Suggestion: Conveyors for grain

[Joman]

Farm setups are quite difficult to do, because you need to do it without forklifts. You have to connect more silos than doable for all the grain, harvested in one season. Forklifts don't do the job for high volume goods.

We really need conveyors for grain!

[FutureJohny]

Grain conveyors and lists actually are a thing. However usually not as a separate structure for long distance transport, but as internal component of grain silos.

[esbenmf]

+1

[Onbird]

You can currently use cableways for the purpose, but it's kind of weird that cableways of all things would be the most efficient way of moving crops. If crops can be moved by cableway, why not conveyor instead?

[ZILonaut]

This game worked the last 2 years pretty good without conveyers.
There are worse problems to be fixed.

[VV!1d_8µnn¥]

in my opinion it would be more fitting if grain is ingame treated like dry bulk, but i dont get why you wanna do transport by conveyers for them, grain is harvested during only a small time of the year and the rest of the year you have a big infrastructure that is completly unused, just build a bigger silo

[Stele]

He's talking about vanilla silo that can handle 800T as I remeber and you can't connect more than four to cargo station.

[Joman]

Originally posted by Stele:

He's talking about vanilla silo that can handle 800T as I remeber and you can't connect more than four to cargo station.

Yep!

[polle]

you can also pack containers and store it this way

[The Mustachioed Marxist]

Originally posted by Wild Bunny:

in my opinion it would be more fitting if grain is ingame treated like dry bulk, but i dont get why you wanna do transport by conveyers for them, grain is harvested during only a small time of the year and the rest of the year you have a big infrastructure that is completly unused, just build a bigger silo

Same. It is handled in much the same way as cement or alumina, so making it a dry bulk product using conveyors and covered hoppers for transport makes most sense to me.

The dry bulk handling in-game could use some love too with new conveyor engine heights like aggregates just got. And more storage silo options.

[barry.zandstra]

In my experience, the issue is manageable. Having taken inspiration from bbaljo's most efficient farm tutorial, I like to omit the medium fields and build my farms with 18 large fields, 2 small DOs, and a rail cargo station with four silos attached. There is also a gas station so I only have to supply one building instead of three. Those four silos holds 3200 tons of crops, while the 18 fields can produce 5400 tons, but that is where the rail cargo station comes in, or rather, the train. A dedicated rail DO picks up crops from those farm stations and delivers it to the industries. The harvest does not all come in at once, it takes months to harvest, and in the mean time a good chunk of your harvest can be processed into alcohol, cattle, food, or textiles.

At the receiving end, I like to build a buffer such as the one pictured below, where the farm rail DO keeps them at least 80% full, and a dedicated train (which in this picture is longer than it needs to be) runs up and down to the silo that is connected to each factory.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2865305755

The buffer storage near the industry is deliberately oversized to hold some of those crops that can't fit the farm silos. Between the start of the harvest and the first snow, these two food factories consume over 9000 tons of crops even during the harvest, assuming you are hauling off the food fast enough to let them run at full production.

You only need to grow and store as much as you can use during one year of full production, since the next harvest will come in by then.

I am currently setting up a little experiment where I use a shipping canal to deliver crops from a collection point that is fed by a farm DO. This is the collection point, still an early phase of construction:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2865311505

So personally, I do not see the lack of grain conveyors as a problem in need of fixing.

[Joman]

I like the dry bulk idea.
This would be nice.

[pryt]

My old way to do things:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2378701554

Nowadays it's more efficient to use farms for sowing/harvest only and use distribution offices to bring the crops somewhere. They should remove the factory connections on Farms altogether.

[ni.frings]

Originally posted by Wild Bunny:

in my opinion it would be more fitting if grain is ingame treated like dry bulk, but i dont get why you wanna do transport by conveyers for them, grain is harvested during only a small time of the year and the rest of the year you have a big infrastructure that is completly unused, just build a bigger silo

Yes, i am also wondering why crops are not handled as dry bulk which would be much more next to reality.

[Silent_Shadow]

If you don't mind the workforce, you can use containers to store crops much more cheaply without nearly as many factory connection headaches.

There are also mods that handles crops in containers, but I am unsure how they work:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2782171551
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2782148362

[ZILonaut]

In real life grain is blown into the silo. Not with conveyers.
Grain needs to be stored dry. Open conveyers can't do that.
It is blown right from the truck or trailer.