Goods delivery operates on Calvinball rules

[YertyL]

This concerns a scenario from the industries DLC, but I strongly suspect it will be relevant for all goods delivery. Supply line priorities seem completely borked at the moment.

I created a city with two forestry districts. Both overproduce raw materials, and both are oversaturated with storage and delivery. Still, I experience regular raw material shortages. Why? Because processors constantly get their raw materials from extractors all the way across the map instead of the 70% full warehouse with 7/15 trucks used right next door. Check the attached screen. The greenly highlighted empty sawmill in the "Elizabeth Wood production" district at the bottom is currently getting a delivery from a truck stuck somewhere in the middle of the city, originating from the district at the very top of the map (the three stars).
I triple-checked that I have enough raw materials and available trucks. Still, this happens constantly. My unique factories are also constantly short on materials for the same reason -- they order their paper from the warehouses all across the map instead of the one right next door. Ironically enough I constructed the second district to avoid this very problem. So can we please get two simple fixes:

1. Storage on "balanced" delivers locally at 40+% full, but only exports at 60+% full. This would partially avoid having to completely overproduce storage just to have an available truck for processors/factories that is not busy exporting
   
2. Most importantly: For the delivery of goods, processors/factories prefer the nearest available storage. Not an extractor all the way across the map. This is the whole point of having storage buildings in the first place.

So yeah, for a DLC that is so focused on supply lines, it would be highly appreciated if the supply lines were not totally bonkers.

EDIT: I experimented further with strategically placed "fill" and "empty" warehouses. The problem is: As long as buildings prefer delivery from a producer across the map to a warehouse right next door, then as soon as you have a significant number of extractors/producers, "balance" and "empty" warehouses are effectively export only, and "fill" warehouses effectively do almost nothing, as almost all orders will go to producer buildings instead of warehouses.

 

[YertyL]

There is of course also the issue of my normal zoned industry importing ore products right next to my industrial zone exporting all three kinds of ore products (ore,glass and metal in those storages and warehouses) -- see the screenshot. But that seems to be mostly old news at this point.

EDIT: The ore refinieries also import material from the cargo harbor 3 map squares away instead of the 72% full warehouse on balanced with spare trucks right next door.

 

[Pillark]

Find this very annoying. Traffic is one of the most difficult aspects of the game to manage. Goods vehicles being more sensible would help clean this up.

+1 for Calvinball reference

The score is still Q to 12!

 

[Hummer]

1. Storage on "balanced" delivers locally at 40+% full, but only exports at 60+% full. This would partially avoid having to completely overproduce storage just to have an available truck for processors/factories that is not busy exporting
   
2. Most importantly: For the delivery of goods, processors/factories prefer the nearest available storage. Not an extractor all the way across the map. This is the whole point of having storage buildings in the first place.

So yeah, for a DLC that is so focused on supply lines, it would be highly appreciated if the supply lines were not totally bonkers.

I completely agree with your entire post. My industry never seems to make any sense. I would also like to have an option to turn off exports or imports if possible. One of the other items that really annoys me is how I'm producing 50 tons of ore, I'm demanding 55 by my processors but instead of pulling ore out of my next door ore storage which is 5 buildings all at 50%, they import ore. Drives me crazy.

 

[ristosal]

@co_emmi Industry areas that are of the same production type shouldn't interact with each other in this particular way. What is extracted in an industry area needs to stay within it. This is a bug.

 

[co_emmi]

Industry Areas can interact with each other. Player could make an area that only extracts and another area which only produces goods. Extracted materials can also be sold to zoned specialized industry or sold to outside connections.

 

[Kedryn]

How aout a policy for districts, Industries or base game, with three tickboxes: 1) Internal Use, 2) External Use, 3) Exports. Can tick all, none or some.

It would really help with our logistics.

 

[Chieron]

How aout a policy for districts, Industries or base game, with three tickboxes: 1) Internal Use, 2) External Use, 3) Exports. Can tick all, none or some.

It would really help with our logistics.

That is pretty nonsensical, as you will basically always need to export out of the area to a storage (warehouse / basic resource storage) or consumer (unique factory / generic industry / export out of city).

• Internal use can only be useful for raw resources (and is a trap for some, because e.g. grain is used by some unique factories).
• intermediate goods (e.g. animal products or metals) need to be set to External use or Export.

What will happen with overproduction, when all storages are full?

The transport issue needs to be solved, but what you proposed would not help much. It's about needlessly transporting from the other side of the map, or importing; instead of using the resources next door. Not fine-grained control of the entire resource flow (which could also be solved by setting up actual supply routes). The underlying system needs to be more intelligent, which would also help the related service problems (garbage/deathcare/fire/police..) which also cross the entire map when there are better options close by.

 

[Tobis]

Industry Areas can interact with each other. Player could make an area that only extracts and another area which only produces goods. Extracted materials can also be sold to zoned specialized industry or sold to outside connections.

I know they interact, one can provide for the other, but when resources are scattered you place the producing building near your extractors to only have to provide arterial roads for one of the two, but with two competing extractor fields they will do an almost perfect criss-cross request cycle. Is distance a factor even?? Can it me made so?

 

[deanwebb]

I've not gone with two zones for a given industry, but I do make sure I have an internal-only road/rail network to get the raw materials and intermediate goods to the final production sites. It's gamey, but it forces the conditions necessary to utilize local resources.

 

[Harle]

Industry Areas can interact with each other. Player could make an area that only extracts and another area which only produces goods. Extracted materials can also be sold to zoned specialized industry or sold to outside connections.

This doesn't really address the issue, though, does it?

Q. The production building is using resources produced from across the map instead of the resources nearby.
A. Yes, production buildings can use resources from anywhere.
Q. Why are they choosing to use wildly less efficient sources of goods?
A. ???

Unless there's some internal market going on that means it's cheaper for the production building to transport goods from farther away (and there isn't) then why aren't they using the closer option? Is there a reason?

Is the issue that extraction buildings are deciding which buildings to send goods to? So extraction buildings scan the map, and if the nearest empty production building happens to be far away, then it chooses to send goods there, in spite of the underutilized extraction buildings near the drop-off? Are too many 'external' extractors overwhelming the production building with a slow drip of send requests, leaving a small number of 'local' extractors with a lower percentage chance of shipping to nearby production?

Whatever the case, who ships where should be weighted by accessibility first. Otherwise you end up with this slow drip of deliveries that doesn't make sense and can grind a perfectly good industry zone to a halt.

 

[YertyL]

If finding the nearest target for a ressource delivery is too computationally expensive, one simpler solution that would at least mitigate the problem would be if all buildings preferred storage targets, i.e. an extractor only delivers directly to a processor if no raw ressource storage is available, and a processor only to a factory if no warehouse is available.

This way, you would probably need more storage buildings, but you could at least steer the process through placement of those buildings. If you included a preference for storage buildings in the same district (which again, should not be expensive), this would already solve a lot as far as I can see it.