Cities: Skylines (Steam) - Warehouses not delivering cargo to unique factories

[gafrad]

Description
Warehouses not delivering cargo to unique factories

What is your game version?
1.11.0-f3

What expansions do you have installed?
All of the above

Please explain your issue is in as much detail as possible.
EDIT: I have tested this in a 100% vanilla game and this is TL;DR of my comment down below in the thread:

• if the warehouse is set to balanced, it will not send out deliveries unless having more than 50% of storage full. Even then it is inconsisent and is often not preferred by the unique factory (although it provides the shortest route to it)
• on fill, it doesn't send out trucks at all.
  
• on empty, it just focuses on exporting again not making the deliveries to unique factory consistent.

So the biggest issue I'm reporting is that warehouses are not preffered for deliveries based on proximity and resource availability no matter what.

373 lain in waste.

Log and dxdiag in the thread.
__
This is old report before the test:
No matter the warehouse setting, it seems that any warehouse with the correct cargo type will not even try delivering the cargo to unique factories, even if it provides the shortest route to the factory.
I have a large warehouse with metal in it set on balanced (it is 70% full and has enough trucks available) right next to the Steel unique factory, and yet the factory constantly complains it doesn't have enough materials.The warehouse ignores it and happily exports its contents to nearby train station.

According to route view, the factory always has deliveries directly from a metal processing factory in an industry district across two tiles instead of the warehouse. The truck often has to use trains to transport it across the whole city, that's why the deliveries are late and the factory complains.
Adding more warehouses does not change anything. Changing to "Fill" doesn't make a difference. "Empty" would probably not do anything but sell all the stuff.

The warehouses should prioritize unique factories and supply them, not export only, which they currently seem to do.

Edit: I do not own any mod that changes traffic AI. Also spellcheck
Can you replicate the issue? If yes, please explain how you did it.
All other unique factories I have (Plastic furniture, Petrochemical plant, Electronics) have all the same issue while being closely surrounded by warehouses storaging the correct cargo set on balanced with enough trucks available. All other unique factories show that deliveries come directly from industrial processing factories.

Attachments

 

[Stealthy]

Bumping this up as the warehouse usage is still flawed.

 

[Zimba Zimbabe]

Bumping this up as the warehouse usage is still flawed.

Indeed, is still there. I have an large industry area with all unique factories. There are warehouses for all needed goods in the vicinity, but when ordering, the orders come from all over the place (e.g. factory at the other side of the map, or even imported crops).
So my factories are continuously missing materials :-(

 

[Avanya]

Indeed, is still there. I have an large industry area with all unique factories. There are warehouses for all needed goods in the vicinity, but when ordering, the orders come from all over the place (e.g. factory at the other side of the map, or even imported crops).
So my factories are continuously missing materials :-(

This is NOT a bug, it is how the AI works and how every service works as well. If you play with just 9 tiles unlocked, make sure to smooth out traffic in areas with heavy traffic, so resources reach their destination without too much of a delay. For long distances it's worth using cargo rail to ship things faster and more efficiently. If you play with 25 or 81 tiles unlocked, you really should get Rebalanced Industries since the game wasn't designed to transport goods over such distances. The mod makes the production chain a bit more robust and better able to handle larger distances.

And just for good measure I'll drop a link to my guide to the production chain in case some haven't seen it. Balancing the amount of storage space and keeping on top of traffic problems is the way to get things flowing. The guide also includes a section for the most common issues and how to deal with them.

 

[Zimba Zimbabe]

This is NOT a bug, it is how the AI works and how every service works as well. If you play with just 9 tiles unlocked, make sure to smooth out traffic in areas with heavy traffic, so resources reach their destination without too much of a delay. For long distances it's worth using cargo rail to ship things faster and more efficiently. If you play with 25 or 81 tiles unlocked, you really should get Rebalanced Industries since the game wasn't designed to transport goods over such distances. The mod makes the production chain a bit more robust and better able to handle larger distances.

And just for good measure I'll drop a link to my guide to the production chain in case some haven't seen it. Balancing the amount of storage space and keeping on top of traffic problems is the way to get things flowing. The guide also includes a section for the most common issues and how to deal with them.

Thank you for this reply. I've used your guide to design my production flow. As you mention in the guide:

You can never be sure where a factory orders its resources from - there might be a storage building right next to it with the resource it needs and trucks available for delivery, but the order might end up going to a storage building across your city. This is just how services work.
​

As I have only 1 (huge) storage building per resource, the AI for the getting the resources for the unique factories is not only picking a random storage building, but a random source for the material (storage or processor, or worse for crops: import over sea). I will have to deal with it

As my industry zones for each type of resources are quite spread over the map (up to 3 tiles away from the unique factories, but not more), the goods simply don't get there in time. I'm even using a separated rail connection from each specialized zone towards the area with the unique factories (and their storage buildings), with different cargo stations per specialized zone to avoid clogging my rail lines.

Your guide mentions to add several small storage buildings near the factories. I'll try this; now I'm using one big storage building for each resource type, and I will use multiple small ones. While the AI now has the choice of e.g. 10 processors and only 1 storage building, I'll can increase this e.g. to a 10:10 ration, increasing the odds that the AI picks a storage building instead of an processor.

 

[Avanya]

How full is your one big storage building? Unless you have a fairly small amount of extractors even the largest storages will get full and struggle to keep an amount where they will work like they should. A full storage too busy exporting will mess up things and force your factories to get their resources directly from the extractors, which you do not want happening.

 

[Zimba Zimbabe]

The storage building is in balanced mode and stays around 50% with only a few trucks in use.

 

[Avanya]

Hmm, then it should work just fine. And factories should definitely not be requesting goods from extractors. Have you excluded mods messing with things and made sure you aren't hitting the vehicle limit?

 

[Zimba Zimbabe]

Hmm, then it should work just fine. And factories should definitely not be requesting goods from extractors. Have you excluded mods messing with things and made sure you aren't hitting the vehicle limit?

Some unique factories need crops. Those can come from extractors (fields). To be honest, that was an assumption: I saw they came from oversee, and I see no reason they could come directly from the fields.

Anyhow, next time I'll play (probably next weekend), I will be sure that the goods can get in time to my unique factories from whatever source (checking my train lines, stations and highways, and avoiding alternative slow routes through internal ship lines). And I will replace all big warehouses (1 per resource) to smaller ones, to have more chances to get goods from warehouses instead of elsewhere.

FYI: mods/assests that might affect this, are:

• TMPE (although I disable all features requiring another path finding algorithm; I use only the advanced lane selector)
• Unlimited money and unlock everything: I might not be able to have so many factories with only 65000 inhabitants (although the factories do not complain of having not enough workers).
• Double track cargo station (asset with typical layout of tracks to make it work): might impact the path-finding (although lots of trains arrive at my warehouses).
• Cargo river (mod+assets): some resources can choose to travel with the slow river ships instead of using rail. I will remove those, to be sure rail is always used.

 

[Zimba Zimbabe]

A small update: I made a direct train connection (one way rail, no transfer) between each specialized zone and the area with the warehouses and the unique factories, and this is already was improving a lot!

 

[Exsosus]

Hello Zimba, thank you for your input, I'll try that and update this thread here if it solves the problem! My problem today is that my unique factories are not producing and missing 1 good at a time. They receive them, build, and then go offline again for half an hour + or more waiting on goods that are right in the warehouse next to them!

No mods.

 

[Exsosus]

This is a permanent bug.

 

[plut092]

I have my industry at one location and highway connection and shipping connection to the unique factory which has a warehouse on the same road and the warehouse (set to balanced) gets wares and if it gets to full it exports and this is only for metals, the other warehouses does fill the factory and are they aren't even on the same road.

TLDR this bug needs fixing still.

 

[Player80]

I created a Paradox account solely to say - this game breaking bug being here 4 years later is absolutely outrageous. The OP provided extensive examples and clarity about this crap, and yet you have done nothing to ever fix it, while putting time into new DLC. Why? What is wrong with you that your team cannot fix what you made? We paid for this content, with every reasonable expectation that it works as advertised, and it does not.
When are you going to fix it Paradox? Because the more people you screw over with bugs you refuse to fix, the less you can be trusted, the less credibility you have, for anyone to buy more DLC when they know you output content that have no intention of fixing when it breaks.

 

[Stealthy]

Yep. Still an issue. Factories pretty much never get deliveries from the warehouses, regardless of the warehouse size, available trucks and warehouse working mode.

It shouldn't be that hard to fix this, but like waste issues etc. it just seems that nobody actually takes these seriously. Or even bothers to explain how the mechanism works and what we are supposed to do to make it work.

 

[gafrad]

Well, I came back to see nothing is being done about this thread in 4 years despite it being one of the most viewed thread. I tested again with -noWorkshop and this is still an issue. Warehouses refuse to prioritize deliveries based on distance, making vanilla unplayable for me.

For anyone who can play with mods, this mod "More Effective Transfer Manager" basically fixes this issue, something the developers apparently cannot/refuse to do.

 

[Stealthy]

All it would take is to make factories prefer taking from warehouse instead of processors. I know demand is cyclic and first responding sales gets the job, but that should start from the warehouse, and if no warehouses with demanded items is able to supply, then move on. And always prefer the closest supplier in the order mentioned earlier.

 

[gafrad]

Indeed. That's basically what the mod does. But then again, that's how this game is, vanilla has a lot of issues that are frustrating. A lot of people would mention traffic AI, but you can get around it even in vanilla. The worst are those that literally need a mod, otherwise it's not working properly. One of those examples is this issue proclaimed to not be a bug but intended services AI behavior so it cannot be easily fixed. And then one modder goes and fixes it about 1 month after Industries released. CO often reminds me of the unspoken things Maxis have done to SC, when they said the map cannot be bigger but then someone made it bigger and it worked just fine.

 

[Seth C Triggs]

I actually wonder if some things are quietly being fixed; I noticed my deathcare and police services have been properly requesting the closest facility. Maybe eventually this is going to be updated.

There is still the bug related to this, I think, where warehouse status (Balanced/Fill/Empty) is bugged.

 

[Report_CS2_Bug]

Still experiencing this issue after years of play. I have tried placing warehouse in balance mode with different storage percentage next to specialized factories. But those factories still complaining "Not enough Special Goods" frequently. They mostly import resources from far away processing buildings.

 

[a.cisco]

I found this thread and wondering if anybody managed to get more_effective_transfer_manager mod work because I didn't.
With the mod on, Unique Factories still don't get goods from warehouses putted around them.
Any help? Thanks