Mall Rats Bug: Only minus income from delivery material purchase but no plus income at deliveries

[Camzillasmom]

Hi,

I notice that some location only produce negative income (material purchase) and don't produce positive income at delivery. I'm actually getting charged again at delivery.

For Example:
I delivered Butter from Birmingham to the Croissant Factory at Huntington Beach.
When picking up Butter I got charged but at Delivery there was no income but another charge - leading to a big fat minus at the account ;-). I like xmas but does it mean I deliver for free? ;-)

There are a couple of other locations that do that as well but that's the one I wrote down. Will add some more here when I see some.

At this point I'll wait for a game update.

Thanks!

P.S.
Also buggy:
- Milk deliveries to Butter at Birmingham generate no income. Maybe it's the Butter location?
- Boise (Wood) (no income from wood deliveries)
- Mayvale (Milk) - no income from milk deliveries to my own butter factory
- San Francisco (Paper) - no income from paper upgrade deliveries to my own butter factory
- Deliveries of Butter (own factory) to Modesto (Garlic Kitchen)
- Coprus Christi (Oil) - There is income but much less than expenses, leading to minus.
- San Diego (Eggs) - Deliveries to malls not paid
- Long Beach (Fish) - Deliveries to malls not paid
etc...


What works:
- Charges from own factories to own factories seem to work alright...
- Des Moines (Robots)
- Santa Fe (Machinery)
- The Marketplace At Brick (Bricks)

[sacada]

Thanks. I will check into this.
One thing to note is that if you do multiple deliveries with the one load you only get paid once the truck empties.
Make sure you click on the money at the top of the screen to see a full breakdown of all the costs and income of each delivery.

[Camzillasmom]

Thanks!
I'll have a look again but it seemed quite obvious that there was something wrong when I started to build my own factories.
With the set industries I was struggling to earn enough money. With my own industries money went up quickly (as usual like in the other DLCs).

[archmag]

Each time you deliver you get "ResourcePrice*TonsDelivered-CostOfRoute" cash. So you shouldn't be surprised when you deliver cheap product at large distance and as a result get negative income. Butter is one of the cheapest products, it costs only 70 per ton (there are several products that cost 50 and Fertilizer and Worms cost 30). Machinery costs 200, Robots 250, Bricks 100 so it is easier to get income with those products because they usually cover the delivery cost. Building your own industries closer to the target is a good way to reduce delivery cost (plus you get extra income if you upgrade the industry and sell it later).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1939986490
As you can see from this screenshot if you send 40t truck with butter from Birmingham to Huntington Beach you get paid 2803.5 (essentially 70*40=2800 and 3.5 from some random rounding I guess) but you pay 4676.89 for the route because you deliver almost from one side of the country to another. That's why your income from delivery is negative.

What I didn't know though (or knew some time ago but already forgot) is that cost for route with empty truck is different from full truck. Huntington Beach to Birmingham costs only 1557.67, while loaded truck going back pays 3 times more. But I think it is intended penalty (or bonus for empty truck).

With 200t truck it is even worse:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1939995071

You get 200*70=14000 but you pay 51402.96 for the long route. Even robots won't be profitable if you send them that far on 200t truck. Difference of route cost between empty and loaded truck is 11x for 200t.

So be careful when sending trucks too far unless you are fine with losing some money.

[Camzillasmom]

Hi archmag,

I'll have a look again today. Thank you for your detailed answer! Always appreciate reading your expert advice!

Thank you!

[archmag]

Just to add - to open this log screen with detailed income you need to click that P button under the header where your total cash is displayed.

[Princemousey]

Hey, I understand the calculations for the negative income routes but just wondering if this is intentional or supposed to be a bug? ie are you supposed to make a profit on every single route or will there be routes wherein you lose money?

[kg6jay]

If you're hauling small amounts of low value cargo over long distances, fuel costs can override any profit you might have otherwise earned.

[archmag]

Originally posted by kg6jay:

If you're hauling small amounts of low value cargo over long distances, fuel costs can override any profit you might have otherwise earned.

The thing is if you are hauling large amounts you get even bigger negatives. You would think that it is more efficient to send large trucks on large distances but it is not. 5x40t trucks result in -9366.95 "income" while 1x200t truck results in -37402.96. So you shouldn't send any trucks on such distances unless you are prepared to pay for it. And with such huge penalties even sending large truck with high value cargo will result in negatives.

Originally posted by Princemousey:

ie are you supposed to make a profit on every single route or will there be routes wherein you lose money?

I am sure there are supposed to be inefficient routes in game where you lose money if you are not careful. This was in all previous games (especially noticable in Brazil where even if you don't care about consumption you still want to place industries closer to the delivery point so that you get more income and due to amount of required deliveries that income was huge if it was positive). Although I didn't know that sending larger truck on such route is worse than sending smaller one, I always assumed the opposite and never cared enough to check until this thread. There is also a problem that trucks decay faster on such routes so essentially you should try to avoid them as they only provide negatives - loss of money, loss of durability, loss of boosts, loss of time. The only positive - if you are lazy you don't have to build anything and develop it (that is if you can build it, if you can't you don't have a choice).

[T-wRecks]

There's one oddity that seems to affect Mall Rats more because of the mall capacities often being even multiples of truck capacities. I'm not sure if this is intentional or a bug, but Mall Rats seems to very heavily penalize overdelivering to a mall, to the point where it seems to be the same as dumping a load into a completed city, ie, you lose money on the load and the trip. The extra oddity with Mall Rats (which probably is a bug) is that it also behaves this way if you hit the capacity exactly. So for an 80 capacity mall, you'll lose massively if you deliver in one load with a Road Train, get paid normally for the first load and lose big for the second with a B-Double, etc., even though you're not actually overfilling at all. It has to be bugged somehow, I'm just not sure in exactly which way it's bugged.

[sacada]

Yes. That one was tracked down in L:Earth. I will get a patch to push back to L1 and L2.

[Solitaire90]

Hi, there is still a problem with this issue. I notice it more on the Bananas. In the payments window it states the trucks are actually empty so you are being charged for the pickup and then charged again for an empty journey when you reach the mall you are trying to supply, even though you have delivered a full load. I've also noticed it on a few others but as I said this is the one I noticed it on more.