The Guide to City Garbage Management

[icedude94]

I am re-posting this here and will report it as a guide now that I've done enough tests to feel confident in my theories.

Guide to garbage:

There are 3 different types of garbage in the game and I will explain why I think this from looking at numbers and why I think you are supposed to have a mix of processing for all 3.

The 3 types are:
-Recyclables
-Non-Recyclabes.
-Industrial Waste

Now looking at the costs to maintain these facilities and their processing speeds:

Landfill:
$30,000 monthly cost
Processes 0.6 tons per month
$50,000 to process 1 ton of garbage.
Hazardous waste extension:
$30,000 per month
Processes 1.1 tons per month
$27,272.73 to process 1 ton of garbage.

Recycling Plant:
$160,000 monthly cost
Processes 11 tons per month
$14,545.45 per ton of garbage processed
Hazardous waste extension:
$40,000 per month
Processes 1.1 tons per month
$36,363.64 per ton of garbage processed.

Incinerator(without the processing speed extension)
$210,000 monthly cost
41.1 tons per month processing speed
$5,109.49 per ton of garbage processed.

Industrial Waste Processing Site(and you can only build one):
$450,000 per month
55.1 tons per month processing speed
$8,166.97 per ton of garbage processed


If we are to assume that all garbage is just garbage and can be processed by any facility, it makes no financial sense to use anything other an an incinerator to process your garbage and you should NEVER build the processing extensions for landfills and recycling plants because of how expensive the processing cost is per ton.

Why would you ever build an extension to a recycling plant that costs more than double to process garbage?

The only conclusion that makes sense to me is that there are different types of garbage.

It makes sense to build the industrial waste processor to handle industrial waste at a cost of $8,166.97 vs $36,363.64 per ton.

Now the 2nd part which is throwing everyone off is the perception that the processing rate listed for facilities is wrong or the rate of processing is off.

I think the current processing rate showing when you have a building selected is what it SHOULD be if all of the garbage in the facility was of the correct type. The actual rate it is processing is based off of what you actually have in storage at the facility.

Now all garbage facilities act like warehouses for one another and they redistribute the garbage between themselves with dump trucks to balance out storage percentages. When they do this, they don't distinguish between garbage types. Each building does its own sorting as it processes and what it can't process stays in storage.

Now investing in storage extensions makes sense. If all garbage was the same, then you want your garbage facilities to be near full to maximize the processing speed so you get the most value out of the facility. Storage extensions work against this.

If however all garbage is not the same and having too little storage could cause processing speeds to slow down and garbage facilities to become full of stuff they can't process, now it makes sense to invest in storage.

This even makes the argument for having landfills. The landfill can process all 3 types but very slowly and very expensively and it's mainly for storage.

To put this into perspective for the folks drowning in garbage. Imagine if every one of your waste management facilities was like the post sorting facility but its entire storage was full of global mail and it had no space to receive unsorted mail and nowhere to put processed local mail.

Now the test to prove it:
The city has a garbage network of 2 landfills, 2 recyclers, 1 incinerator, and 1 industrial waste processor for a population of 37k.

It has been this way for a long time without change. This is my test city for figuring out the simulation.

This is the incinerator in the city which we will refer to as Incinerator 1.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067684146

Incinerator 1's storage capacity always stays around 20% and occasionally sends out dump trucks to grab garbage from the recyclers. You can see a landfill and the industrial waste processor a little bit behind it.

This is now the test setup: Everything else besides incinerator 1 was removed and Incinerator 2 is added on the right. Total garbage processing capacity exceeds total accumulation.

If I put the incinerators right next to each other, outside garbage collectors start coming in for the far side of the city and we don't want that for this test. All other waste management facilities were removed.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067682271

I let the simulation run for only ONE MONTH.

Here is incinerator 1:
It is just about full. I expected it to fill up first as it has much more industry around it(more industrial waste) and is closer to downtown.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067682450

Here is incinerator 2:
It is well on its way to getting full. I made one observation, as incinerator 1 was filling up. Incinerator 2 did not send any dump trucks to relieve the storage load. Could this be because Incinerator 1 did not have any extra burnable garbage in storage for incinerator 2 or could it just simply be because it already had its garbage collectors out and was reserving space?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067682554

It was then at this point I stopped the test because these started showing up:
Garbage trucks from other cities, for the areas around incinerator 1.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067682877

In conclusion, this evidence supports my theory that there are different garbage types in this game and you need a mix of facility types and ample extra storage space to process everything.

[⎛⎝Tiùwilo⎠⎞]

No, it's just one type of garbage, the game is just really weird about how it handles logistics. The recycling plant supposedly doesn't cause pollution and creates resources for the industry, which we cannot quantify nor look at, so there is no way to make any sort of guess about how profitable it could theoretically be.

Apparently there's also an issue with cargo ports etc. IMPORTING endless amounts of garbage at random.

[icedude94]

I stand ready with my arms wide open for all the daggers that will fly at me now from the folks who refunded the game already.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Aarki⎠⎞:

No, it's just one type of garbage, the game is just really weird about how it handles logistics. The recycling plant supposedly doesn't cause pollution and creates resources for the industry, which we cannot quantify nor look at, so there is no way to make any sort of guess about how profitable it could theoretically be.

Apparently there's also an issue with cargo ports etc. IMPORTING endless amounts of garbage at random.

I've had a cargo rail terminal in the city that has been there forever. It has 245 tons of garbage in it that was brought in my train. That garbage has sat there and never left.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Aarki⎠⎞:

No, it's just one type of garbage, the game is just really weird about how it handles logistics. The recycling plant supposedly doesn't cause pollution and creates resources for the industry, which we cannot quantify nor look at, so there is no way to make any sort of guess about how profitable it could theoretically be.

Apparently there's also an issue with cargo ports etc. IMPORTING endless amounts of garbage at random.

If there's only one type of garbage, how do you justify the cost to process per ton of the hazardous waste processing extensions of the landfill and recycling plant?

[⎛⎝Tiùwilo⎠⎞]

You're right in that there's no point to anything other than the incinerators. The landfill isn't even required to hold you over until you can afford an incinerator, as the garbage service from the outside will handle things for you until you can plop down your own incineration plants.

Not to mention the profitability of making all that energy from the burned trash, there is currently no way the recycling plant could ever hope to compete with it, even if it were to produce electronics or some other supposed high-value material for the industries or exports.

The game is broken, balancing is off. The economy does not work, therefore the recycling plant's potential "profit" cannot be determined at all.

[Hert the Fisherman]

Originally posted by icedude94:

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Aarki⎠⎞:

No, it's just one type of garbage, the game is just really weird about how it handles logistics. The recycling plant supposedly doesn't cause pollution and creates resources for the industry, which we cannot quantify nor look at, so there is no way to make any sort of guess about how profitable it could theoretically be.

Apparently there's also an issue with cargo ports etc. IMPORTING endless amounts of garbage at random.

I've had a cargo rail terminal in the city that has been there forever. It has 245 tons of garbage in it that was brought in my train. That garbage has sat there and never left.

Same I had 400t garbage imported and it just sits at the cargo terminal. Yeah I think all aspects of this game are complex. And they are all interconnected. I had other cities do my garbage. And I just built landfill, incinerator, and recycler all next to each other. And right now only the landfill is working so, the other ones must be waiting for the landfill to have more garbage first.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Aarki⎠⎞:

You're right in that there's no point to anything other than the incinerators. The landfill isn't even required to hold you over until you can afford an incinerator, as the garbage service from the outside will handle things for you until you can plop down your own incineration plants.

Not to mention the profitability of making all that energy from the burned trash, there is currently no way the recycling plant could ever hope to compete with it, even if it were to produce electronics or some other supposed high-value material for the industries or exports.

The game is broken, balancing is off. The economy does not work, therefore the recycling plant's potential "profit" cannot be determined at all.

There is no profitability from exporting energy from burning garbage. You are just burning money in addition to garbage.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by icedude94:

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Aarki⎠⎞:

You're right in that there's no point to anything other than the incinerators. The landfill isn't even required to hold you over until you can afford an incinerator, as the garbage service from the outside will handle things for you until you can plop down your own incineration plants.

Not to mention the profitability of making all that energy from the burned trash, there is currently no way the recycling plant could ever hope to compete with it, even if it were to produce electronics or some other supposed high-value material for the industries or exports.

The game is broken, balancing is off. The economy does not work, therefore the recycling plant's potential "profit" cannot be determined at all.

There is no profitability from exporting energy from burning garbage. You are just burning money in addition to garbage.

An incinerator generates 65 MW watts of energy for $295,000 per month in upkeep cost(with extra furnace extension).
That means the incinerator is producing energy at $4,538.46 per MW.

Energy sold through export is sold at a rate of $2500 per MW.

[⎛⎝Tiùwilo⎠⎞]

Which you need to calculate into the operation costs, same as the supposed output of the recycling plant, which you cannot do as there is no acessible data. Keep in mind the actual upkeep and income are not properly displayed by the game either.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Aarki⎠⎞:

Which you need to calculate into the operation costs, same as the supposed output of the recycling plant, which you cannot do as there is no acessible data. Keep in mind the actual upkeep and income are not properly displayed by the game either.

Still not relevant to why a city with 2 incinerators and more processing capacity gets overloaded with garbage and a city with less capacity and varied processors doesn't. Straw man argument.

[Hert the Fisherman]

Does the recycler actually produce raw materials for your industries?

[icedude94]

Originally posted by Hert the Fisherman:

Does the recycler actually produce raw materials for your industries?

I have NEVER seen a truck with resources leave the recycling facilities so that could be an issue. If the recycling plant's storage was filling up with resources for factories, then my city before the test setup should've collapsed a long time ago.

[Hert the Fisherman]

Hmmm. Maybe trucks from the cargo terminal or a warehouse come to your recycling to pick it up and it’s super rare.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by Hert the Fisherman:

Hmmm. Maybe trucks from the cargo terminal or a warehouse come to your recycling to pick it up and it’s super rare.

I've never seen trucks from the cargo terminal do pickups. They only do deliveries and return. Warehouses send their own trucks to make deliveries to the cargo terminals.

[icedude94]

Originally posted by ⎛⎝Aarki⎠⎞:

Which you need to calculate into the operation costs, same as the supposed output of the recycling plant, which you cannot do as there is no acessible data. Keep in mind the actual upkeep and income are not properly displayed by the game either.

For the record:
I do not charge any service fees in my city for electricity or water so there is no money coming in from selling power to my citizens and I don't export power unless it is from a profitable source like the large coal power plant.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067759064

No service fees for water and electric is a 40% efficiency bonus for commercial and industrial zones and a +10 to well-being for residential zones.

I prefer to help get as much as I can to level 5 wealth so they produce more, consume less, generate less garbage and produce more tax revenue.

That's me "offsetting the costs."