simcity-2013
I have several industries complaining now.
I have built a Trade Depot and added several Freight Shipping Warehouses. Some of them seems to be used (fills up with boxes), but there's lots of free space.
How does freight shipping work really? What am I missing? How do I stop the complaints?
Goods spawn at commercial buildings at 6 am and at 6 pm.
Residential shoppers buy the goods from commercial buildings. If there are no goods at a close commercial building, the shopper will search farther and farther for goods.
This is how it happens:
In the commercial view, dark blue bars represent goods, while dark blue cars and people represent shoppers. The building on the left has depleted its goods, and will not be visited by any more shoppers this cycle.
The green smiley (with an up arrow above) is a residential building gaining happiness that a satisfied shopper has returned.
Commercial buildings that don't successfully sell goods will abandon.
Freight is generated from industrial buildings while workers are present. Industrials ship freight to commercials and storage. Freight that is delivered to storage just "rots", allowing allowing more shipments to arrive.
Freight that is delivered to a commercial building is converted into money inside the building. Money in a commercial building allows the building to grow and keeps the building from abandoning. It is possible to keep a commercial building alive and growing through goods sales only, with no freight delivered.
This is how it happens:
In the Industrial View, there are four highlighted items:
The yellow bar indicates freight in the industrial building, while the teal bar indicates past successful shipments. Yellow trucks indicate freight headed to fill an order. Teal trucks indicate satisfied shipments returning to the industrial building.
The whole freight acceptance and decay concept appears to be in flux at this point. At launch, I observed trade depots filling with freight, which would just sit. Today, these same depots receive freight and vaporize it within the hour. I have observed trade depots, commercial buildings and coal mining plants accepting freight.
Industrial buildings that don't successfully ship freight will abandon.
https://twitter.com/MaxisGuillaume/status/314508463445266433
yeah it makes power for them -- almost 100% for D1, 30% for D2 and 10% for D3
I'm assuming that D is short for density...
Best Answer
Freight Delivery Truck Respawn
Each industrial building gets its own truck to deliver freight. The truck will locate nearby available orders and attempt delivery. Delivery may involve multiple buildings. All the freight on the truck must be delivered before the return trip starts.
If the truck returns from delivery quickly, it will spawn once per hour - each industrial building has its own timer. This way you get 24 truck deliveries per day.
If the truck is delayed, does not return in one hour (before the next truck would spawn... then the next truck doesn't spawn. The building resets the clock for another hour. This can happen when the gets stuck in traffic, or its freight shipment is far away. In this case, you get less than 24 truck deliveries per day.
For example: if a truck takes 2.5 hours to return, the next truck will spawn in 0.5 hour. The building keeps the timer. If this happens consistently to the same building, you'll get 8 truck shipments per day.
If your city suffers complete gridlock, you may get down to 2 truck shipments per day.
Solving the problem
If you switch to industry view, and you observe an industry building which never hits 0 freight (empty yellow bar) - then you have identified a building that really needs better freight shipping. Either solve the traffic jams, or place a freight accepting building close to the industry. Watch the truck before you try to solve the problem.
Freight accepting buildings include commercial buildings, trade depot with freight attachment, trade port with freight attachment, many service buildings (power, sewage), and the road out of the city (although I haven't seen that last one accept freight yet).