I had marketplaces, lots of them but not many farms. I was intending to import all my food. However I never imported enough, then I realised that possibly I was being restricted to 500 units. Is this true?

Is it not possible to import all of your food?

Unless I have multiple docks maybe?

(17-02-2012 09:58 AM)Mikeeboy Wrote:  I had marketplaces, lots of them but not many farms. I was intending to import all my food. However I never imported enough, then I realised that possibly I was being restricted to 500 units. Is this true?

Is it not possible to import all of your food?

Unless I have multiple docks maybe?

Each freighter will only bring 500 units of any particular import

so with a large population, few home grown resources and multiple markets you would need to have more freighters arriving, so more docks are are needed.

Additional docks should do the trick.

The default import for marketplaces is corn. If you have a really barren island, you can go into the Import/Export section of the Almanac and turn on imports for fish and pineapple as well, that will get you 500 of each with each freighter (if your import limit is high enough). The variety also helps improves food quality.

(17-02-2012 09:58 AM)Mikeeboy Wrote:  I had marketplaces, lots of them but not many farms.

Be carefull to not have to many markets if you import foods. The teamstersystem is from tropico3 when imports didnt exist and doensnt allways compute with what you want.

Each time a freighter comes it will distribute the 500 corn amongst all of your markets, wich meens that if you got 10 markets, thats 10 teamster = about 3 teamster offices needed just to transport corn for each freighter arriving since all of them aint working all the time. Each hauling 50 corn wich wont last long aswell.

So , in addition to building extra docks, make sure you got teamsters to haul the load aswell.

And if you got 10 markets, and 4 docks, and each dock get 2,5 freighters each year that meens that your teamsters will have to make 100 corn deliveries each year...

If you allso import banana, papaya and fish like someone else said, that meens its 400 deliveries. And then maybe that 1 delivery from your oil-refinery aint so important for your teamsters as it is for you.
And then you need 12 teamsteroffices just to transport food to the markets, wich aint so cost efficient anymore since you might aswell build 12 farms.

I did this mistake once and wont do it again, my import based industry needed 8 docks to get enough supplys ( i had 6 of each kind or so), and that didnt work out so well with all the markets i allso had so i ended up with 350 teamsters.


basicly lots of docks and lots of markets is contra productive. You have to compromise.

With small populations (less than 500 or so) you can rely on imported food heavily. You've just got to manage it well, and make sure that you have cash in the bank to import stuff. If, as soon as you get your export cash, you spend it all on building or other things, you leave nothing for the imports.

There is one flaw with relying on heavy imports on big islands..

You need tons of dock workers, and teamsters, infact many times it's far more than you would need if you just had your own farms..

if im not running with imports, i can have one teamster office, perhaps 2, most of the time.. But when i want to do heavy imports, ill have 5-6-8.. and that leads to a ton more traffic.

something to think about.

Surely the trip a teamster has to make from dock to marketplace is the same (maybe a bit further in practice) as the trip he has to make from farm to marketplace. You could argue that from the dock it's more efficient since from a farm it goes to garage and then to marketplace?

---

I'll add a new one into the mix as well. If I import fish and pineapple and also have canneries, if those canneries need the input, will all of the imports go to the canneries? If so, will my food quality rating still rise i.e. do the tropicans know what they're eating or does the game just look at the food types that are in the system?

Yes it is the same distance, but thats not how it works..

A teamster will goto a farm and pick up all 800 units, or even more bring it to a factory or dock in one shot.

i dont know the exact amount they can get from the docks, but its not 800+, and it's not even 500.. So what takes a teamster one trip to go from farm to market, or farm to industiral building, can take 2-3 teamsters or more to move the exact same amount of material from the docks to where it needs to go..



I dont know if the other foods you can import will goto markets or not, i never tired to import food. I have heard you can only import corn, but perhaps that is cause you need to swap it manually. I supose i could test it one day to not build any food producers and see how the whole thing works, but i havent as of yet, Nor have i seen many posts about it.

Basically, if you are using heavy imports your number of teamsters will go way up, especially if you have any farms running along with the imports.

I personally have never experiment will only imports, but i'd be currious to try one day.. Perhaps if you only have docks running and all your industiral close by it might work.. If you do give it a shot, update the post with your findings..

Hi,

Teamsters will bring exactlyn500 from the docks, tested it yesterday by accident with logs to a lumbermill. I assume it is the same with food.

Cheers,
Loerelau

(21-02-2012 06:29 PM)loerelau Wrote:  Hi,

Teamsters will bring exactlyn500 from the docks, tested it yesterday by accident with logs to a lumbermill. I assume it is the same with food.

Cheers,
Loerelau

it is not always the case.. Especially if you have more than one building, And other products the amount changes. Just watch your docks for any leanth of time. You will see amounts as low as 80 being taken at times.

But even if they can take the whole 500 load from the docks, they can take more from the other buildings..

As i said, heavy imports change how they work drastically.

If you have a cannery, imported fish and pineapple will go there first (even if your people are starving). Only when their import queue is full (900+ units or so) will the overflow go to your marketplaces.

Tropicans don't eat canned goods. The food quality score seems to vary with availability and variety at the marketplaces -- ideally, you'd have full markets with corn, fish, beef, cheese, pineapple, papaya, and banana.

(21-02-2012 06:29 PM)loerelau Wrote:  Hi,

Teamsters will bring exactlyn500 from the docks, tested it yesterday by accident with logs to a lumbermill. I assume it is the same with food.

Cheers,
Loerelau

As i said i my earlier post, those 500 will be divided amongst the number of places that need deliveries. If you have 5 markets, you requiere 5 teamsters, each taking only 100. 500/5=100 units.

(26-02-2012 04:54 PM)Sovereign Wrote:  

(21-02-2012 06:29 PM)loerelau Wrote:  Hi,

Teamsters will bring exactlyn500 from the docks, tested it yesterday by accident with logs to a lumbermill. I assume it is the same with food.

Cheers,
Loerelau

As i said i my earlier post, those 500 will be divided amongst the number of places that need deliveries. If you have 5 markets, you requiere 5 teamsters, each taking only 100. 500/5=100 units.

You know it has me wondering if you have say 5 cannery, and 5 docks.. would that number rise to take the full 500?

(26-02-2012 07:15 PM)Tropije Wrote:  

(26-02-2012 04:54 PM)Sovereign Wrote:  

(21-02-2012 06:29 PM)loerelau Wrote:  Hi,

Teamsters will bring exactlyn500 from the docks, tested it yesterday by accident with logs to a lumbermill. I assume it is the same with food.

Cheers,
Loerelau

As i said i my earlier post, those 500 will be divided amongst the number of places that need deliveries. If you have 5 markets, you requiere 5 teamsters, each taking only 100. 500/5=100 units.

You know it has me wondering if you have say 5 cannery, and 5 docks.. would that number rise to take the full 500?

Negatory, If you have 5 docks and 5 cannerys. It will not mean they will take a full 500. They will still take 100 each from each freigher, only you will have 5 times more freighters coming.

(27-02-2012 12:21 AM)Sovereign Wrote:  Negatory, If you have 5 docks and 5 cannerys. It will not mean they will take a full 500. They will still take 100 each from each freigher, only you will have 5 times more freighters coming.

Ok.. so then it is as i was thinking, if you have any sort of standard expanded industry, then you are definatly going to be relying heavily on teamsters. which is also a traffic issue.

No wonder why on heavy import islands my typical traffic set ups are soo off. Perhaps with modern times and the metro system it wont be as bad.