Importing Unwanted Raw Materials

[blueplectrum]

Hello everyone,

I've just bought the Industries DLC and playing on PC. I have a problem that i couldn't. I'm trying to build a forest industry but i cant make warehouses or processors to stop importing materials. I have more than enough extractors for my processors. I have a small log yard for my excess raw materials. I just cant make processors to use home made raw materials. If it helps in any way for you solve my problem, these are the steps i've followed from begining.

1-Created a industry zone and changed it to forest zone with main forest building.
2-Put down 6 or 7 extractors
3-Placed 2 Small Log Yards. But as soon as i placed them, a huge wave of importing trucks came in town and filled the Log Yards immediately. I have no idea why they import raw materials to storage while there are 6-7 extractors across the street
4-After having some money, I've put down 2 Sawmills. I thought maybe these Sawmill will use filled up Small Log Yards' goods but NO! They've decided to import their own raw materials.

It happened on my other save file with farming industries. I havent found a solid fix for this problem.
What am i doing wrong? How can i fix this 'problem' ? Please Help

 

[MrDaaark]

It says trucks in use 12/12. So it's too busy to fill the orders. When you first put these things down you have to wait out the initial setup period while they fill up with massive traffic. You also have to make sure you are balancing out the needs of all the different units.

If your processor building is like "I need wood", but all the storage building trucks are in transit, then the processor building will import.

If you just want to make money, you can ignore the mechanics and just spam extractor buildings. My city of less than 10K population yesterday was bringing in $100,000+ every week just from exporting everything. Put down a cargo train station nearby and you'll speed up that money making.

 

[ristosal]

There's currently an issue with excessive imports to storage buildings, which will hopefully be fixed alongside next week's free update. Normally a storage building should only import to about 50% if it's set to balanced (instead of something like 300% as they do now).

 

[DukePingwin]

What you need is more warehousing capacity and you probably need less wood production. (or more usage of wood)

What i normally do when I start a new type of industry is first build a warehouse and import materials to fill it up a bit. (Keeping it on balanced). Once there is some wood I build something that uses wood and the warehouse will now deliver it. The using plant will not import because the warehouse trucks are not doing anything so they can deliver the materials. Once that flows I build some wood extractors, but not more then my industry needs. I also make sure I have quite a bit of warehousing capacity to make sure there are always trucks available.

If you over build your extractors your warehouses will be overloaded and start to export. If you do not have cargo trains or a cargo harbor nearby this means the warehouse trucks are delivering the materials off the map and once all trucks are exporting they cannot do deliveries to your plants. As a response your plants will import what they need.

It is a lot of traffic you also do not need in your city.

 

[blueplectrum]

Thank you for your answers.

@MrDaaark As you and Duke said, my problem is my trucks are all occupied. I will watch your videos now thank you.
@ristosal was it always like this? Or did it get broken after previous patches or something?
@DukePingwin I guess that is exactly the problem i'm having. As you can see on the screenshots, my Log Yards' trucks are always in use, exporting excess logs to off-map. I guess thats why Sawmill always try to import because Log Yards cant deliver. But why not the extractors? Cant the Saw Mill gather resourcers directly from the source?

I'm relatively new to the game. There are still some mechanics i'm trying to get used to both in the vanilla game and DLCs, but this thing here is kind of broken i guess? It is not working as it should be.

 

[blueplectrum]

What you need is more warehousing capacity and you probably need less wood production. (or more usage of wood)

What i normally do when I start a new type of industry is first build a warehouse and import materials to fill it up a bit. (Keeping it on balanced). Once there is some wood I build something that uses wood and the warehouse will now deliver it. The using plant will not import because the warehouse trucks are not doing anything so they can deliver the materials. Once that flows I build some wood extractors, but not more then my industry needs. I also make sure I have quite a bit of warehousing capacity to make sure there are always trucks available.

If you over build your extractors your warehouses will be overloaded and start to export. If you do not have cargo trains or a cargo harbor nearby this means the warehouse trucks are delivering the materials off the map and once all trucks are exporting they cannot do deliveries to your plants. As a response your plants will import what they need.

It is a lot of traffic you also do not need in your city.

Okay so I've tried what you've said. I've build a Small Grain Silo and let it import all of its storage. After that i've build 1 Small Animal Pasture. But the problem is since the Silo is full, it stated to export some of its materials and then import it again. Since the Silo is using all of its trucks to export, Animal Pasture still imports the material it needs. I've not extractor built yet.

Am i building the wrong building? Should i use Warehouse instead of Silo? What is the difference between these two other than warehouse being manageable with different kinds of materials to store?

 

[blueplectrum]

I'm trynig to build a self-sufficent city from start. As soon as i hit Tiny Town, i want to start produce farm and wood products to boost my income. My goal is to go full green city as much as i can with Industial DLC. I guess i'm still missing something.

 

[ristosal]

@ristosal was it always like this? Or did it get broken after previous patches or something?

Broken by one of the recent patches, it was working properly for years.

 

[blueplectrum]

Broken by one of the recent patches, it was working properly for years.

I hope they fix it in upcoming patches quickly. I've bought the DLC with so much hope and excitement. This really bums me out.

 

[MrDaaark]

I hope they fix it in upcoming patches quickly. I've bought the DLC with so much hope and excitement. This really bums me out.

It's only a minor issue.

You will have no problem making your city self sufficient with this DLC. You can run entire cities off a single farm or forestry industry because they bring in so much weekly income. Especially if you have a cargo train station. You'll never have to worry about money again.

Once you get a nice road loop going of extractor -> raw storage -> processor -> storage -> train / harbor going. You'll have trucks just driving in a nice circle and generating nonstop income for your city. You don't have to worry about anything, or micromanage supply chains either. The units will figure it out. When a single industry area is generating between 75,000-100,000 every week, you don't need to worry about the problems of individual buildings.

 

[blueplectrum]

It's only a minor issue.

You will have no problem making your city self sufficient with this DLC. You can run entire cities off a single farm or forestry industry because they bring in so much weekly income. Especially if you have a cargo train station. You'll never have to worry about money again.

Once you get a nice road loop going of extractor -> raw storage -> processor -> storage -> train / harbor going. You'll have trucks just driving in a nice circle and generating nonstop income for your city. You don't have to worry about anything, or micromanage supply chains either. The units will figure it out. When a single industry area is generating between 75,000-100,000 every week, you don't need to worry about the problems of individual buildings.

75k-100k Weekly? Wow. I've just bought the rest of DLCs on Steam Spring Sale. I'm playing the Green Power Scenario and wether the remaining DLCs are filling up the gaps or commercial zone policy organic and local produce, I've started generate 'some' money on my farming industry.

I dont have much of a 'FARMING INDUSTRY', but a small farming area. I'm still trying to get used to Industry and the other DLCs so i'm taking it slow. But still, how do you make 75-100k weekly? Do other types of goods and products generate more? Or does it have to do with placement of the building?

I'm currently making about 15k profit on my farming industry but it bounces up and down constatly. From 5k to 20k. Do you have any tips to improve the efficency ?

 

[MrDaaark]

As I said, I just spam extractor buildings. I find a big patch of land that can support the industry and then I cram as many extractor buildings as I can into that space. Then I just make a cargo train station. I end up with never ending trucks looping around from the extractors to the train to export it all for $$$. Driving to a nearby train station is quicker than driving out of town on a long trip. So the trucks can go back and forth constantly picking up and dropping off the yields. Fast $$$.

Your screenshot looks like you have more farming land to the north. Cram as many fields in there as you possibly can! Turn that fertile soil into money and export it all.

Your area there looks good. But you have a lot of storage buildings and a lot of processing buildings, it's adding up to almost $5,000 a week in needless upkeep. You also seem to have multiple buildings for both milking parlors and slaughterhouses? In real life you would have both to produce milk and meat, but in the game they both just produce the abstract 'animal products' resource in different amounts.

You only need the cattle shed to feed 1 slaughterhouse. And then a warehouse to store the resulting animal products for any factory that might need it. The overflow will be sold off.

All the rest of your extractor buildings can just keep selling off their yields. What are you storing all that for? You are paying to store what you could be selling for weekly income!

 

[blueplectrum]

As I said, I just spam extractor buildings. I find a big patch of land that can support the industry and then I cram as many extractor buildings as I can into that space. Then I just make a cargo train station. I end up with never ending trucks looping around from the extractors to the train to export it all for $$$. Driving to a nearby train station is quicker than driving out of town on a long trip. So the trucks can go back and forth constantly picking up and dropping off the yields. Fast $$$.

Your screenshot looks like you have more farming land to the north. Cram as many fields in there as you possibly can! Turn that fertile soil into money and export it all.

Your area there looks good. But you have a lot of storage buildings and a lot of processing buildings, it's adding up to almost $5,000 a week in needless upkeep. You also seem to have multiple buildings for both milking parlors and slaughterhouses? In real life you would have both to produce milk and meat, but in the game they both just produce the abstract 'animal products' resource in different amounts.

You only need the cattle shed to feed 1 slaughterhouse. And then a warehouse to store the resulting animal products for any factory that might need it. The overflow will be sold off.

All the rest of your extractor buildings can just keep selling off their yields. What are you storing all that for? You are paying to store what you could be selling for weekly income!

When all the extractor trucks are in use, processors start to import resources. So i though if i have bunch of storage units with weekly surplus resources from extractors, processors would have no problem finding the resources they need. First few weeks were a complete traffic mayhem. After that it just sorted itself out. Yeah but maybe the problem is stack up so much resources i can be selling. Plus the weekly cost of the storages...

 

[MrDaaark]

Correct, but

You don't need 40 storage buildings for like 6 processors.

You can't help the import thing. I understand your goal, but the game is going to do what the game is going to do. Just like how you have garbage trucks out 24/7 instead of a proper garbage day. Or how buildings will call from services from halfway across the map instead of the building next door. You just have to roll with it. I also wouldn't worry about importing $500 worth of resources when the area in general is making $5,000-$50,000 a week. You can just make it headcannon, like the Shelbyville Lumberyard is bidding low on wood imports and undermining your self sufficiency goals.

Your flour and your animal products are resources for UNIQUE FACTORIES to use. Every unique factory can just keep 1 warehouse nearby for each of the resources it needs. Or a larger warehouse if multiple nearby factories use the same resource. Anything more and you're wasting your own profits.

If you spam extractor buildings, you'll often get a lot of status icons that say no buyers and etc, but I wouldn't worry about it. It will constantly cycle and you'll get a fluctuating avalanche of money every week. You can add warehouses at that point, but I don't tend to worry about it. I can fund an entire city off a messy extractor only forestry or farm, or I can have perfect logistics. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[rwk219]

Hello everyone,

I've just bought the Industries DLC and playing on PC. I have a problem that i couldn't. I'm trying to build a forest industry but i cant make warehouses or processors to stop importing materials. I have more than enough extractors for my processors. I have a small log yard for my excess raw materials. I just cant make processors to use home made raw materials. If it helps in any way for you solve my problem, these are the steps i've followed from begining.

1-Created a industry zone and changed it to forest zone with main forest building.
2-Put down 6 or 7 extractors
3-Placed 2 Small Log Yards. But as soon as i placed them, a huge wave of importing trucks came in town and filled the Log Yards immediately. I have no idea why they import raw materials to storage while there are 6-7 extractors across the street
4-After having some money, I've put down 2 Sawmills. I thought maybe these Sawmill will use filled up Small Log Yards' goods but NO! They've decided to import their own raw materials.

It happened on my other save file with farming industries. I havent found a solid fix for this problem.
What am i doing wrong? How can i fix this 'problem' ? Please Help

If you are open to using mods then Transfer Manager CE is exactly what you need.

I use this to:

1) Not allow my extractors to export. I basically force them to send raw materials to processors. Raw material is not very profitable.
2) If there are no unique factories needing processed materials then I use TMCE to allow processors to export. Processed materials are more profitable than raw.
3) If processed material is needed for factories then I use TMCE to not allow processors to export.
4) Warehouses and storage buildings are often not needed with TMCE, especially if extractors/processors/unique factories are close together, since you are essentially dictating where materials will be going. But if I do build them then I use TMCE to not allow them to import.
5) In TMCE options you can set an option to make roads seem longer / more time consuming (in terms of calculations) than other means of transport. Basically you are making rail lines seem more attractive.

I believe you can micromanage even further by choosing specific buildings and such but I haven't delved into this. I find doing things on an area/district basis keeps things running smoothly most of the time.

by the way, if you do choose to do this then you'll need to make sure your processor needs match up nicely with your extractor capabilities and that your unique factory needs match up nicely with your processor capabilities.

For example if you have too many extractors and you won't allow them to export then they'll just sit on product while they wait for your processors to need more product. I find having 2 small extractors matches nicely with 3 small processors.

another example, if your unique factory needs are less than what your processors are outputting then similarly your processors won't have any where to send product (if you set them to not export) while they wait for your unique factories to need product again. So in such a case you may want to allow some of your processors to export (they'll still send to your UF but if they get filled up then they'll export).

 

[blueplectrum]

If you are open to using mods then Transfer Manager CE is exactly what you need.

I use this to:

1) Not allow my extractors to export. I basically force them to send raw materials to processors. Raw material is not very profitable.
2) If there are no unique factories needing processed materials then I use TMCE to allow processors to export. Processed materials are more profitable than raw.
3) If processed material is needed for factories then I use TMCE to not allow processors to export.
4) Warehouses and storage buildings are often not needed with TMCE, especially if extractors/processors/unique factories are close together, since you are essentially dictating where materials will be going. But if I do build them then I use TMCE to not allow them to import.
5) In TMCE options you can set an option to make roads seem longer / more time consuming (in terms of calculations) than other means of transport. Basically you are making rail lines seem more attractive.

I believe you can micromanage even further by choosing specific buildings and such but I haven't delved into this. I find doing things on an area/district basis keeps things running smoothly most of the time.

by the way, if you do choose to do this then you'll need to make sure your processor needs match up nicely with your extractor capabilities and that your unique factory needs match up nicely with your processor capabilities.

For example if you have too many extractors and you won't allow them to export then they'll just sit on product while they wait for your processors to need more product. I find having 2 small extractors matches nicely with 3 small processors.

another example, if your unique factory needs are less than what your processors are outputting then similarly your processors won't have any where to send product (if you set them to not export) while they wait for your unique factories to need product again. So in such a case you may want to allow some of your processors to export (they'll still send to your UF but if they get filled up then they'll export).

I dont really like using mods but being able to manage import/export may be what i've been missing. I'll look into it. Thank you.

 

[DukePingwin]

To clarify something mentioned above a few times, the role of the cargo train station.

If you build say 50 oil drill platforms you will have way more oil then you need so you can export. But you will also see your drills reporting 'no customer available' and that doesn't mean there is no demand. It means the trucks are all in use but there is oil ready to ship. Driving off the map and back takes time and that time is too long to keep up with production. Once the drill's storage is full and there is no truck available it stops producing.

So add a cargo train (or harbor) and the trucks only have to go there, drop of the oil and they are back real quick. That makes sure your drill can always produce = earn money.

 

[MrDaaark]

To clarify something mentioned above a few times, the role of the cargo train station.

If you build say 50 oil drill platforms you will have way more oil then you need so you can export. But you will also see your drills reporting 'no customer available' and that doesn't mean there is no demand. It means the trucks are all in use but there is oil ready to ship. Driving off the map and back takes time and that time is too long to keep up with production. Once the drill's storage is full and there is no truck available it stops producing.

So add a cargo train (or harbor) and the trucks only have to go there, drop of the oil and they are back real quick. That makes sure your drill can always produce = earn money.

I end up with never ending trucks looping around from the extractors to the train to export it all for $$$. Driving to a nearby train station is quicker than driving out of town on a long trip. So the trucks can go back and forth constantly picking up and dropping off the yields. Fast $$$.

That's what I was getting at. The map GREEN PEAKS has an oil deposit right next to train tracks in the south east corner, and the northern most tiles have oil, forestry, farming, and ore right off the northern sections of tracks. It's non 6 figure income just from stacking extractors right up to the train stations. Just an endless profit loop.