City Specialization is Broken - Rant

[cubercaleb 8]

So yesterday I started up a new city that had quite a bit of oil, got a decent city going, 50k sims, no real traffic problems, 12k/hour profit with about 4 maxed oil drilling factories or whatever they are called, about 1-2 dozen factories, no garbage problems, education for everyone, no crime, health, or fire problems, plenty of water, sewage, and power, etc. It was all going good up until my oil started drying up (3 month supply). I noticed that the amount of oil that my oil drills were drilling was going down, still making a decent profit but I realized it was a problem, so I waited on the oil hq upgrade to get an oil refinery. Plopped my oil refinery down, maxed it out on plastic which exports for 12k/1k units, as opposed to 4.5k/1k units of oil, hopefully it would make me more money before my oil dried up. Plopped down a trade depot for plastic, set it to export, also set all my oil trade depots to local use. At this point my income drastically dropped down to 7k/hour, all my oil trade depots got filled up, and wouldn't budge, oil production stopped. I noticed a bunch of oil trucks coming into he city dropping off oil to the oil refinery.... That's when I got livid. Instead of the oil refinery using the oil from my city, which it should have been, it was importing oil. This caused a chain reaction in my city as far as my specialization is concerned, loss in profit, even when I should be making much more. It also annoyed the heck out of me that all my factories kept going up in density, then b'ed and whined that they had no workers, even though 2/3 of my city was low wealth med density residential... and I had maybe half a dozen to a dozen med/high density factories tops, they were all low tech so its not like the workers were unskilled. Wonderful, Oil refineries are broken and you can't drill oil for more than an hour of gameplay for it dries up and your profits go down the toilet. Wonderful... just wonderful...

 

Also fix the part where factories whine that they have no workers, oh wait, that's a problem with all the sims filling up the first factory they see. Then go make the sims more intelligent and spread themselves out evenly through the factories, and not clog the same road and factory.

[Zpike 79]

This is not a bug.  It's poor city design.

 

Resources are not infinite.  You have to plan for them running out.  If you have very little oil in your region it will run out quickly.

 

You really can't run a city indefinitely on oil profits.  You can import oil by putting down multiple trade depots.  Then use the oil to run your plastics or electronics factories.  You don't make as much cash as you do if you have oil reserves, but you can make a good living that way.  You can also run a recycling center for extra resources for your factories.

 

As for your worker issues, that also is not a bug.  It's part of your city design.  You must balance your city to fit the demand for your industry.  If you don't you will end up hurting for either workers, traffic, or both.  Take a look at the data sheets under the population tab.  You can see what you have in workers and jobs so you can rezone or improve existing zones to cover the demand.

 

LTP.

[cubercaleb 8]

This is not a bug.  It's poor city design.

 

Resources are not infinite.  You have to plan for them running out.  If you have very little oil in your region it will run out quickly.

 

You really can't run a city indefinitely on oil profits.  You can import oil by putting down multiple trade depots.  Then use the oil to run your plastics or electronics factories.  You don't make as much cash as you do if you have oil reserves, but you can make a good living that way.  You can also run a recycling center for extra resources for your factories.

 

As for your worker issues, that also is not a bug.  It's part of your city design.  You must balance your city to fit the demand for your industry.  If you don't you will end up hurting for either workers, traffic, or both.  Take a look at the data sheets under the population tab.  You can see what you have in workers and jobs so you can rezone or improve existing zones to cover the demand.

 

LTP.

I'm not saying i was expecting to have infinite oil, but having my profits go down after I plop down a oil refinery, and for the oil to not be used locally but imported is what pisses me off, it just fills up the oil trade depots and never gets used, then oil gets imported from nowhere to my oil refinery. also I DO NOT have a worker shortage, what did I say, I said 2/3 my city was residential, the rest was utilities, commercial and industrial. Go re-read my post carefully, it's not my fault, its the buggy state of the game.

[Zpike 79]

Turn off your "import from global market" flag on your oil power plant and they will only use local oil.

Make sure you have a good road system to and from the trade depot, the city entrance, and your power plant. (no traffic)  This will allow your trucks to get to and from your trade depot with the oil for your power plant.

 

 

"it's not my fault, its the buggy state of the game."  - No, it is your fault.  I have many cities all with no issues buying, selling and using resources because they are all built with functional road and trading systems.  If your system is not working it's not because of a bug.

[dkazeki 0]

Turn off your "import from global market" flag on your oil power plant and they will only use local oil.

Make sure you have a good road system to and from the trade depot, the city entrance, and your power plant. (no traffic)  This will allow your trucks to get to and from your trade depot with the oil for your power plant.

 

 

"it's not my fault, its the buggy state of the game."  - No, it is your fault.  I have many cities all with no issues buying, selling and using resources because they are all built with functional road and trading systems.  If your system is not working it's not because of a bug.

Assuming cubercaleb turned off the import global market switch, because he mentions that he set oil imports to "local use only".  It does sound buggy.  

 

I have similar city, where my wells started to dry up so I shut down exports to reserve them for my own fuel and plastic production.  Of course, my profits decreased because, I now had a surplus of crude, that could have been sold on the global market.

[cubercaleb 8]

Turn off your "import from global market" flag on your oil power plant and they will only use local oil.

Make sure you have a good road system to and from the trade depot, the city entrance, and your power plant. (no traffic)  This will allow your trucks to get to and from your trade depot with the oil for your power plant.

 

 

"it's not my fault, its the buggy state of the game."  - No, it is your fault.  I have many cities all with no issues buying, selling and using resources because they are all built with functional road and trading systems.  If your system is not working it's not because of a bug.

I was referring to my oil refinery, not my oil power plant.

[cubercaleb 8]

Turn off your "import from global market" flag on your oil power plant and they will only use local oil.

Make sure you have a good road system to and from the trade depot, the city entrance, and your power plant. (no traffic)  This will allow your trucks to get to and from your trade depot with the oil for your power plant.

 

 

"it's not my fault, its the buggy state of the game."  - No, it is your fault.  I have many cities all with no issues buying, selling and using resources because they are all built with functional road and trading systems.  If your system is not working it's not because of a bug.

Assuming cubercaleb turned off the import global market switch, because he mentions that he set oil imports to "local use only".  It does sound buggy.  

 

I have similar city, where my wells started to dry up so I shut down exports to reserve them for my own fuel and plastic production.  Of course, my profits decreased because, I now had a surplus of crude, that could have been sold on the global market.

That's what i did, the intent was that the oil would go to the oil refinery, get refined and sold at 3x the price, yet the oil refinery just imports oil (its set to use local oil) which backs up oil production and costs me 5k/hour. note that there is little traffic from the oil drills and depots to the refinery.

[kgpurrs 107]

So yesterday I started up a new city that had quite a bit of oil, got a decent city going, 50k sims, no real traffic problems, 12k/hour profit with about 4 maxed oil drilling factories or whatever they are called, about 1-2 dozen factories, no garbage problems, education for everyone, no crime, health, or fire problems, plenty of water, sewage, and power, etc. It was all going good up until my oil started drying up (3 month supply). I noticed that the amount of oil that my oil drills were drilling was going down, still making a decent profit but I realized it was a problem, so I waited on the oil hq upgrade to get an oil refinery. Plopped my oil refinery down, maxed it out on plastic which exports for 12k/1k units, as opposed to 4.5k/1k units of oil, hopefully it would make me more money before my oil dried up. Plopped down a trade depot for plastic, set it to export, also set all my oil trade depots to local use. At this point my income drastically dropped down to 7k/hour, all my oil trade depots got filled up, and wouldn't budge, oil production stopped. I noticed a bunch of oil trucks coming into he city dropping off oil to the oil refinery.... That's when I got livid. Instead of the oil refinery using the oil from my city, which it should have been, it was importing oil. This caused a chain reaction in my city as far as my specialization is concerned, loss in profit, even when I should be making much more. It also annoyed the heck out of me that all my factories kept going up in density, then b'ed and whined that they had no workers, even though 2/3 of my city was low wealth med density residential... and I had maybe half a dozen to a dozen med/high density factories tops, they were all low tech so its not like the workers were unskilled. Wonderful, Oil refineries are broken and you can't drill oil for more than an hour of gameplay for it dries up and your profits go down the toilet. Wonderful... just wonderful...

 

Also fix the part where factories whine that they have no workers, oh wait, that's a problem with all the sims filling up the first factory they see. Then go make the sims more intelligent and spread themselves out evenly through the factories, and not clog the same road and factory.

So your factories kept going up in density?  1.  Why did you put a higher density road then you wanted?  You can always destroy the factory, and downgrade the road.  This is your fault.  Worker shortage because they all go to one factory?  Nonsense, factories require 20% low wealth workers to operate, then they move on to the next empty factory until that 20% is met, etc.  Once all are 20% met, they fill in the rest.  A high density factory requires 300 workers and provides 1400 jobs max.  One factory can support a huge population, my city of 250k population supports only TWO high density factories.  Your 50k population could never support half a dozen high density factories.  Use your bulldoze, use your de-zone.  DERP!

 

Oil (plastic/fuel) Refinery does not accept global deliveries, they can only get supply from a trade depot (maybe you don't need depots if you produce them from an oil field I never tried).

 

Basically the way my oil cities work, is I get 50k gallons of oil a day, then I start to refine it all into fuel (screw plastics).  Once I get to 30k fuel a day my production starts to drop to about 40k gallons of oil (its drying up).  Eventually it gets to the point where I just destroy all the oil wells and import 50k gallons a day with 5 oil refineries (these employ a ton of people btw, you don't want any industry in your city at this point taking up jobs).

[AlexMBrennan 11]

Are you sure you are importing oil from the global market rather than seeing local supply trucks taking detours?

In any case, it's obvious that profits will drop when you stopped exporting oil when you plopped your first refinery because there is no way you will able to process oil from four oil wells with one refinery. Stopping exports was a mistake - because import and export prices are equal, you are better off selling your oil immediately and upgrading your fuel refineries; once oil runs out or the oil wells can no longer keep up with demand start importing.

Going for plastic was suboptimal since fuel is more profitable.

The solution to the worker shortage is obvious - zone more residential and less industry. You do not need independent industry once you have unlocked specialisations.

[Zpike 79]

You can also use two supply depots setting one to "export" and the other to "use locally".  Just give the export depot only one bin for the resource you want to export.  As long as you have an abundance of resources being produced you should have enough to export some and still have some to use locally.

[dkazeki 0]

You can also use two supply depots setting one to "export" and the other to "use locally".  Just give the export depot only one bin for the resource you want to export.  As long as you have an abundance of resources being produced you should have enough to export some and still have some to use locally.

I did the same.  It provides better control.

[dkazeki 0]

Are you sure you are importing oil from the global market rather than seeing local supply trucks taking detours?

In any case, it's obvious that profits will drop when you stopped exporting oil when you plopped your first refinery because there is no way you will able to process oil from four oil wells with one refinery. Stopping exports was a mistake - because import and export prices are equal, you are better off selling your oil immediately and upgrading your fuel refineries; once oil runs out or the oil wells can no longer keep up with demand start importing.

Going for plastic was suboptimal since fuel is more profitable.

The solution to the worker shortage is obvious - zone more residential and less industry. You do not need independent industry once you have unlocked specialisations.

 

I agree with Alex that you have to prepare yourself for the eventual drying up of your wells, at which time will be required to start importing.  But until then you might as well use your own crude for refining and plastics.  Why import when you can have it for free.  I think zpike's suggestion was pretty wise, to keep both actions going.  It all depends if you want to make a killing upfront, or keep juicing that well at higher profit margins for a longer time.  The later having more longevity.

 

My town also started to decline, but not due to export/import woes, but traffic started choking my city.  With so much land devoted to drilling/refining/trade, my RCI was not setup correctly to maintain profit.  I'm borrowing money now to fix the layout.

[AlexMBrennan 11]

Sorry, but no. If you sell the oil at one depot, and buy the same amount from another depot then there is no net gain/loss because prices are identical.

However, if you stockpile crude oil then the time value of money becomes a concern - you could sell all your oil today, invest it immediately and buy it back at the same price at a later time; it's basically a free loan.

[Vaikin 10]

The main broken thing with mining/drilling, is the fact that the supplies only last a few months. Any real city would have resources for decades.

[dkazeki 0]

Sorry, but no. If you sell the oil at one depot, and buy the same amount from another depot then there is no net gain/loss because prices are identical.

However, if you stockpile crude oil then the time value of money becomes a concern - you could sell all your oil today, invest it immediately and buy it back at the same price at a later time; it's basically a free loan.

 

...wait, do we have to buy the oil from ourselves?  I know there is the cost to produce the oil (capital costs of the drill rigs and drilling operations) but I'm pretty sure, without doing any calcs that it is less than importing the same quantity of oil.  If the cost they same, then I'd agree with you and take advantage of the time-value of money.

 

Assuming that producing oil is less than importing, you could continue to exporting your surplus and make your cash early.  Or if you were satisfied with the current rate of income, I would stop all exporting and turn every ounce that you drill into a higher profit product (plastic, fuel) and let that run for a longer duration.

[Cob92 360]

I use two depots always. One by the city entrance for exports, and one near the refineries that acts as overflow storage for the wells before the oil goes to the refinery.

[Zpike 79]

The main broken thing with mining/drilling, is the fact that the supplies only last a few months. Any real city would have resources for decades.

 

 

That's not broken, that's just a balance issue and will be adjusted if they feel it needs to be.  This is common with multiplayer games.  The economy is static right now while they fix more critical issues.  Once they turn on the dynamic economy we will see how things balance out and changes will be made.

[cubercaleb 8]

Well I plopped down three more oil refinery's to "keep up with demand" and demolished the industry. Power and water consumption went way up, sewage and garbage output went way up, and so did health problems, at this point my oil was getting refined and sold however I was only pulling in $500 an hour, even tough my petroleum hq said the profit was way up (2x what it was before). At this point I demolished my refineries, replaced them with industry and set my depots to export, turned off the unneeded utility add ons, and all of the sudden I'm pulling in 10k again.... 

 

I stand by my statement, Oil refineries are broken and useless.

 

Looked some stuff up, apparently plastic isn't profitable... So if I plop down the oil to fuel add ons and i export that instead will i make money?

[Vaikin 10]

The main broken thing with mining/drilling, is the fact that the supplies only last a few months. Any real city would have resources for decades.

 

 

That's not broken, that's just a balance issue and will be adjusted if they feel it needs to be.  This is common with multiplayer games.  The economy is static right now while they fix more critical issues.  Once they turn on the dynamic economy we will see how things balance out and changes will be made.

I get the need for balance(not having resources last forever), but they're all but gone after only a few sim years. If you grow accordingly, your city won't even have half the area covered and you'll be out of coal/oil/ore. It's way too fast....

[Trooth 22]

I have never seen this. The refinery shuts down if it has no oil. You can't have it import oil directly. You must have a depot importing unless a region partner is gifting oil to you. Maybe you do have a bug. The trade system is one of the few things that works in this game

Well I plopped down three more oil refinery's to "keep up with demand" and demolished the industry. Power and water consumption went way up, sewage and garbage output went way up, and so did health problems, at this point my oil was getting refined and sold however I was only pulling in $500 an hour, even tough my petroleum hq said the profit was way up (2x what it was before). At this point I demolished my refineries, replaced them with industry and set my depots to export, turned off the unneeded utility add ons, and all of the sudden I'm pulling in 10k again.... 

 

I stand by my statement, Oil refineries are broken and useless.

 

Looked some stuff up, apparently plastic isn't profitable... So if I plop down the oil to fuel add ons and i export that instead will i make money?

you won't see specialization profit in your hourly report for things that get exported. My tv and computer factories make me 4 million a day but I lose 20k an hour. It is something I can live with lol.

[cubercaleb 8]

I have never seen this. The refinery shuts down if it has no oil. You can't have it import oil directly. You must have a depot importing unless a region partner is gifting oil to you. Maybe you do have a bug. The trade system is one of the few things that works in this game

 

Well I plopped down three more oil refinery's to "keep up with demand" and demolished the industry. Power and water consumption went way up, sewage and garbage output went way up, and so did health problems, at this point my oil was getting refined and sold however I was only pulling in $500 an hour, even tough my petroleum hq said the profit was way up (2x what it was before). At this point I demolished my refineries, replaced them with industry and set my depots to export, turned off the unneeded utility add ons, and all of the sudden I'm pulling in 10k again.... 

 

I stand by my statement, Oil refineries are broken and useless.

 

Looked some stuff up, apparently plastic isn't profitable... So if I plop down the oil to fuel add ons and i export that instead will i make money?

you won't see specialization profit in your hourly report for things that get exported. My tv and computer factories make me 4 million a day but I lose 20k an hour. It is something I can live with lol.

That is odd, why would they not show that?

[Trooth 22]

I have never seen this. The refinery shuts down if it has no oil. You can't have it import oil directly. You must have a depot importing unless a region partner is gifting oil to you. Maybe you do have a bug. The trade system is one of the few things that works in this game

 

Well I plopped down three more oil refinery's to "keep up with demand" and demolished the industry. Power and water consumption went way up, sewage and garbage output went way up, and so did health problems, at this point my oil was getting refined and sold however I was only pulling in $500 an hour, even tough my petroleum hq said the profit was way up (2x what it was before). At this point I demolished my refineries, replaced them with industry and set my depots to export, turned off the unneeded utility add ons, and all of the sudden I'm pulling in 10k again.... 

 

I stand by my statement, Oil refineries are broken and useless.

 

Looked some stuff up, apparently plastic isn't profitable... So if I plop down the oil to fuel add ons and i export that instead will i make money?

you won't see specialization profit in your hourly report for things that get exported. My tv and computer factories make me 4 million a day but I lose 20k an hour. It is something I can live with lol. That is odd, why would they not show that?

It shows on the other side of the budget for expenses and income, but not in the hourly reports. Technically it isn't an hourly income or expense that is collected or spent. Just a big series of import and export transactions.

[dkazeki 0]

 

I have never seen this. The refinery shuts down if it has no oil. You can't have it import oil directly. You must have a depot importing unless a region partner is gifting oil to you. Maybe you do have a bug. The trade system is one of the few things that works in this game

 

Well I plopped down three more oil refinery's to "keep up with demand" and demolished the industry. Power and water consumption went way up, sewage and garbage output went way up, and so did health problems, at this point my oil was getting refined and sold however I was only pulling in $500 an hour, even tough my petroleum hq said the profit was way up (2x what it was before). At this point I demolished my refineries, replaced them with industry and set my depots to export, turned off the unneeded utility add ons, and all of the sudden I'm pulling in 10k again.... 

 

I stand by my statement, Oil refineries are broken and useless.

 

Looked some stuff up, apparently plastic isn't profitable... So if I plop down the oil to fuel add ons and i export that instead will i make money?

you won't see specialization profit in your hourly report for things that get exported. My tv and computer factories make me 4 million a day but I lose 20k an hour. It is something I can live with lol.

That is odd, why would they not show that?

 

I thought the same thing, so I posted it in another discussion thread.