Best roads setup for custom houses

[DaveOath]

Large custom houses have three road connections. What is the best way (if there is any) to use all three of them the most efficiently?

Edit: for vanilla large customs.

Thanks.

[Silent_Shadow]

I think most people just have one outlet road on the left, and two entry roads on the right. If you use the road signs you can limit buses to one road and trucks to the other, which allows buses to skip most of the line of trucks.

[joeball123]

Assuming a vanilla large customs house, using the middle connection as the entrance and the outside connections as the exits and merging the three some distance outside of the customs house should in principle be most efficient.
- You cannot restrict entrances to only using the nearest loading docks, but the middle connection offers the shortest average distance between entrance and loading dock.
- You cannot restrict loading docks to only using the nearest exit, but if both exit roads are equally attractive then vehicles leaving a loading dock should go to the nearest exit rather than taking the longer path to an exit on the other side of the customs house.

In practice, you're probably not going to lay out the roads perfectly enough to actually get equally-attractive exit paths so traffic leaving the customs house likely won't split between exits evenly (or at all), and only one vehicle can move inside the customs house at a time while travel times between entrances/exits and loading docks are long enough that using multiple lanes for inbound (or, for that matter, for outbound) traffic doesn't really help. As such, I would say that the road layout you use doesn't really matter as long as it doesn't create additional traffic issues; the only real considerations are basically space, convenience, and aesthetics.

[bballjo]

All vanilla customs houses are setup for single vehicle traffic (only one vehicle moves at a time), which makes them slow, one can argue just as slow as normal closed border connections.

Because of that, a single road is really all you need, and it can be helpful, because then the whole queue that's on the road will be taken care of...if you have multiple roads and queues you may end up with some vehicles getting stuck forever.

Sometimes adding an extra road connection for special isolated transportation makes sense (waste disposal comes to mind), but that's up to you.

As queues can get very long, I'd recommend not putting intersections, especially potentially busy ones, too close to the border (may be 100m?).

Good luck!

[OldGalah]

In cheat mode add one small customs house near the large one, you can then dedicate busses or dumpers to it. Many border crossings around the world have separate truck and passenger entrances.

Any map is only an interpretation by the map generator or mod maker of what a map should look like, so making changes to a map that you might think unplayable to make it more interesting or challenging by tweaking resources and terrain etc opens up many more maps to try.

I usually delete all resources on new maps and replace them to make challenging supply routes across the map, long complex train distribution routes are fun to do. Also adding hills to change maps that look good but have too many or very large flat areas helps create interesting road and rail routes.

I also delete all trees on a new map and use my custom settings for tree replacement and also for rock generation.

[leftbehind]

@OldGalah: How do you alter maps in-game? I know some terraforming can be done via landscaping tool, and that border crossings can be added in cheat mode, but I've never seen anything that allows resources to be altered or rocks (terrain texture or props?) to be added, etc.

[Sirius Czech]

Originally posted by leftbehind:

@OldGalah: How do you alter maps in-game? I know some terraforming can be done via landscaping tool, and that border crossings can be added in cheat mode, but I've never seen anything that allows resources to be altered or rocks (terrain texture or props?) to be added, etc.

In cheat mode terrain editor can be done everything if you scroll through the left menu (and the bottom build menu as well). For resources, you just "paint" them with desired intensity

[DaveOath]

Thanks for all the comments.

I always thought there was some "magical" way to use those three road connections, but I wasn't smart enough to figure it out.

[leftbehind]

Ah, I have the left menu auto-hide, I never noticed the options changing on it when going in to landscape mode before. Rock painting and tree tools are awesome - should be available form the default in-game landscaping menu IMO.

[Sirius Czech]

Originally posted by leftbehind:

Ah, I have the left menu auto-hide, I never noticed the options changing on it when going in to landscape mode before. Rock painting and tree tools are awesome - should be available form the default in-game landscaping menu IMO.

best thing out there is "make a tree line" - it simply allows you to select tree type, spacing and so on and lets you paint alleys. Absolute banger!

[OldGalah]

@DaveOath I often find a map I like in the workshop download it and then import the height map from that map when creating a new map, it gives you a clean slate to start with, no trees or rocks until you apply them, also cheat mode on an existing map does everything too as others have already said.

My custom settings for trees are: X = 201, Z = 57, precision = 6, number = 127, radius = 113

For rocks they are: height start = -60, height end = 940, height fall = 0, angle start = 27.14, end = 50, fall = 11.90

Good luck exploring map making.

[Beast of War]

Best road setup is a railroad connection !

Road connections to customs will always lead to slow processed queue's greatly limiting progress to whatever you are building. But by building a short distance cargo rail platform you can get almost limitless amounts of goods, and divide the traffic around it much better with multiple warehouses, depots and road cargo distribution connections.

[Sirius Czech]

To be fair, rails are shining from large volumes and/or large distances. Cement, gravel, iron, coal, boards, bricks, grain, steel from the middle of a map ... sure, use trains.

But easy border (starting) setup with high throughput is right at the edge of your city with:
- 1 road cargo station (4-6 vehicle one), to which you connect
- 1 large open storage (up to 250t each of steel, bricks, wood and prefabs)
- 1 large covered storage (5-8% for each thing like chemicals, mech+el. parts, electronics, fabric; 10% clothing and alcohol and rest food); for high density buildings use 2 covered warehouses (basically separate alcohol and food from the rest).
- 1 meat storage (for two covered storages this doesn´t need to be connected to the loading station if you won´t manage space-wise).

Then have an IM/EX DO (DO12 usually for me) that cares about IMport and EXports (hence the name), get them largest trucks available and let them travel customs <-> supply hub and fill it to 20-30% (and eventually export things you already manufacture yourself from 90% above from the same hub or from semi-near industry area). Especially 1962 Mack-E longhaul trucks do a wonderfull job with their 30t carrying capacity.

Besides this DO only fuel DO goes to customs for things.

Thing to note - if you are running out of money (you earn, but not enough), you can simply regulate steel/electronics/all shopping using this very DO and while having checks in those main storages for empty warnings is a good safety measure, you know you still have SOME iron supplies stored.
--------------
This setup I run near every city I have and it works wonderfull. If you want to see it, check out my YT channel "comrade Sirius" - for Husak challenge I play there (where you cannot take a loan at all amongst other rules) this helpd tremendously to keep your finances at check ;)

Bonus points for connecting vehicle maintenance building right to the covered warehouse storing all those parts already, helps a lot and saves a space for extra warehouse (which is basically needed for those services anyway)

[DaveOath]

Originally posted by Beast of War:

Best road setup is a railroad connection !

Road connections to customs will always lead to slow processed queue's greatly limiting progress to whatever you are building. But by building a short distance cargo rail platform you can get almost limitless amounts of goods, and divide the traffic around it much better with multiple warehouses, depots and road cargo distribution connections.

Agreed.

In realistic mode, the first years without a rail network are painful, specially when you export your trash.

[Sirius Czech]

Originally posted by DaveOath:

Agreed.

In realistic mode, the first years without a rail network are painful, specially when you export your trash.

There is no reason to export your trash, though. You did get a 5 free landfills that can take TONS of trash so you have a lot of time in your republic to learn about recycling processes (research), plan and build a recycling center. You can also build a small incinerator and gravel recycling plant right from the get go if needed, so even self produced gravel doesn´t clogg up landfills.

Unless you are extremely tight on space, there is no need in exporting any of it. On the other hand, creating at least a waste storage so all your garbage trucks do not go to customs with 0,5t of waste reduces waste enough so first few years those should not be a problem at all

[DaveOath]

Originally posted by Sirius Czech:

Unless you are extremely tight on space, there is no need in exporting any of it. On the other hand, creating at least a waste storage so all your garbage trucks do not go to customs with 0,5t of waste reduces waste enough so first few years those should not be a problem at all

That was the case. I picked a nice valley for my first town but needed more space to be flexible with my trash. I had to use the transfer to export 6.5 tons per truck, not 13 trucks with 0,5 tons.

The upside: I had to focus very early on my rail network to unclog the custom house. Now, it pays off.