Scrap Republic advice

[MOK]

I'm doing my first realistic run, and am learning the ins and outs of garbage and whatnot. And I've got a bit of a theme/RP situation going on here, where it's at the outskirts of a conflict zone, and in a world where a lot of stuff is falling apart for various reasons. So I thought it'd be cool to go heavy on the scrap & garbage industry to match this RP.

But on the other hand, I know this game is loaded with landmines, where there's things that just wont work so well depending on various factors. I've seen that success is sometimes dependent on knowledge gained from either running into those otherwise invisible landmines, or by being forewarned outside the game. I know I'm at high risk of stepping on some of those landmines with this gimmick, and would have more fun if I avoid some of em with your help.

So I'd like some advice on what I'd do to make this "scrap republic" concept work. I haven't yet set up my first industry, just got some construction & initial infrastructure to pull me away from the border. Can I keep myself afloat with an early garbage-related industry? What would it look like? What kind of stages would I progress this industry through?

Thanks!

[whisper]

Nothing garbage related is really a moneymaker as far as I'm aware. Like importing scrap and processing it into steel for your own use is slightly more cost-efficient than just importing the steel directly, but doing it for export doesn't really pencil. You might think that importing and burning toxic waste will be profitable but that resource is extremely sensitive to transactions so if you set something like that up the (negative) price of hazardous waste will quickly trend toward zero.

You're probably gonna need a non-garbage-related export industry to keep your balance of payments afloat.

[High King Lemur]

Burning imported hazardous waste is a decent start but it won't stay like that long. If it's for role-play purposes, I'd suggest adding subsidies with a script mod for handling scrap to enable that kind of playstyle.

It should be reasonably simple to create a script that would give you money at the start of each year. Maybe like a compensation based on total imported scrap, perhaps according to total processing capacity or make it a repeated quest to import a total of X of scrap during the year and get the money when completed.
You would just need to make an educated guess on how much money should be granted for each resource and account for inflation. And some scripting effort obviously.

[ling.speed]

Afaik imported scrap composition changes over time, and from customs to customs.

Also due to some internal mechanics it can be very slow to load/unload. Cant help it at customs, but on player side some loading stations can be better than others. So keep an eye on throughputs when scaling up.

While scrap isnt too profitable, its not useless, its like buying cheeper steel - profit is in using it to make bigger things.

One cool way to play is to try used vehicle lottery. If you know how to read prices well you can make scrapping facility into a money maker (not a big one but it is fun). Oh and save yourself from building the smaller one, go big from the start.

[Silent_Shadow]

Burning hazardous waste is good at the start, but price changes sink it.
Buying vehicles to scrap is a net loss in my experience. Worse conditions just means getting less valuable resources and wastes from scrapping them, and the prices you buy at are based on how useful the vehicle still is, not the cost of disposing it.
Sometimes you'll find customs houses with high percentages of metal or aluminum scrap, which can be quite profitable when extracted and recycled, but this is not guaranteed, and also subject to price changes.

Another big issue is just getting the waste; it's probably the worst thing to import in bulk.

[ling.speed]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Buying vehicles to scrap is a net loss in my experience. Worse conditions just means getting less valuable resources and wastes from scrapping them, and the prices you buy at are based on how useful the vehicle still is, not the cost of disposing it.

Yeah i was trying to buy older or more worn vehicles first and it was net loss, but then noticed that even for near brand new vehicle the price can roll low enough to net a small profit when all components were sold (including work costs). So it comes down to experiance in reading the prices and luck.

Vast majority of the vehicles will not be profitable, but as a part of RP it has potential to not be a drain, especially when compontents end up used rather than sold and it is kind of fun activity.

[Elessar_warrior]

My way to approach the waste management is to use the most of each factory. That said, i'll only need one of each recycling centers, if you bring everything to it by train. The buildings are small but have a big processing capacity. No separation plants are needed as separation can be done at the source. Only the incinerators i'll need multiple ones.

[MOK]

Thanks for the tips everyone. So looks like I've chosen a hard-mode. I kinda figured as such. Fortunately, I don't need this to make me a lot of profit, or be the profit driver over the long term. If, over the long term, it can be leveraged in balance-neutral way, then it seems I can apply it towards more profitable things so that it's not a net negative. The trick will be in finding industry processes to keep rationalizing the expansion of the garbage industry.

But in the end, it sounds like if I'll have a 'main' industry, it'll be something that maximally utilizes the output of my recycled garbage, or minimizes the logistics of exporting excess materials. Any ideas what I'd eventually manufacture to use up all the junk? Or alternately, ways to steer the garbage import to be more useful junk?

I'll try out the hazardous waste burning in the short term, and see if I can implement that into a larger waste center schematic that grows over time. But after the hazwaste, I'll probably build a separate industry to keep me positive, like the usual booze & clothing.

My last run, I built a pair of steel mills, and from then on the game felt trivialized and killed my interest. I couldn't find any place to spend all the profit, no rationalization for needing such an income, no motive to build further industry or settlement. So I'm hoping this scrapping method plots a course that retains just enough viability to be successful but won't really solve all my fiscal problems. The bonus of running a low-pollution industry here is a big part of the RP concept.

[pawelkrzyzak]

Right now I am burning everything that burns but I am planning on setting up recycling network for roleplay purposes. One never knows, when embargo for resources will kick in after everybody will learn, I will start my own nuclear program... I expect "West" to pay a visit in my small but pugnacious State :)

[High King Lemur]

Originally posted by MOK:

Any ideas what I'd eventually manufacture to use up all the junk? Or alternately, ways to steer the garbage import to be more useful junk?

With recycling plants you get various resources. You could recycle metal, plastic and aluminium waste into a vehicle production line. Since you're roleplaying with a conflict nextdoor, what about producing and exporting tanks?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985371615

[Silent_Shadow]

Most waste is created in amounts just large enough to be an issue, but not enough to base industries on. The biggest uses for waste are creating supplementary power similar to renewable power, followed by solid fertilizer for farms. Every other waste is either useless or just not produced in large amounts.

If you want to reduce pollution for bragging rights, you'd be best off getting into nuclear power supplemented by renewable power, treating all your sewage, recycling construction waste to minimize quarrying, recycling plastic waste to minimize oil/plastics production, and the hardest part: concentrating your industry as tightly as possible. "Pure" enough sources of burnable waste could also replace coal usage in heating plants, but only for the coldest parts of winter.

[MOK]

I mentioned earlier how this game has landmines to be stepped on, to tank a run. It looks like I correctly identified the main mission I chose to be one of those landmines. Problem is I'm pretty tied to this gimmick, this playthrough. So I'll just report back what I find, eventually, and see if anything turned out differently or if I found a decent edge case or niche to focus on.

In the meantime, I'm still getting my head around all the moving parts regarding waste management. I'm interested in seeing examples of a large scale operation... Anyone got a good screenshot of a high-productivity, integrated setup, and explanation of their particular process? Particularly with regards to consuming the outputs, like the steel and plastic and whatnot. I already understand that it tends to produce a glut of fertilizer. Unfortunately, I'm in a map that has very little spare land for agriculture.

[Silent_Shadow]

If your fertilizer needs have been met, then power production is the next best use for biowaste, which has a "caloric multiplier" of 50% (letting you reach half of the waste to power plant's maximum power output) and only 30% will remain as ash. Fertilizer is terrible for making power or heat and is not worth exporting, so try not to let excess biowaste convert into it.

If you really want to make money off of scrap, then check the proportions of the mixed waste sold at each custom house to decide where you will be starting. You'll get different proportions for trucks and trains, so make a save, enable cheats, and then get a truck and a train to load from each custom house on the map. The percentages given when mousing over their load will not be that accurate, but you can see the exact amounts by pressing "q" while mousing over and convert it to a percentage of the whole waste.

Ideally you'd get mixed waste with a high percentage (20%+) of metal or aluminum scrap because these make the most money and have high efficiency separation plants. Once you've extracted the metals, you can extract construction waste and plastic waste too, or just burn it and let the wind "purify" the pile to construction waste. If you're left with a mix of mostly burnable waste, then you could burn it for heating instead of some coal, but you will likely need a coal heating plant anyway. Don't bother importing mixed waste with only high amounts of construction waste, biowaste/fertilizer, or "other" waste, as these can't be used for much and aren't worth exporting.

[MOK]

Thank you for all the info you've given so far!

So now I understand these levers that can be used to nudge what kind of waste I could import, and that generally the metals are the prize, relative to everything else. But would you say that it's simply not possible to leverage all the construction waste and others towards another industry?

For example, if I exported a lot of cement, could that rationalize looser importing that includes a higher proportion of construction waste?

And to be clear, exporting fertilizer is strictly a negative? Unable to break even with it's logi costs?

Finally, plastics is something I've never dealt with. Do any of the industries that use it as an input rationalize it's gain via recycling?

As I'm continuing to look around and read more on waste, it appears that this is one of the more complicated parts of the game. And also the most logistically & developmentally intense. I'm getting the impression that it's not really a valid focus until mid game, due to how much rail is required.

[Silent_Shadow]

Fertilizer is so cheap that the profits would mostly be eaten up by the cost of transportation, so at best the margins would be so low that recouping the setup costs would take years or even decades. Even gravel is barely worth exporting when close to the border, but it is worth 3 to 4 times as much as fertilizer and is cheaper and faster to transport too.

Processing construction waste into gravel isn't very profitable because gravel isn't very profitable in the first place, but using it to make cement can improve the profit margins on cement quite a bit, though you likely won't be able to run the cement plant at 100% off of imported construction waste because of the volumes involved; even with half of the imported mixed waste being construction waste, you'd need to import almost 1,000 tons of mixed waste a day to run the cement plant at full production (good luck). You could import pure construction waste, but then you'd still need 315 tons a day and you'd have to pay for it, so the savings would mostly disappear. Running the cement plant at a lower production percentage works, but this also reduces the daily profits by quite a bit. Still, if you're making or importing construction waste (or gravel) already, then this is the best way to get rid of it.

One ton of plastic needs ~4.16 tons of oil to produce, so every ton of plastic waste recycled saves about 5/6 of a ton of oil, which makes recycling it in your republic generally worthwhile if you presort it. Unfortunately, the separation efficiency is only 60%, so a lot of what you import in mixed waste will be unrecoverable, and I don't think it is commonly found in imported waste either. Importing pure plastic waste and recycling it into plastic is only slightly profitable (like ~9% increase in value), but at least you can use flatbed ships to import it instead of going through customs houses.

Making vehicles, electronics, and electrical components all use steel and plastics, and can be very profitable, but again, sustaining these industries at decent production rates will be difficult unless you supplement the supply of steel and plastics with your own industries.

I don't recommend using railways to move waste because of their horrendous loading times (importing from customs is another matter). You should aim to presort everything as much as possible, incinerate useless wastes and dispose of the ash locally, and then route what remains to recycling centers or processing it on site before transporting it. If you really want/need to transport large amounts of waste, then use heavy cableways.

As an industry, waste recycling isn't really worth setting up until you have enough industries to crank out the good wastes in decent amounts. The recycling/separation ratios and the difficulty in importing and transporting waste just make waste a poor source of material or wealth, but they are just good enough to make your own industries a bit more efficient.

[High King Lemur]

Originally posted by MOK:

Finally, plastics is something I've never dealt with. Do any of the industries that use it as an input rationalize it's gain via recycling?

If you're thinking separation, there's barely any plastic waste in imported mixed waste but you could import it directly and recycle it (10t of plastic waste into 2t of plastics). The default plastics factory outputs 2.2t/workday for comparison.