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Greetings everyone! The newest expansion for Cities: Skylines called Industries was announced on 11th of October 2018, and we are happy to tell you fellow city-builders all about it. In the previous Dev Diary we gave a short introduction, so be sure to check that out if you haven't already!

So what is an Industry Area? The new Industry Areas uses a similar system as the Park Areas in Parklife expansion. Users can define Industry Areas with the Paint Industry Area tool and place highly specialized industrial buildings inside the area to create a multitude of different production chains. From extracting the raw materials all the way to the final end product.

Cities: Skylines - Industries tutorials

TwoDollarsTwenty has made lovely tutorial videos for Industries expansion! The first episode is available here:

All the tutorial videos will be available on this playlist at Paradox Interactive Youtube channel!

Note: Tutorials were made with a beta version of the Industries so you might notice some differences compared to the Dev Diary screenshots.

Creating your Industry Area

To better understand how to approach creating your first Industry Area it might be wise to make couple of things clear. Firstly the new Industry Buildings can be found in the revamped Garbage Service menu, which is now renamed to Garbage and Industry. Each Industry Area type has it's own Extractors, Processing Buildings, Auxiliary Buildings and Raw Material Storage Buildings. For example, Farm Industry includes buildings such as Crop Fields, Milking Parlor and Barns while Oil Industry has Pumps, variety of different kinds of plants like Oil Sludge Pyrolysis Plant and Crude Oil Storage buildings.

Secondly, and this is very important so sharpen your eyes, just like city service buildings the Industry Area Buildings do not spawn but are placed next to a road. Without road access the Industry Area Buildings are unable to send out trucks full of precious resources.

Now that we have the basic information let's get back to how to actually make an Industry Area.

Much like with Parklife and Park Areas or base game districts, defining an Industry Area happens with a brush tool. The new Industry Area tool is located in the same place as "Paint Park Area" or "Paint District" tools. So just select the tool, use it like you would use "Paint Park Area" or "Paint District" tools and when the desired area is painted you can determine its type by placing the Main Building.

And that's it! After the Industry Area has its type determined you can start placing Industry Buildings inside the area and start creating your first full production chain, more buildings are unlocked when your Industry Area progresses through the levels. But more about production chains and leveling the industry areas in upcoming Dev Diaries!

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After successful start, Oak Oil Products is looking forward to expanding

Types of Industry Areas

Industries expansion comes with four types of Industry Areas, each of them require different raw material and all of them have their own buildings fitting for their own distinctive style. It's only natural that the industry areas require different natural resources which is exactly the reason why we have Forestry, Farming, Ore and Oil Industries included in the Industries DLC.

Ever dreamed of maintaining your own lumberyard and having the workers rocking that eternal lumberjack look? Or wishing that your city would be absolute number 1 in paper production? Then the Forest Industry is definitely for you. Forest Industry can take advantage of the areas rich in forests and use those gathered forest raw materials to produce forestry special goods: planed timber and paper.

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I know, I won't get tired of watching those rows after rows after rows of trees being so... orderly placed.

Or perhaps the modest lifestyle of countryside is more of your thing, and instead of trees you want to create vast crop fields. In that case the Farming Industry with all its variety in crops, fruit and animals could be the thing for you. In order to produce special goods, like Flours and Animal Products, the farming Industry's processing buildings need crops to operate. That's why fertile land is the perfect place to build your Farming Industry, crop- and fruit fields nourish on fertile land, and the more the fertile land is, the more crops your fields produce! With Snowfall maps certain Farm Buildings are replaced with greenhouse versions for the buildings.

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A variety of appearances for fields really brightens up the country-side!

But some you may find it more satisfying to drill into the ground and look for the ore that it holds within. Ore Industry will do just that for you. Ore can be extracted from the ground with the help of mines, extracted ore can then be exported, stored or transferred to ore industry's own production buildings to produce special goods such as Metals and Glass.

Also! Don't forget that ore is not naturally replenishing resource so once it is depleted you might want to transfer your mines to a new location!

And just like with ore, oil is not a replenishing resource and can also be found within the ground. And if you want to get into that black gold you are going to need the Oil Industry. Oil can be pumped up from underground or underwater reserves and be processed into Oil special goods, like Plastics and Petroleum. While Oil Industry might be the most polluting Industry it also can be highly profitable.

Specialized and non-specialized Districts can be built inside Industry Areas and both can benefit from each others but we will get back to how they work together in more detail in the future Dev Diaries.
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Industry Area Info view and Industry Areas Overview

To quickly get a nice view of your Industry Areas we've added a new Info View dedicated to Industry Areas. From the Info view you can easily switch between different Industry types and access the Industry Areas Overview panel. Industry Area Overview panel nicely lists all the Industry Areas that are located in your city, shows their type, name, levels and how many workers are working for the Industry Area. From the Overview you can also easily open each Industry Areas Info Panel that shows even more details!

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Overview of the Industry Areas quickly summarizes how your Industry Areas are doing

Benefit of having Industry Areas in your city

When properly maintained the Industry Areas can provide a great boost to your city's economy and offer many work places for your educated citizens. Each Industry Area type has a wide selection of buildings to choose from. When placed inside the same-type area they will become operational and will start to produce goods and other resources which can be exported, sold to zoned industry or to Unique Factories.

The Basic resource chains from base game are now expanded upon and exposed for the players to create the ultimate, most honed and perfected production chains, this should keep even the perfectionists entertained for hours to come. The production chains provided by the Industry Areas expands the basic resource chains into more detailed and manageable system, but more about Production Chain Management, types of buildings and different resources in our next dev diary!
 
Three questions:

Are farms and other resource extraction 'buildings' still limited to unrealistic 4x4 plots?

Will cargo trains finally get fixed? The issues have been well-documented over the past few years, but they include external empty train spam, general empty train spam, and 'lack of goods' notices from industry that depends on train transport because the game doesn't properly order imports, allow enough time for travel, allow enough full trains to spawn, or in some cases even identify cargo train stations as import-export points. Ditto for cargo ship 'trains'.

Are those 1-tile lanes we saw in the screenshot forestry-only, or will we be able to use them everywhere?

Edit:

I am not a programmer, but would it be possible to use Parklife's park system to create big extraction 'fields' and escape the 4x4 limit on growables? Parklife lets players plop buildings inside park zones, and connects all buildings inside the park to a main single entrance for garbage/deliveries/etc.
 
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Please tell me that you can unlock live stock and have active fields with cows, horses, pigs and/or chickens. The Parklife DLC was awesome with real animated animals - I've been waiting and waiting for better looking farm animals. Please make my day and tell me it's in the new DLC!!!!
 
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Three questions:

Are farms and other resource extraction 'buildings' still limited to unrealistic 4x4 plots?

Will cargo trains finally get fixed? The issues have been well-documented over the past few years, but they include external empty train spam, general empty train spam, and 'lack of goods' notices from industry that depends on train transport because the game doesn't properly order imports, allow enough time for travel, allow enough full trains to spawn, or in some cases even identify cargo train stations as import-export points. Ditto for cargo ship 'trains'.

Are those 1-tile lanes we saw in the screenshot forestry-only, or will we be able to use them everywhere?

Edit:

I am not a programmer, but would it be possible to use Parklife's park system to create big extraction 'fields' and escape the 4x4 limit on growables? Parklife lets players plop buildings inside park zones, and connects all buildings inside the park to a main single entrance for garbage/deliveries/etc.

Ploppable lots have a max size of 8x16 without using subbuildings, so since these new buildings are ploppable they are not limited by the 4x4 size like growables. Downside is you have to hand place them, but if we have 8x16 lot farms you fill out an area pretty fast even like that - and placing them together you can prob get a really nice big field even if it's several buildings. So no more tiny farm areas. :)

Cargo trains not being full is because they can't wait long enough for more orders to come in without causing problems for the industry. The goods need to get there in time like you say, which is why they don't always get to fill up. They haven't talked about any changes, so I wouldn't expect it, but I imagine some of the new industry might help. Right now we might have 10 factories needing 2 material (numbers are random and don't reflect the actual numbers in game) sending out orders spread out. So you have a train with 4 here and a train with 6 there all messing up your tracks. Now with bigger factories the same area might hold 4 factories sending out orders for 5 material each. That would lead to trains with at least 5, but likely more often something like 10-15. So less trains would be needed. I'm just speculating here, but I can see how larger factories would mean larger amounts being shipped at a time, which should mean fewer trains that are almost empty. There's hope at least, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. :)
 
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More detail in the not replenishing resources ( oil, ore) the duration of that was increased ?, because in vanilla the resources are depleted in a few minutes, but if you increase the time duration of that resources so will be worth it use this new industries loop. I know you add the mod for infinite resources, but that is not realistic.

Please add more time to ore and oil.
 
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What CAN actually be placed outside industry areas?
I'm worried about storage and warehouse that I wanted to place where I want, to mange cargo traffic in a specific way.
 
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Ploppable lots have a max size of 8x16 without using subbuildings, so since these new buildings are ploppable they are not limited by the 4x4 size like growables. Downside is you have to hand place them, but if we have 8x16 lot farms you fill out an area pretty fast even like that - and placing them together you can prob get a really nice big field even if it's several buildings. So no more tiny farm areas. :)

Cargo trains not being full is because they can't wait long enough for more orders to come in without causing problems for the industry. The goods need to get there in time like you say, which is why they don't always get to fill up. They haven't talked about any changes, so I wouldn't expect it, but I imagine some of the new industry might help. Right now we might have 10 factories needing 2 material (numbers are random and don't reflect the actual numbers in game) sending out orders spread out. So you have a train with 4 here and a train with 6 there all messing up your tracks. Now with bigger factories the same area might hold 4 factories sending out orders for 5 material each. That would lead to trains with at least 5, but likely more often something like 10-15. So less trains would be needed. I'm just speculating here, but I can see how larger factories would mean larger amounts being shipped at a time, which should mean fewer trains that are almost empty. There's hope at least, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. :)

Looking again at the screenshots, looks like there are 4x8 ploppables. Thanks for the correction!

If the new industrial zones make a single order for all of the buildings within, then it might help generate more full trains and reduce the number of empty 10% trains. But CO has had three years to fix cargo trains, and they haven't even acknowledged there is a problem.

The train spam problem comes from two sources:

1. Each cargo station generates an external train if connected to the outside, and an internal train if connected to another cargo station. These trains shuttle around regardless of actual demand or cargo stores, and quickly spam up any reasonable rail network.

2. As you've said, factories import goods from the outside individually, and the game doesn't properly batch cargo before generating trains (and ships). This also spams up any reasonable train network.

But because the game doesn't account for the additional time used by batching an import order, factories that use cargo trains inevitably wind up "out of goods". If they go without goods for too long, they stop placing import orders and must be bulldozed to restore functionality. Good design this is not.

Thinking on it, I don't see why factories and stores are placing orders to outside connections when a cargo station is nearby to begin with. The cargo station (or harbor) should be its own resource silo from which nearby factories order imports. When a station's particular resource pool drops below 50%, it can make an import order to the outside or to a surplus cargo station for whatever it needs and generate a single full train rather than the current spam of 10% trains.
 
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There's no trains without functionality. There's no trains that just go back and forth to make things look busy. They all transport goods and so are responding to orders. Some of them will go back empty (I can't remember if it's the outside connection ones or the ones spawned by stations), which is likely what you see, but they aren't just going around for lols.

I can't say what can be done on COs end, but I do remember modders talking about why there isn't a mod to fill up trains more and that's because the extra wait causes the buildings to be abandoned. They can't wait that long, so trains with less in them need to be dispatched. That's a number that can be tweeked by the devs I imagine, but I can't say what sort of other effects that would have. It might mess with trucks or make the whole thing so trivial it might as well not be there. I don't know.

As for stations having storage that would have been handy, but it seems like the warehouses will pretty much play that role in the DLC, so we can build up a storage of resources or goods, which I imagine will help.
 
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Don't forget that ore is not naturally replenishing resource so once it is depleted you might want to transfer your mines to a new location!

No. No I definitely would not want to. I would find it tedious and annoying.

Unlimited oil/ore currently prevents achievements if I am not mistaken.
 
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Looking again at the screenshots, looks like there are 4x8 ploppables. Thanks for the correction!

If the new industrial zones make a single order for all of the buildings within, then it might help generate more full trains and reduce the number of empty 10% trains. But CO has had three years to fix cargo trains, and they haven't even acknowledged there is a problem.

AMEN. I'm sorry to disappoint you but CO is too much focused on creating new DLC's adding new and new assets (most of the players will use about 25% of them) they are focused too much on making money and bringing old DLC's to consoles = again making more money. They dont care about some stupid cargo trains behavior :) There is many things that could be added and it would make people happy there is so many things whih can be fixed there is so many mods which should be in the base game - like loading screen mod. I hope that one day we will get mod which will skip selected vanilla assets NOT to be loaded into memory, because I dont want to use them. For example if the loading screen mod wont be available in the future I'm qutting this game. I cant imagine myself playing with few some 1000 assets and waiting 10 minutes for game to load when I can use 4000 assets and wait 3 minutes for game to load.
I brought this topic on cargo trains many times. I also suggeted a cargo planes many times. They dont care. It is simple as that. Adding cargo plane is easy I'm pretty sure about it. It will be cargo terminal which would "lure" cargo planes when cargo planes arrives it spawns train or trucks like train cargo station. Fact that cargo planes are missing from CSL is huge oversight on CO part.
 
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It's quite boring to have to change mining zones and oil rigs constantly, they depelete quite fast, and in a very unrealistic way.

Also: cargo planes will be in the DLC people, read a little before you comment.
 
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AMEN. I'm sorry to disappoint you but CO is too much focused on creating new DLC's adding new and new assets (most of the players will use about 25% of them) they are focused too much on making money and bringing old DLC's to consoles = again making more money. They dont care about some stupid cargo trains behavior :) There is many things that could be added and it would make people happy there is so many things whih can be fixed there is so many mods which should be in the base game - like loading screen mod. I hope that one day we will get mod which will skip selected vanilla assets NOT to be loaded into memory, because I dont want to use them. For example if the loading screen mod wont be available in the future I'm qutting this game. I cant imagine myself playing with few some 1000 assets and waiting 10 minutes for game to load when I can use 4000 assets and wait 3 minutes for game to load.
I brought this topic on cargo trains many times. I also suggeted a cargo planes many times. They dont care. It is simple as that. Adding cargo plane is easy I'm pretty sure about it. It will be cargo terminal which would "lure" cargo planes when cargo planes arrives it spawns train or trucks like train cargo station. Fact that cargo planes are missing from CSL is huge oversight on CO part.

What are you sayingn dude ? Whatever.... If I agree with you about stupid behaviour of cargo trains....
So they don't care of our suggestions ?
First, there wouldn't be a sub-forum titled "Suggestions & feedback"
Second and as one said above, read article about cargo planes....
Then, how many asked for tollbooths, or farming improvements ?

Would have been EA on that Simcity 2013 era, I would probably agree with you and I know what am talking about since I was one of those users who suggested them things they agreed too late really... Here is really not the same thing, so far. I see the community words matter and its good thing for all parts.

Now speaking about consoles...
First, you have to distinguish a publisher and a developer
Deuxio, you have to know Colossal Order , the CS creators, doesn't work on consoles versions
Paradox Interactive believed in their Cities Sktlines project to the point a deal happened between the two.
Great thing! The game worked too good they can expand employment for that game :
- More workers @ Colossal Order
- Tantalus works on consoles versions.

See EA strategy with their wrong decisions, the guys behind Simcity 4 game you probably know - lost their job a bit later.

More money ? if nicely used - Am happy to support such projects as Cities: Skylines and everyone behind. Game dev & publisher.


Talking about mods now - Why are they available ? Think straight.

Sorry, I can understand your irritation but you have to understand their point of view too. PC limits and so on...
And your words were not fair.
 
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From what I seen, looks like they are modular ploppable buildings that is placed next to a road. It is exactly the same what Ploppable RICO buildings do and how to build them. This is like just a functional version of the Ploppable RICO assets created in the Workshop.

Other industries though, such as oil/ore or forestry, does not support Ploppable RICO for now. Only farmlands are the only assets I can find in the Workshop.
 
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This looks very promissing! Can't wait future diaries and videos. I belive this DLC will be woth investing into! However, I am also concerned about railway cargo system. My city is also filled with trains with 7% load. Unfortunately, because of how the engine works, we cannot expect real working rail yards. Train AI would have to be reworked completely. But I would politely ask for some new train tracks at least. Four track concrete elevated railways with mutual catenary would be fantastic. Hope there are new train models and variable train lenghts comming. Thank you CO! I keep spending money on your lovely product. ;)
 
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No. No I definitely would not want to. I would find it tedious and annoying.

Unlimited oil/ore currently prevents achievements if I am not mistaken.

But it is less realistic then, a good idea would have been to make them empty more slowly !

As for cargo trains, maybe the cargo airport(s?) will relieve the cargo train stations a bit ?
 
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Question to Colossal Order. Just out of curiosity. In view of the fact that there will be a post office, including Workers’ Union, will there be a State Work Safety Inspectorate which will control the employers who break the employment legislation? : D
 
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It's quite boring to have to change mining zones and oil rigs constantly, they depelete quite fast, and in a very unrealistic way.
This. At the moment, it's mostly busy work with not much benefit. In the end, I mostly don't care about oil and ore resources anymore in my game and ignore the whole sector.

You cannot even reliably substitute the raw material by imports at the moment. A sign of this is that oil or coal power plants don't reliably work in this game because they have constant supply issues or stop working completely. Maybe, a dedicated oil terminal in the harbor could alleviate this, but I'm not too optimistic. There seems to be something wrong with delivery priorities.

In general, I'm quite happy how the DLC looks. I just hope the underlying mechanics make it practical.
 
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Other industries though, such as oil/ore or forestry, does not support Ploppable RICO for now. Only farmlands are the only assets I can find in the Workshop.

That is not correct. Ore, oil and farming specialisations for Ploppable RICO have been working since the mod was released. A typo in the mod caused forestry to bug out and cause errors, but that has been fix in one of the last patches. All specialisations work with Ploppable RICO at this point.
 
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