Unreliable Mail Service (Solution)

[El Presidente]

Your cargo Train Terminal(s) are hoarding all your mail. You must delete them to fix the mail service.

This means no cargo trains!

Sort it guys!!!

[Sacb0y]

Also I do wanna say with my trains I decided to add more routes to increase the number of trains used. That seemed to help.

[ManlyKloc]

I did some testing and it's definitely cargo routes that break mail processing. I was stuck at 100k demand 30k processing and nothing helped other than removing cargo train routes (it jumped to 80k), and then removing the cargo rail station (it further jumped to 130k, well above demand).
The processing facility seems to be completely borked, first time I built it it did nothing, then it stored some mail and was stuck at low processing, and now it does nothing again. Even without it everything seems to be working nicely so I suggest never even unlocking it.
Edit: After letting the game run at max speed for a while the sorting facility seems to started working again, now I'm at 170k processing and 111k demand.

[archonsod]

Originally posted by Zengrath:

I got the impression they didn't test end-game big cities, they only tested early game to push it out the door and sell the game.

The problem is they don't explain the mechanics well. A lot of your issues are likely down to the external connections, though to be fair there's at least one bug with those regarding when Cims will choose to use a neighbour's facilities over your own. It's likely what's happening with your schools - Cims aren't going to your school because it's quicker for them to use the external connection, so they're heading out of town for their education rather than using the local facilities.

I am finding everyone complaining about high rent, i have like 1% unemployment, all other services covered. And i don't know how to fix it, it's not just residential but even more so industrial and commerce complaining about high rent, the tool tip says "you may need to replace with higher density" yet there is only light industrial, so i see no way to lower rent for industries. It makes no sense to me.

It's another thing that's badly explained. Rent is determined by land value, in the case of higher density buildings split between the number of occupants (cims or businesses). High rent complaints will happen when you've got things on high value land that aren't making enough money to pay the rent. For Cims it's their personal wealth, for businesses it's their profits. There's a couple of ways to deal with it when it comes to industry, most obvious is to crash land value in your industrial region (remove services etc). Easiest is to simply demolish the industry on the high value land and re-zone somewhere cheaper. If you have the money you can also subsidise, though that's more of a temporary measure. Note it also has a knock on effect - if your businesses are struggling to turn a profit they'll also be unlikely to pay top dollar to their staff.
One thing to note though is that there's a supply and demand economy in the game so this may well be expected. If for example you have three factories requiring timber in a zone and you start producing timber, but not enough to fill the demand, you'll get competition issues - the first factory buys up the timber while those after it have to import. Since operating is now cheaper, first factory upgrades itself which in turn increases it's demand for timber and goods output. Which is bad news if any of those other factories produce the same goods, because more of the demand from your commercial offices for that good are being fulfilled by that first factory, so while it's having a whale of a time with low material costs and increased sales the factories down the road are facing increasing material costs and less sales. If that's happening (check the building levels for a clue) you can either try increasing the raw material production if it's an option to see if you can sustain more of those factories, or just bulldoze it and let something more profitable take over (it's what's likely to happen eventually if you let nature take it's course). The same happens with commercial; if you get five bars on the same block you can end up with all five struggling due to splitting the customers five ways rather than one bar raking in the cash.

[True Pc King]

i'm just dumb i only placed mailboxes and sorting facility lol. no post offices

[Zengrath]

Ok. I tried both solutions posted in this thread. First I tried spamming the heck out of mailboxes everywhere as long as I kept getting smiley faces, this seemed to increase processing but only temporarily, after running simulation at fastest speed a while eventually processing speed dropped back down from 90 to like 30k in my 44k city. Also all the large buildings in my city was still red and has never not been red, i thought maybe it's supposed to be red to indicate it just produces a lot of mail at this point.

Then i tried deleting my cargo shipyard. In fastest timescale i noticed nearly instantly both my post offices started using all the trucks which it hasn't before. I also now noticed some of those big red buildings started turning green for the first time. I also seen my processing shot up over 100k a month exceeding my needs. I let it run a while watching my city start turning green on mail info panel. Then once my sorting facility started getting mail my processing speed shot up again to about 200k, way more then the 93k or so mail that my city produces.

Not only that but funny enough my monthly profit shot up through the roof after s while. I was getting around maybe 15k per month max, now i see 30k a month. I think cost savings of shipyard deleted and maybe a big increase in taxes now from all businesses doing better now with mail working?

So lesson learned. Spamming mailboxes may seem to fix it but it does not in long run. Deleting cargo shipyard and train station fixes it.

I hope they fix this issue. shame cargo and train yards are broken.

Also happiness from mail services went from -9 to +9 fairly quickly from simply deleting my cargo shipyard.

[Morgan Bateson]

Originally posted by Zengrath:

Ok. I tried both solutions posted in this thread. First I tried spamming the heck out of mailboxes everywhere as long as I kept getting smiley faces, this seemed to increase processing [.....]

I awarded you, mostly because I think it's wonderful how you contributed to the community by taking the time to think the issue through and then also sharing the findings.

Thanks, I appreciate that.

[RadCon]

Im on 100k pop rn and the mail sorting system not working at all. But i dont have cargo train tho, but instead i have cargo shipdock. But still, the sorting system not working at all. Not mail sorted at all.

[mrjoker]

Originally posted by El Presidente:

Population now 39,000

ONE Post Office is enough.
ONE Sorting Office is enough.

25 of 30 mail vans in use.

Population +3 happy with reliable mail.

Delete places hoarding mail because your vans are NOT picking up from there. It is that simple.

wauw. Didn't know, i was already looking for different solutions...

[Sacb0y]

Originally posted by Kote Panjang:

Im on 100k pop rn and the mail sorting system not working at all. But i dont have cargo train tho, but instead i have cargo shipdock. But still, the sorting system not working at all. Not mail sorted at all.

More mailboxes. EVERY BLOCK. just cause a road is green doesn't mean it's fulfilled.

[Zengrath]

Originally posted by Kote Panjang:

Im on 100k pop rn and the mail sorting system not working at all. But i dont have cargo train tho, but instead i have cargo shipdock. But still, the sorting system not working at all. Not mail sorted at all.

I also had cargo shipyard and had same problem, delete the cargo ship yard, it simply isn't worth it until it's fixed. All it does is prevent mail from processing and a lot of things don't seem to be exporting properly. It simply isn't worth the hassle until they fix it. My profit went up 2x per month from deleting my cargo shipyard at 44k population.

[Zengrath]

Originally posted by Sacb0y:

Originally posted by Kote Panjang:

Im on 100k pop rn and the mail sorting system not working at all. But i dont have cargo train tho, but instead i have cargo shipdock. But still, the sorting system not working at all. Not mail sorted at all.

More mailboxes. EVERY BLOCK. just cause a road is green doesn't mean it's fulfilled.

Sorry but this is incorrect, I already tried this and put mailboxes everywhere, it only briefly increased processing speed then dropped right back down to where it was before I spammed mailboxes everywhere. It was my cargo shipyard, once I deleted that my mail issues fixed itself and my profits soared. Cargo shipyard clearly broken.

[Sacb0y]

Originally posted by Zengrath:

Originally posted by Kote Panjang:

Im on 100k pop rn and the mail sorting system not working at all. But i dont have cargo train tho, but instead i have cargo shipdock. But still, the sorting system not working at all. Not mail sorted at all.

I also had cargo shipyard and had same problem, delete the cargo ship yard, it simply isn't worth it until it's fixed. All it does is prevent mail from processing and a lot of things don't seem to be exporting properly. It simply isn't worth the hassle until they fix it. My profit went up 2x per month from deleting my cargo shipyard at 44k population.

My cargo ship yards work fine with mail, I just waited way too long to get the proper ammount of mail boxes.

[Sacb0y]

Originally posted by Zengrath:

Originally posted by Sacb0y:

More mailboxes. EVERY BLOCK. just cause a road is green doesn't mean it's fulfilled.

Sorry but this is incorrect, I already tried this and put mailboxes everywhere, it only briefly increased processing speed then dropped right back down to where it was before I spammed mailboxes everywhere. It was my cargo shipyard, once I deleted that my mail issues fixed itself and my profits soared. Cargo shipyard clearly broken.

did you actually fulfill the demand? It may lock up for a bit then start processing again, the cargo shipyard WILL send out mail. It just takes time, and can hold things up a bit.

Having more routes or more stops helps.

But ♥♥♥♥ is mad backed up.

[König Panzerschlag]

Deleted cargo port and shutdown cargo airlines, can confirm this fixed all issues with mail and appeared to help issues with garbage collection

[Zengrath]

Originally posted by Sacb0y:

Originally posted by Zengrath:

Sorry but this is incorrect, I already tried this and put mailboxes everywhere, it only briefly increased processing speed then dropped right back down to where it was before I spammed mailboxes everywhere. It was my cargo shipyard, once I deleted that my mail issues fixed itself and my profits soared. Cargo shipyard clearly broken.

did you actually fulfill the demand? It may lock up for a bit then start processing again, the cargo shipyard WILL send out mail. It just takes time, and can hold things up a bit.

Having more routes or more stops helps.

But ♥♥♥♥ is mad backed up.

My ship yard? Yes i actually before finally deleting it did try making 3 routes to 3 different places on my map and speeding things up. only thing that did was increase the frequency of imported goods. I still seen ships leaving my shipyard empty and no change to my mail issue.

It doesn't just "take time" I had it running fastest speed for hours real time while working yesterday to test what issue was, the amount of local mail at my cargo shipyard never changed at all, remained same. ships simply did not do anything with the mail.

I even built a passenger port too just in case by some crazy reason mail was only taken by passenger ships that did nothing too. I think I honestly exhausted all options. deleting port is only thing that fixed my mail and my profits started soaring, probably because my industry was broken with the broken shipyard.