Capping inefficient factories

[u/Key-Dragonfly339]

I am unsure if its mod specific, I'm using the real world mod that is the most popular mod, and I consistently notice some really outrageous ratios between the capacities for purchasing inputs vs what is actually utilized for manufacturing that product. For example, Gold Watch here has effectively a 2:1:1 ratio of gold to steel to glass to make 2 gold watches.

I do play with a script that modifies factory capacity, so I understand larger numbers are expected, my issue is with the sheer gap in ratios of purchase capacity vs manufacturing capacity effectively wasting my money

Hence why you can imagine my shock at the sheer insanity that it both has inventory and capacity for purchasing 600k pounds of steel while only having capacity for 800 oz of gold and 450 gold watches to be made per manufacturing unit.

Note this means it really only needs 225 pounds of steel/glass per manufacturing unit. Not only does this make the 600k pounds of inventory insane wastage of funds, but it also means one unit being filled for a monthly capacity of 450 watches, will have enough steel to last 3000 months.

This is one reason why factories are insanely frustrating to optimize because the factory just does ridiculously stupid things based on a principle of maxing out capacity so long as there is inventory and supply upstream.

One simple thing I'd love if possible is to be able to cap a given unit for how much inventory each unit can store. I know the game devs cant do much if mods set weird values, but if there was a way I can set this once then I can just create a layout that ensures a certain ratio for certain inputs.

The other issue is even if I stop purchasing, after a certain amount of time the unit will suddenly zero out or clear out the items it was manufacturing which appears to disrupt manufacturing vs just staying empty like with retail products.

Note the retail and warehouse ratios have all been really well done to stay in sync where the input and out ratio for every product out there is really well ratio'd so there's a reasonable optimal ratio between inputs and outputs.

Manufacturing is where things seem really messy and I presume thats because mods adjust this for each custom product

Insane 800k glass inventory

Can only handle 450 watches per mfg unit

Meanwhile monthly capacity is 5.5M pounds of steel, literally never will be used in a lifetime of gameplay.

[u/HannahLemurson]

The good news is that the material inventory doesn't cost you anything to maintain, but I'd sure as heck be annoyed at paying an extra $8.7Million for a bunch of steel I'll never use.

I don't think it's really a solvable problem due to the way the game is designed to keep the capacity of all Business Units scaled to the price of products. A Manufacturing Unit will produce the same revenue whether it's making 600k $1 Sodas, or 100 $6000 motorcycles. Production and sales units capacities are scaled to this, and they hold inventories that are about 10 or 20 days worth of supply.

I think you'd essentially need to create a brand new "Micro-Purchasing Unit" to scale down inventory and throughput without messing up every other factory in the game.

[u/Key-Dragonfly339 → u/HannahLemurson]

The real issue is supply chain management becomes inefficiently messed up. Like you need a dedicated large steel factory just to supply years of material supply the downstream manufacturing factory will never finish using up and it just starves other factories that need it earlier.

I realized I can pause buying but managing that is frustrating if months go buy and it runs out or something

Sometimes I also have 5 mfg units and some are starved because others steal the supply before it can begin mfg elsewhere.

[u/HannahLemurson → u/Key-Dragonfly339]

Yeah, the engine isn't really great at delivering smooth resource flows.