Has anyone made Unique Factories work continuously?

[Jamey]

I get constant waves of the factories running out of resources. It seems like they are not requesting any goods until they are completely out of something.

When the resource they are out of is Crops, they seem to pick the farthest possible grain silo, rather than the one right next to the factory.

I tried multiple warehouses for each good, that doesn't help.

I've tried Balanced warehouses, which seems to be the worst setting for warehouses because trucks get tied up delivering goods off map even though there is a perfectly good cargo station nearby. I've tried Fill warehouses, which is better than Balanced, but still results in waves of non-production.

In short, I'm baffled. Nothing I try results in a smoothly flowing supply chain.

 

[Promethian]

I agree. The unique factories need to store more goods total and order more goods sooner. It seems they can hold 2 trucks worth of goods and order at half. I think 4 trucks worth and order at 3/4 (and again at each 1/4 threshold) would be good but I'd settle for 3 trucks of storage and ordering at 2/3.

The best you can do is set the uniques up near your agriculture industry so crops don't have to go as far. You need to build all the uniques close together as well so you can centralize your warehouses of the other products. If you split them up and put warehouses near each then they will order goods from the far warehouse.

Multiple warehouses does help. You get more trucks available to do delivery. If your warehouses are maxed out on trucks you need more/better warehouses. The small warehouse seems to be the best cost for service. Double the effect of the yard and not much bigger.

 

[Avanya]

I have. Firstly it's been without mods, so maybe mods play a role in making things not so smooth.

I used a lot of warehouses and storage facilities. I found that I was producing a ton of the raw material, let's just take crops as an example, so all my silos and barns were way past half full, which meant all their trucks were busy exporting my crops (as balanced wants to sit around the 50% mark). I added in some warehouses set to the Zoned Industry - Farmland (or what it's called) as I'm like 90% sure it's the same as the crops produced and the silos and barns just aren't big enough. Once I had at least one storage that wasn't almost full all the time, it delivered crops to my factories and things started running more smooth. I also made sure to have a few storages for the intermediate goods nearby the buildings that need it. I did the same for the other industry areas and every time I spot one that has problems with missing resources, I made sure there was a storage building for that resource nearby (my refinery needed metal, so a storage yard nearby for metal helped a lot there).

Basically the trick seems to be balancing storage, once that's good your flow of resources and goods will be good too.

 

[Turjan]

The system basically breaks down if transport lines get too long. I never managed to get my "vanilla" city to balance goods because I had agriculture areas that were on opposite sides of the city and lots of the local produce groceries everywhere in the city. As a result, none of the new factories got crops, although the producers drowned in them and all storage facilities were full. Maybe you need silos in the range of hundreds?

Anyway, I got fed up when the citiy's deathwaves got out of control. I have to try again with a new city I guess.

 

[humorpalanta]

They work if they have supplies. Doesn't matter where you build that factory but you have to store the ingredients close to it. If it needs crops but those are on the other side of the map build a silo or whatever it is to store some crops near the factory.

 

[Joonnnyy]

buiding storage near the industry is not a complete fix, as the industry willpull from ANY storage in the ENTIRE city
so sometimes you will still pull from across the map, just not always

and this is anoying, when the storage right next door is full and has 0 trucks used, but the industry orders from the other side of the city and the truck then ignores the cargotrain for an even longer trip

 

[Turjan]

They work if they have supplies. Doesn't matter where you build that factory but you have to store the ingredients close to it. If it needs crops but those are on the other side of the map build a silo or whatever it is to store some crops near the factory.

As the post before me mentions, that doesn't help. In my case, the factory in need sits next to two full crop silos. Not even the cattle raising facilites next to crops with no buyers and full silos get anything. I'm sure it works in a small town with not much going on, but it doesn't if things get larger.

 

[Promethian]

This is the best I have managed. All the factories are running at 150% and out of materials happens but rarely. The warehouses on the right are the refined goods. One for each type. Currently with 10-15 trucks in use at any given time. The left warehouses hold the unique goods. Yes, the agri being nearby was a deliberate choice because of crops. The other specialized goods can be shipped in to the warehouses.

 

[Turjan]

Yes, in small towns, it works. Everything is close and not much else going on. The complications come with larger cities.

 

[StormbringerGT]

I made a warehouse district. All goods are shipped and stored there. This is also where all the trains and boats come and go as well. This was halfway between where the raw materials are mined and where the luxury goods are made. This way they don't really have a choice where they get their materials' either from the only place where I have where houses, or directly from the producer of the raw materials itself.

 

[karolans]

Yep transport still seems to be key. Basic question on that note - if you completely force heavy traffic into effective ways like rail/designated highways, they seem to bypass it by just sending smaller trucks instead (which ignore the heavy traffic ban). Am I right and is there a way to actually have control over the flow?

 

[Promethian]

Got all the unique factories now. All running at 150%. Profits are kind of crazy. No traffic problems. Its also far from an ideal set up. I plan on rearranging them as this is just the result of squeezing them in as they unlocked.



The tricks are the early planning. I made sure the agri was nearby so there is no crop delivery problems and every resource has a medium warehouse. Small warehouse frequently caps out its trucks which can delay a delivery to a unique factory so I made room for the mediums early.

For greater long term planning I'm going to move most of this up in the picture closer to the water. Then fill in more warehouses. I still need some generic industry to prevent commercial from shutting down and generic takes the refined goods those warehouses store. So filling in more warehouses here is going to be needed as I expand further.

 

[Turjan]

23,000 inhabitants, and you are basically finished with the DLC. I guess that's the scale the game is built for.

 

[Jamey]

The tricks are the early planning. I made sure the agri was nearby so there is no crop delivery problems and every resource has a medium warehouse. Small warehouse frequently caps out its trucks which can delay a delivery to a unique factory so I made room for the mediums early.

I've rebuilt a couple of times to streamline deliveries and added a second set of medium warehouses to help with deliveries. I'm still having some out of goods waves, but it's better.

Doing it again, I'd go with a block that has central warehouses and factories all around them (to shorten delivery routes). I'd also build the setup next to my farms so that the crops pulled from there would arrive faster.

I don't think that would solve cases where the goods are pulled directly from intermediate factories, but I also don't think that is solvable on most maps.

 

[Joonnnyy]

added a second set of medium warehouses to help with deliveries

you should use small warehouse, but 2 instead of 1 medium
this will get you 10 more trucks(2x20 vs 30) and 100t more storage (2x250t vs 400t) and twice the number of wares shipped/recieved per time, while using 16 tiles less space
the only downside is the upkeep and additional roads, but that should not be a problem

 

[Promethian]

23,000 inhabitants, and you are basically finished with the DLC. I guess that's the scale the game is built for.

Hate to say it but you aren't entirely wrong. This is as far as the unique factories go and if you can see it on the screen I am importing 990 purple with zero other sources of purple. I don't even have that much commercial. I'll have 3x as much commercial before I hit the final milestone. So the unique factories can barely sustain me at this point.

However the unique factories are not the entirety of the expansion. The goods from the new 4 specializations do get sent to generic industry and are more profitable and fun to set up than the old zones. So its an improvement to how industry works for the entire life of your city. I'd say its a better upgrade than Green Cities, which mostly just replaced zoning with prettier zoning.

 

[Arthemus26]

Hi.
I made an account just to comment on this topic.
I'm also having trouble with the unique factories running out of materials. This is happening even with warehouses next door, with 0 trucks in use, and with plenty of the relevant material in storage.

In my main map have a central industrial area for manufacturing and 4 satellite areas to produce raw/specialized materiais.
I suspect the factory is ordering from the warehouses in the specialized zones instead of the warehouse next door. Which makes zero sense. They should order from the closest warehouse, they should order far more often, and they should stockpile more materials to avoid running out. Specially if the production rate is increased.

 

[Glitcher]

The left warehouses hold the unique goods.

Is there any point to storing unique goods? They're the end result of production, so they should either by sold in stores or exported for cash. Storing them serves no purpose.

 

[barrygreybeard]

the advantage of storing them is that when your commercial zones are in need of the resource they are immediately available so do not make a request for an outside delivery.

 

[Avanya]

For those interested I just released a guide dealing with how to balance out the production chain and talking about why certain issues happen. I hope that helps understand the whole thing a bit better.

I suspect the factory is ordering from the warehouses in the specialized zones instead of the warehouse next door. Which makes zero sense. They should order from the closest warehouse, they should order far more often, and they should stockpile more materials to avoid running out. Specially if the production rate is increased.

I agree that would make much more sense, but that isn't how the game works. It's just like services, it never considers where a building is when responding to an issue or request for resources, it's just a matter of who's available first (I'm not sure how the game determines this). Depending on what you're using the far away warehouse for, it might be worth changing the options for it. For example if it's just a resource dump for the nearby processing buildings, it might be benfitial to set it to Empty instead as that will likely keep it busy exporting leaving your warehouse closer by as the one available to respond.