Not getting resources delivered

[JuliusAlexander]

Okey dokey, let's start with a screenshot:

You can see where the Ore Industry is, the red arrows point to a Lemonade factory, and an electronics factory, both requiring resources from that site. There isn't a great deal I can do about the distance, this is where the Ore is. So what I've done is plonked down two cargo trains and linked them up. You can also possibly make out, a Cargo Hub, next to the word "Docklands", which has a road linking it to the collector running parallel to it. Despite this, neither of those factories are getting the goods I need, nor are the warehouses I set up next to them. In fact, the trains from the Ore site to the factory are extremely infrequent (it works so I know it's not a problem with the line). What on earth is going on? It's simply impractical to have put the factories over next to the Ore Site because then they're a million miles away from the oil and crops they rely on. So how do I get the resources to them?

Also, on a side note, is is possible to have screenshots be thumbnails on this forum? I feel like I'm taking up too much room with the pictures.

 

[Lucododosor]

Also, on a side note, is is possible to have screenshots be thumbnails on this forum? I feel like I'm taking up too much room with the pictures.

You can hide images (or anything really) behind spoiler tags. It's an option in the top menu when writing a comment.

As for your issue, do the resources never get delivered or they do once in a while?

 

[paulxiep]

Despite this, neither of those factories are getting the goods I need, nor are the warehouses I set up next to them.

I don't see any warehouse next to the factories. If you place 1 warehouse for glass and 1 for metal near them that should work. (don't forget electronics need plastics too)
You might have to demolish and rebuild the 2 factories to reset the material order, but ONLY do that after your new warehouses have some materials ready.

And you have to avoid having other glass and metal warehouse in other areas far from the factory too, otherwise the factories might decide to be dumb and order from the far-away warehouse instead, and will wait quite a while for it. That does happen with vanilla transfer manager.

ps. roads with median is quite bad for industrial area. You can't deliver from the opposite side so trucks will have to drive the long way getting themselves onto the correct side.

 

[JuliusAlexander]

Resources get delivered OK, just not in sufficient quantities to keep the factories operating with any level of consistency. They operate only for as long as the delivered resources last then go silent waiting for the next delivery which is every ten minutes or so. As for the warehouse, it's there, I'm just not using a vanilla one for space saving reasons, and no, they aren't bugged, they work perfectly fine. The warehouses suffer from the exact same issue as the factories, they don't receive enough resources to fill on balanced. When I previously used a vanilla warehouse, before the Electronics factory was built, and turning off the Lemonade factory, it got to the dizzy heights of 1% full. That's why I tore it down and used a smaller one from the workshop.

Also, on a side note, my Cargo hub isn't working, insofar as ship deliveries, unless I build a Cargo harbour somewhere. What's up with that?

Edit: Here's the latest problem. This one takes the biscuit.

Someone want to tell me how the hell that crop field can't have enough buyers whilst at the same time the Lemonade factory right next to it doesn't have enough crops to produce Lemonade with?

 

[MarkJohnson]

Also, on a side note, is is possible to have screenshots be thumbnails on this forum? I feel like I'm taking up too much room with the pictures.

Yes, down below where you "Attach files" you will get an option when you press the logo of the attach file, after it has uploaded and it will give you an option of "Insert..." there should be two options. Thumbnail or full screen.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Also, on a side note, my Cargo hub isn't working, insofar as ship deliveries, unless I build a Cargo harbour somewhere. What's up with that?

I know ships won't come unless you have a direct line of sight to the actual shipping lane. If there is the slighest curve and it blocks it just a tiny bit, it won't send shipments to the harbor. That maps looks like it should have at least one.

If it has more, then maybe you have a mod issue somewhere?

 

[JuliusAlexander]

I know ships won't come unless you have a direct line of sight to the actual shipping lane. If there is the slighest curve and it blocks it just a tiny bit, it won't send shipments to the harbor. That maps looks like it should have at least one.

If it has more, then maybe you have a mod issue somewhere?

Even if the route shows green? I mean I literally made no change to the positioning of the hub, I simply placed a harbour down and both harbours suddenly started getting ships. Right now the Hub is acting like a Cargo Station rather than a Cargo Hub, i.e. it gets trains, but not ships.

 

[JuliusAlexander]

OK I made some adjustments and I'm telling you the way supply chains work in this game is fundamentally broken and the least realistic aspect of the game. Let me layout why in a simple example. I have a Petroleum refinery on one side of the road, a Pyrolysis Plant, and a Petrochemical plant on the other side of the road. Literally as close as I can get it - 2u. The factory is continually pausing while it waits for resources to be delivered from down the chain. This simply would not happen in real life, no manufactory will ever operate on anything less than a surplus of materials, they don't wait for the materials to be delivered before commencing production. The devs need to take a look at this and adjust the way the supply chains work to reflect this because the way its set up is wholly unrealistic and the biggest cause of the inconsistent income. My set up is in the picture.

The way to fix this is for factories to have limited native storage that acts as a buffer for (reasonable) delivery times.

 

[MarkJohnson]

The game works as first come, first served. It doesn't wait. if cargo is ready, it goes right now!

So, when a building asks for freight, it gets the nearest one available right now. Then when your next door building asks for freight, it will get the closest one available right now. But now, the station next door is already out on delivery, so it can't get it from next door anymore. It has to wait for the other building in the next district over to send it next door to you. The game does not wait.

so raw materials are harvested, then it waits for a processor plant to call for the closest raw material. Then the processed good now waits for a unique factory to call for the processed good. then it makes a Luxury good that gets called by commerce to be sold to cims, as first come/first served.

Supply chain Wiki:

Supply chain - Cities: Skylines Wiki

skylines.paradoxwikis.com

 

[JuliusAlexander]

The game works as first come, first served. It doesn't wait. if cargo is ready, it goes right now!

What you're doing is conflating two issues, I'm not talking about the supply chain, I know how that works, I'm talking about production.

Let's look at a real life car manufacturer, say Ford, for argument's sake. A Ford plant has on-site storage for materials, and items produced downstream by their suppliers, sound systems, for example. Production operates on a supply chain running from the on-site storage to the manufacturing facility, with outside deliveries keeping that storage full.

In Cities, this is not how production works. In the game it sends out a call for the resources it needs, then waits with zero production happening while those resources are delivered. It doesn't matter if there is a warehouse next door, it still requires a travel time during which all production ceases while it waits for delivery, production then starts, and promptly ceases again while it sends out a call and waits for deliveries.

If Ford operated like this, Ford would be out of business. You can't have 1000+ employees, all sat around, being paid to twiddle their thumbs while they wait for the materials to turn up, not to mention the costs of the machinery running, lighting, heating/air-conditioning etc., you'd be loosing millions a day in operating costs and be out of business before the week was out, but this is precisely how it works in Cities (I've been watching it in detail all day).

This is why your economy can wildly swing from thousands in the green to thousands in the red and back again. Everything shuts down while it waits for the supply line to catch up. What I'm proposing is that a buffer is needed on a production building that compensates for delivery time thus simulating on-site storage. This would make the supply chains more realistic. If you don't maintain your supply chain you will eventually run out, the buffer simply eliminates the production delays.

Edit: Just to reinforce check this screenshot out:



You see that shipyard? Do you know how long in-game time it took to receive Plastic, the nearest produced good? 4 years. It continued production for six months and then promptly ran out of goods. It resumed production after two months of downtime while it waited for supplies, supplies coming from warehouses, warehouses that are to the left of the cargo station you can see, a cargo station that is linked directly to two other cargo stations, one at the Forestry, the other at the Mines.

Do you for one minute believe a company could build a shipyard and then wait four years for goods so it could start production and have a two month downtime every six months and remain in business? If you don't think this is broke I've a bridge to sell you.


On a side note, I'd still like an answer on the cargo hub if at all possible, please.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Please take the time to actual read the wiki I linked. It does exactly as you want it to do.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Ah, I see the problem now. You have that broken Seahorse Archipelago map. That map is broken. I tried to convert your custom roads to get it to work, but you used some mod to align roads or something and things aren't getting through to the nodes to make delivery.

I highly advise you to just start a new game. It will take more work to fix that map than just starting over. I spent several days trying to fix that maps in different sections for you, and I don't think I got through 10% of your map from the headaches of bulldozing roads and moving buildings around and trying to figure out what was what everywhere.

But the only thing not working in your city are the roads being misaligned with buildings. To say the least. I'm sure there are other issues on top of that.

I highly recommend to avoid the mods. Even assets may give you problems. Maybe go vanilla and maybe the 25-tile mod, as it lets you unlock the inner 25-tiles, and then you can unsubscribe the mod and the tiles stay unlocked.

 

[JuliusAlexander]

tl;dr The call for resources are going out too late which is why production ceases. Fix it, please.


The Wiki says no such thing, the Wiki says exactly, precisely what I've been saying. I've attached it since the forum won't let me link it.

Industry Processors (e.g. Oil Rig) => Special Goods (e.g. Plastic) => Unique factory.

In the real world there is a step that is missing in Cities (actually there are several but I'll keep it simple):

Industry Processors (e.g. Oil Rig) => Special Goods (e.g. Plastic) => Unique factory storage bay => Unique Factory Production Line.

If Cities was real life, the Production line waits for the Warehouse to deliver the items directly to the Production Line. The Warehouse has to retrieve the items from storage, move them to the loading area, load them onto the trucks, drive through traffic to the Factory's unloading area, unload the cargo, were upon the Factory has to move the goods to the Production line. While all of this takes place the production line has ceased operation.

This is not how it works, there aren't a gang of workers chucking resources onto the production line from the back of a wagon, calls for resources for the production line aren't going out externally, they're going out internally. It runs thusly:

Storage bay => Production line => Call = Storage Bay

Similarly the Storage bay puts out its own calls to the warehouse and/or downstream suppliers for the resources/goods it needs to keep the production line running. The storage will have something like seven days of production in it and a call goes out every three days to keep it filled. Cities does not simulate this because the way Cities supply line works, as demonstrated in the graphic. The map most certainly is not broken, the roads are certainly not broken, you don't even know what roads I'm using so it's an extremely disingenuous suggestion to make. What Colossal have done is over simplify the way it works in real life, for reasons I completely understand, but in the process have made an inefficient operation because it cuts out the internal storage and relies wholly on the external delivery direct to the production line.

The way to fix this is incredibly simple and requires barely anything in the way of resources. I might even dig into the code and fix it myself. Two numbers need to be changed, the number of resources delivered per truck needs to be increased, the timing of the call needs to be more frequent. That way your production never ceases.

 

[Ragga Muffin]

tl;dr The call for resources are going out too late which is why production ceases. Fix it, please.


The Wiki says no such thing, the Wiki says exactly, precisely what I've been saying. I've attached it since the forum won't let me link it.

Industry Processors (e.g. Oil Rig) => Special Goods (e.g. Plastic) => Unique factory.

In the real world there is a step that is missing in Cities (actually there are several but I'll keep it simple):

Industry Processors (e.g. Oil Rig) => Special Goods (e.g. Plastic) => Unique factory storage bay => Unique Factory Production Line.

If Cities was real life, the Production line waits for the Warehouse to deliver the items directly to the Production Line. The Warehouse has to retrieve the items from storage, move them to the loading area, load them onto the trucks, drive through traffic to the Factory's unloading area, unload the cargo, were upon the Factory has to move the goods to the Production line. While all of this takes place the production line has ceased operation.

This is not how it works, there aren't a gang of workers chucking resources onto the production line from the back of a wagon, calls for resources for the production line aren't going out externally, they're going out internally. It runs thusly:

Storage bay => Production line => Call = Storage Bay

Similarly the Storage bay puts out its own calls to the warehouse and/or downstream suppliers for the resources/goods it needs to keep the production line running. The storage will have something like seven days of production in it and a call goes out every three days to keep it filled. Cities does not simulate this because the way Cities supply line works, as demonstrated in the graphic. The map most certainly is not broken, the roads are certainly not broken, you don't even know what roads I'm using so it's an extremely disingenuous suggestion to make. What Colossal have done is over simplify the way it works in real life, for reasons I completely understand, but in the process have made an inefficient operation because it cuts out the internal storage and relies wholly on the external delivery direct to the production line.

The way to fix this is incredibly simple and requires barely anything in the way of resources. I might even dig into the code and fix it myself. Two numbers need to be changed, the number of resources delivered per truck needs to be increased, the timing of the call needs to be more frequent. That way your production never ceases.

a warehouse on fill, next to factory for all its needed resources will fix your issue.
As for things like that not working like that in real life. Iv quite literally been on a line waiting for a truck to deliver, while getting paid, hell ive seen workers hopping off the back of a lorry to goto work. On my line with me, straight from a farm.
Sometimes your farmer cant get to you in time, so you goto middleman