchase for crops in whatever storage building you elected to use, and have something deliver your harvest to that storage building.

[FPStewy]

Originally posted by bballjo:

I would suggest putting a storage in between farm and food factory, grain silo or warehouse both work.
Good luck!

I tried both the warehouse and silo and in my case for some reason don't work. I can guarantee that my farm doesn't push crops into the warehouse.

I'll keep trying.

[bballjo]

Originally posted by #FPStewy:

Originally posted by bballjo:

I would suggest putting a storage in between farm and food factory, grain silo or warehouse both work.
Good luck!

I tried both the warehouse and silo and in my case for some reason don't work. I can guarantee that my farm doesn't push crops into the warehouse.

I'll keep trying.

Farms are weird.. they don't start pushing until the internal storage is full.

It's usually why I use distribution offices to collect the crops, that also allows for more tractors and harvesters at the farm, which means more fields and more crops:)

[FPStewy]

Originally posted by bballjo:

Farms are weird.. they don't start pushing until the internal storage is full.

and that's the problem coz if they don't push my factory has to minimum buy or use a truck

https://i.imgur.com/M1zO0Nl.jpg

[bballjo]

I see...I highly recommend you get a smaller farm mod if you're only planning on running a 1x1x1... otherwise in your case just having 1 truck transport to the factory and wait till full is probably fine. At that point you can set your food factory to buy a min amount of crops, and when the truck drops off, they will use the excess first.

I believe this is the solution you already had...

[Dave]

I know this doesnt really answer your question, but I think autopurchasing at some mid-point in your supply chain like this will drive you crazy. You have this problem, but also if something ever goes wrong at the food factory your people will starve anyway. So you are paying rubles, but still not getting a completely reliable safety net. Turn on some food autopurchasing at the store, and then concentrate keeping it stocked so the autopurchasing never triggers.

My suggestion is Farm > Silo > Foodfactory > Warehouse > Trucks > Stores

The silo may not start filling until the farm is full of crops, but it's worth it to just let that happen. Keep in mind the ~130 crops wasted keeping the farm full are worth barely 2000 rubles, less than one truck, or like a 5% surcharge on original cost of the farm.

[fjorkar]

Originally posted by bballjo:

Originally posted by #FPStewy:

I tried both the warehouse and silo and in my case for some reason don't work. I can guarantee that my farm doesn't push crops into the warehouse.

I'll keep trying.

Farms are weird.. they don't start pushing until the internal storage is full.

It's usually why I use distribution offices to collect the crops, that also allows for more tractors and harvesters at the farm, which means more fields and more crops:)

Originally posted by d_mess157:

I know this doesnt really answer your question, but I think autopurchasing at some mid-point in your supply chain like this will drive you crazy. You have this problem, but also if something ever goes wrong at the food factory your people will starve anyway. So you are paying rubles, but still not getting a completely reliable safety net. Turn on some food autopurchasing at the store, and then concentrate keeping it stocked so the autopurchasing never triggers.

My suggestion is Farm > Silo > Foodfactory > Warehouse > Trucks > Stores

The silo may not start filling until the farm is full of crops, but it's worth it to just let that happen. Keep in mind the ~130 crops wasted keeping the farm full are worth barely 2000 rubles, less than one truck, or like a 5% surcharge on original cost of the farm.

these are very good ideas, especially if you play with the seasons. plus you need more tractors and harvesters in your farm to have efectives

[FPStewy]

Originally posted by d_mess157:

I know this doesnt really answer your question, but I think autopurchasing at some mid-point in your supply chain like this will drive you crazy. You have this problem, but also if something ever goes wrong at the food factory your people will starve anyway. So you are paying rubles, but still not getting a completely reliable safety net. Turn on some food autopurchasing at the store, and then concentrate keeping it stocked so the autopurchasing never triggers.

My suggestion is Farm > Silo > Foodfactory > Warehouse > Trucks > Stores

The silo may not start filling until the farm is full of crops, but it's worth it to just let that happen. Keep in mind the ~130 crops wasted keeping the farm full are worth barely 2000 rubles, less than one truck, or like a 5% surcharge on original cost of the farm.

yea well said, I'm still new at this and playing Medium so money is tight and my goal is to not do a loan or go red :)

after year 1 I'm finally making a meager profit but I have to keep my spending in check and making my own needs is kinda the priority. So it's kinda survival at this point.

I think I understand why it's like this, if it wasn't I would just have a massive system and it would all feed into the factory with little effort.

But now I'm wondering if a lift truck system would work.

[MrKrabs]

Here is my layout. During harvest the farm is bleeding the crops into the lager.
Distribution offices taking the crops to the silo and barn where forklifts taking over.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1655600561943293275/A25FFFC722575BD212764BE11A927C1282354F2B/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1655600561943292899/217905F29171F42D9FF503497C2FC23530F6E2CB/

I just placed two of those apple farm mod near by. Hell, they are a bit overpowered imo.
Crops all over the place. Luckily I have a cargo station there. Got to move it away by train to use the stuff elsewhere.

[TheAmishStig]

The problem you're experiencing with auto-purchase comes from cargo not pushing forward unless it's "pumped". For crops, that's done with Forklift Garages.

The Factory takes from its internal stores until they're empty, then will take from connected storages...but because there's an auto-buy on the factory it never fully empties, so it never tries to take from a connected storage.

The farm meanwhile will have each truck put its crops into either itself or a building that is directly connected [for example a silo or warehouse] depending on which one is "more full"...if the farm is 50% full and the warehouse is 10% full, the warehouse will get the crops until it too is 50% full.

If you're not using a storage building, the easiest fix is to disconnect the farm and factory until the farm is full, and then reconnect. At that point the farm is 100% full, meaning all crops will go to the factory until it too is 100% full. Since there's an auto-buy, crops will never be taken from the farm, so you'll never hit a buffering problem.

If you're using a storage building, the easiest fix is to move the auto-buy to the storage building, instead of having it on the factory.

Otherwise...you could also slap a forklift garage down to "pump" crops into the Factory, getting around the "never completely empty" catch-22 that way.

A more sophisticated fix would be to skip the farm connection completely, since the Food Factory at maximum consumption will outstrip what a single forklift garage can pump, and instead use a Distribution Office.

To do that, connect a Road Cargo Station to the Food Factory (or to a Silo that's connected to the Food Factory, if you want a bigger buffer), then set up a Distribution Office to collect from the fields directly, depositing at the cargo station. Don't send them to the factory directly...the traffic jam will be beyond intolerable...the RCS can service up to 4 trucks at a time, and is coded for multiple vehicles in motion at once.

Double bonus is that the farm itself can then service more fields, since the space you were using for trucks can be used for tractors/combines.

[FPStewy]

after non stop trial and error, I can confirm this. There's a few vids on YT where they have Farm-Silo-Warehouse, I'm wondering if an update changed that.

For some reason now, I just tried again, Farm to Silo to Warehouse doesn't work guaranteed but.....

Farm - Silo - Factory - Warehouse works but most but not all crops gets stored into the silo until the farm fills up, then the farm only pulls from the silo what it needs to do food which it then stores into the warehouse.

So with this setup my understanding is that the Farm is just a buffer for crops and the Factory just a buffer for food, the end products of course being Food in the warehouse which is probably what you want to do anyway.

only downside to this is that the buffer for crops in the farm, and the buffer for food in the factory will remain there forever even if you have zero food in the warehouse and zero crops in the silo. But hey it works.

[bballjo]

Originally posted by #FPStewy:

after non stop trial and error, I can confirm this. There's a few vids on YT where they have Farm-Silo-Warehouse, I'm wondering if an update changed that.

For some reason now, I just tried again, Farm to Silo to Warehouse doesn't work guaranteed but.....

Farm - Silo - Factory - Warehouse works but most but not all crops gets stored into the silo until the farm fills up, then the farm only pulls from the silo what it needs to do food which it then stores into the warehouse.

So with this setup my understanding is that the Farm is just a buffer for crops and the Factory just a buffer for food, the end products of course being Food in the warehouse which is probably what you want to do anyway.

only downside to this is that the buffer for crops in the farm, and the buffer for food in the factory will remain there forever even if you have zero food in the warehouse and zero crops in the silo. But hey it works.

All true, but you can get around the farm storage with a distribution office, and you can get around the food problem by using dedicated trucks to deliver that food somewhere.

In the end, both only take until they are full enough, if you don't touch their export storages, everything will overflow into the next storage, so it's just a matter of time.

It would be nice if we could reduce the export storage like we can the normal storage, so that nothing would be stored in the export slots.

[Theoderem]

Originally posted by bballjo:

All true, but you can get around the farm storage with a distribution office, and you can get around the food problem by using dedicated trucks to deliver that food somewhere.

In the end, both only take until they are full enough, if you don't touch their export storages, everything will overflow into the next storage, so it's just a matter of time.

It would be nice if we could reduce the export storage like we can the normal storage, so that nothing would be stored in the export slots.

I do the thingy with the distribution office.
My setup is a direct connection from meat-production to Silo to farm. To a certain extend grain get's move from the farm to the silo. However if I move grain from the farm to the silo it get's transfered back from the silo to the farm via the industrie connection - will watch this behaviour to check the next time harvesting takes place

[bballjo]

Originally posted by ;2994296961830115383:

Originally posted by bballjo:

All true, but you can get around the farm storage with a distribution office, and you can get around the food problem by using dedicated trucks to deliver that food somewhere.

In the end, both only take until they are full enough, if you don't touch their export storages, everything will overflow into the next storage, so it's just a matter of time.

It would be nice if we could reduce the export storage like we can the normal storage, so that nothing would be stored in the export slots.

I do the thingy with the distribution office.
My setup is a direct connection from meat-production to Silo to farm. To a certain extend grain get's move from the farm to the silo. However if I move grain from the farm to the silo it get's transfered back from the silo to the farm via the industrie connection - will watch this behaviour to check the next time harvesting takes place

That's behavior seems right... The silo should split what's delivered, so some should go to the animals.

But if you have A DO already moving crops, you probably want to delete the farm-silo connection...