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.

[Sacb0y]

I started making districts specifically for my garbage to better organize things. I hadn't considered types of garbage, but it does make sense.

Maybe you should try districting garbage facilities exclusively for industrial and residental to determine any differences.

[icedude94]

Originalmente postado por Sacb0y:

I started making districts specifically for my garbage to better organize things. I hadn't considered types of garbage, but it does make sense.

Maybe you should try districting garbage facilities exclusively for industrial and residental to determine any differences.

I actually didn't do any districting in this city but I could see where it could be useful. The game however doesn't provide enough information from the district info screen to tell you if you have enough capacity for a district or not.

The main thing is you generally want to keep the industrial waste processor in a central location to all your industries as it's the only facility that sends out collectors to pick up a specific type of waste and only industrial zones generate industrial waste.

Edit: No districting for waste management. I do have districts for street parking fees.

[Sacb0y]

Originalmente postado por icedude94:

Originalmente postado por Sacb0y:

I started making districts specifically for my garbage to better organize things. I hadn't considered types of garbage, but it does make sense.

Maybe you should try districting garbage facilities exclusively for industrial and residental to determine any differences.

I actually didn't do any districting in this city but I could see where it could be useful. The game however doesn't provide enough information from the district info screen to tell you if you have enough capacity for a district or not.

The main thing is you generally want to keep the industrial waste processor in a central location to all your industries as it's the only facility that sends out collectors to pick up a specific type of waste and only industrial zones generate industrial waste.

Yeah, IMO the game should have the full range of info views available per district.

Cause it's clear city wide processing has little to do with the local level.

I started playing on the map with islands (archipelago i think) so centralizing all the garbage isn't viable as there's just not enough space, especially when incinerators cause so much air pollution.

If i had more time to play i would experiment more.

[Spill]

Last game I only got the incinerator to generate a little more than 1MW. Even though it had garbage enough.

[Sacb0y]

One setup i have for part of my city is a landfil, a recycling center, and an incinerator, and both the recycling and the incinerator are restricted to a small district around the land fill.

This area has kept garbage well maintained and there's no apparent garbage import. and one truck is just constantly going back and forth between the landfill and the other two facilities.

Perhaps one test would be to try a landfill with multiple recylcing centers with a combined processing rate similar to a single incenerator with a land fill. Restricted by district ofcourse.

That might help determine how the types of garbage fare.

I guess they'd need to be bound to similar cities too.

[Spill]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067784391

It looks like it will proccess metals, plastics, textiles and paper. Just placed it have nott seen if the numbers run

[icedude94]

Originalmente postado por Spill:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067784391

It looks like it will proccess metals, plastics, textiles and paper. Just placed it have nott seen if the numbers run

How did you enable the developer mode? I can look at my recycling plants.

[Sacb0y]

Originalmente postado por Spill:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3067784391

It looks like it will proccess metals, plastics, textiles and paper. Just placed it have nott seen if the numbers run

Oh using the dev tools is neat.

[Advanced Nap Techs]

Originalmente postado por icedude94:

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

You're assuming the game was designed intelligently when all sights point otherwise.

Why do you assume they didn't just arbitrarily assign expansion costs? In a game where cars teleport to their destination if their trip is taking too long and where garbage angels arrive magically from other cities to do your waste management without being asked, why EXPECT things to be rational and logical?

[Jon]

What's more likely is the way buildings are internally flagged not working well for the incinerator. The incinerator likely has some internal flag marking it as a power plant, and as a garbage processor. The power plant flag tells the game 'import whatever resource this building needs to run until I am full'. The garbage processor flag tells the game 'send your garbage trucks out to get garbage unless I am full'. The incinerator won't send trucks out to gather your own garbage unless there is space to store it (keep in mind the efficiency% allows it to go over max storage, so it isn't always obvious how much room is actually available). I think though that as soon as there is space it'll send a truck out but also allow imports from anywhere seeking to deliver garbage (such as a cargo terminal). Since trucks take a long route driving around gathering garbage, a semi carrying 20t of the stuff from an external connection or cargo terminal will always get in first and clog it up. This all lines up with my own observations, but without seeing the source code it is of course speculation.

The incinerator in this case just needs to be hard coded to only accept deliveries from sources other than it's own trucks if it's below some internal storage, say 20%. That way it can import to keep up power production without your own trucks getting blocked.

[icedude94]

Originalmente postado por Jonny Monroe:

What's more likely is the way buildings are internally flagged not working well for the incinerator. The incinerator likely has some internal flag marking it as a power plant, and as a garbage processor. The power plant flag tells the game 'import whatever resource this building needs to run until I am full'. The garbage processor flag tells the game 'send your garbage trucks out to get garbage unless I am full'. The incinerator won't send trucks out to gather your own garbage unless there is space to store it (keep in mind the efficiency% allows it to go over max storage, so it isn't always obvious how much room is actually available). I think though that as soon as there is space it'll send a truck out but also allow imports from anywhere seeking to deliver garbage (such as a cargo terminal). Since trucks take a long route driving around gathering garbage, a semi carrying 20t of the stuff from an external connection or cargo terminal will always get in first and clog it up. This all lines up with my own observations, but without seeing the source code it is of course speculation.

The incinerator in this case just needs to be hard coded to only accept deliveries from sources other than it's own trucks if it's below some internal storage, say 20%. That way it can import to keep up power production without your own trucks getting blocked.

I have a cargo rail terminal, 2 of them in fact with garbage sitting in them.

With my original setup that included landfills, recycling and an industrial waste processor, that means the incinerator should have been receiving garbage imports from the cargo rail since its storage always sits at around 20%(it sends trucks out occasionally to pick up from the recycling plants).

I have let the landfills fill up a bit and then told them to empty. They keep the recycling plants and incinerator about about 80% storage capacity. Once I turn off the emptying on the landfill, incinerator processes things back down to 20% storage.

[Sacb0y]

Originalmente postado por Advanced Nap Techs:

Originalmente postado por icedude94:

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

You're assuming the game was designed intelligently when all sights point otherwise.

Why do you assume they didn't just arbitrarily assign expansion costs? In a game where cars teleport to their destination if their trip is taking too long and where garbage angels arrive magically from other cities to do your waste management without being asked, why EXPECT things to be rational and logical?

Even if it's not true the other reason is simply space. On my map space is a HUGE problem.

[icedude94]

I think having lot of free storage space in your processing facilities is key to keep the system from bottle-necking. If you see a storage constantly at greater than 60%, I would build more of that facility.

[hubb]

Looks like they have changed OPEX everywhere. Garbage, electricity... So, calculations has to be altered. I see incineration now 168k per month.