How much goods does a commercial zone need?

[DukePingwin]

I have a question about commercial demand for goods. First some context:



I have a city of 150k pop on an 81-tile map and my factories (dlc) are not properly supplied. My uniques all have warehouses nearby with the semi-finished products and my processors have nearby raw materials but they never spawn a truck. They are full, set on balanced and do nothing.



I use a mod to not allow import or export of base materials (crops, ore, oil and timber) and that works, but semi-finished and commercial goods (incl unique version) are still exported.



Now the issue seems to be I hit the 16k vehicle limit. When I hit the ‘remove all traffic’ button on the traffic manager the raw material producers send out trucks to the processors but the warehouses still do nothing. Like they are on strike. I tried the mod to up the vehicle limit (to 64k) and it doesn’t cause any issues on my system but it also doesn’t generate more vehicles as far as I can see. I will test this with the mod that shows the amount of vehicles in use but I still need to install that one.



So I did a bit of research on the wiki (slow day at the office) and realized to meet the demand for all unique factories combined the amount of processors and extractors is very limited (made an excel) and I have at least 3-4 times that.



But I also have a chunk of generic industry to produce goods, as my commercial districts are substantial and need more stuff to sell than the uniques can make. So, this industry also needs raw materials and draws from the same farms/mines/drills/woodlands as my processors. I assume a generic factory turns a truck load of raw material (8 tons) into a truckload of goods (8 tons) and I read the type of raw material is random each time the factory makes a demand for materials. (and the speed of the transition depends on the number of squares in the building?)



What I would like to understand is how much generic industry I would need on top of having all the unique factories to feed my commercial zones. What I cannot find out is how many tons of goods does a commercial zone (say 4x12 squares or any other size) roughly need to source. So what I am looking for is a way to estimate the total demand for commercial goods for my city. (assuming no policies etc)



I have cut off all highways and train connections, to stop the uncontrolled importing and exporting. I guess I will need several warehouses for goods to deal with fluctuations in demand and supply due to timing, but that should be doable.



I think I have a lot of unneeded extractors and processors generating the traffic that is now pushing me into the 16k limit. I hope if I can streamline it I can get rid of it, so any help would be appreciated.

 

[ASGeek2012]

First off, don't bother with the more vehicles mod. It simply will not deliver on it's promise of 64k vehicles.

If you really are constantly hitting that 16K vehicle limit, you need to solve that problem first and rule that out as the source of your industry issue. Start by looking to see if you have enough public transit. Check the ridership on those lines and redo the ones that have low ridership. Try to figure out exactly where your cims want to go. I've gotten cities up to 150k and generally top out around 9K to 10K vehicles active. Also try to eliminate tailbacks on your highways, as those are just eating up your vehicle count.

As for how the industrial and commercial demand works, the system the game uses is a little wacky. It does NOT look for the closest source of supply. When a factory puts out a call for a resource, the game randomly selects a source from anywhere in the city. When a unique factory complains about not enough resources, it's not necessarily because you don't have enough, it's that it called for the resource from a warehouse way on the other side of the city and it's still in transit. The same goes for commercial buildings. When they put out a call for goods, it gets answered by a random industrial source.

The only way to really combat this is with a smoothly flowing road network and an internal cargo train network to get goods and resources around your city faster.

 

[Admiral 8Q]

As for how the industrial and commercial demand works, the system the game uses is a little wacky. It does NOT look for the closest source of supply. When a factory puts out a call for a resource, the game randomly selects a source from anywhere in the city. When a unique factory complains about not enough resources, it's not necessarily because you don't have enough, it's that it called for the resource from a warehouse way on the other side of the city and it's still in transit. The same goes for commercial buildings. When they put out a call for goods, it gets answered by a random industrial source.

The only way to really combat this is with a smoothly flowing road network and an internal cargo train network to get goods and resources around your city faster.

There doesn't happen to be a mod that makes the algorythm chose closest sources is there?

 

[Beer Fiend]

There doesn't happen to be a mod that makes the algorythm chose closest sources is there?

Closest one would probably be the District Selection Mod.

 

[Promethian]

There doesn't happen to be a mod that makes the algorythm chose closest sources is there?

Steam Workshop::More Effective Transfer Manager

steamcommunity.com

 

[Ragga Muffin]

It would depend on the type of commercial building, its size / density and level of customers.
Even tho im mod free on egg box i think your calculation of primary > secondary > tertiary goods is off.
Someone correct me if im wrong but if a seconary requires 2 different primarys to make a given product the ratio is at least 2:1.
Goods get compacted when processed, so some uniques are getting 3 or 4:1.

That means less deliverys than you see from your primarys to production centres but goods trucks then have to fight customers for the roads, if the supply chain is too long or they just stupidly busy then your commerse will complain

 

[Admiral 8Q]

It would depend on the type of commercial building, its size / density and level of customers.
Even tho im mod free on egg box i think your calculation of primary > secondary > tertiary goods is off.
Someone correct me if im wrong but if a seconary requires 2 different primarys to make a given product the ratio is at least 2:1.
Goods get compacted when processed, so some uniques are getting 3 or 4:1.

That means less deliverys than you see from your primarys to production centres but goods trucks then have to fight customers for the roads, if the supply chain is too long or they just stupidly busy then your commerse will complain

That's a good point actually. The ratio would be more like that. With "Industries DLC" you can actually see the stuff being moved around. So for farming, if a place requires crops and meat products for example, then 2 goods go in, then 1 comes out. (Not sure what the actual ratios are, but something like this) To make meat products you need crops going in (To feed the animals) so maybe it's 2 crops = 1 meat product. A factory that requires 2 or more processed goods or a raw and a processed , or whatever combo would need all the types to make 1 final 'goods'. Perhaps even more than one of each for the final product

This is why industrial areas get so busy with trucks.

For generic zoned industry, it works similar, though more chaotic, so this is why it can be a mess for import/export, trade between different buildings plus sending the final goods out to commercial and exporting.

Note: The DLC industries don't supply local commercial. It all goes to export.
So unless you want all or mostly importing for Commercial, then you will will still need 'generic' zoned industry.

 

[Frederick III]

Note: The DLC industries don't supply local commercial. It all goes to export.
So unless you want all or mostly importing for Commercial, then you will will still need 'generic' zoned industry.

This is not true. Farms will feed the Self-Sufficient Commercial, and Unique Factories will feed generic commercial. Between IT Offices and Unique Factories, I can easily take care of all an 100k city's need for goods without any large number of imports.