I want this feature which is why I keep posting on my original post. In gathering information for this post, I found one of my older posts from 2017 requesting
Multiple Floors for Warehouses. It lacked a poll which means it couldn't get the kind of traction needed for implementation. Three years later, it was delivered to us as an additional feature for the Banking and Finance DLC. The Subsidiary DLC delivered the Multiple Floors System for retail stores. Maybe I should pin my hopes on the MFS for Factories debuting in the upcoming Real Estate DLC.
Nope!
On January 24, 2020, Avengergb got things moving with this
post requesting multiple floors for all buildings. The All of the Above option won, gathering 33 percent of the vote. Factories came in second with 24 percent of the vote. Surprisingly, 8 people voted against implementing multiple floors for any of the buildings.
Lagrelax commented on running out of space for factories in low-wage cities, an indication that he was playing a centralized distribution style while saving on manufacturing costs. Avengergb fleshed out his thoughts a bit more while discussing manufacturing similar items in the same warehouse, i.e, car body, wheel and tire, and engine. Or, in the case of farms, having frozen beef, leather, and milk all on the same farm using multiple floors.
I jumped in and discussed the space limitations, especially when playing with the Real World Mod.
Leveragedbuy chimed in the first dissenting opinion, arguing complicating the user interface and introducing AI and balancing problems. I countered this argument by pointing out the interface clutter of multiple floors in retail store, of which, there is none; however, in hindsight, I do agree with his thoughts on gameplay balance. One solution he proposes is playing with or building more cities. The former suggestion can be achieved by script, the latter is only possible if you own CES DLC. Those solutions ONLY work if you tend to build all your factories in the lowest wage cities. Later in the thread, leveragedbuyout
writes the retail stores benefit from multiple floors because high-traffic, downtown real estate is limited. A bigger point is that he segues to production capacity which was not at issue to that point in the thread.
Enter a poll by David:
Potential Solutions to the problem of running out of space building factories
In this poll, he offers two solutions. One is the currently implemented solution which is the Factory Capacity Modifier. The second solution, which actually won the poll with 58 percent, was the different medium and large factories having different capacities. Both of these solutions attempt to deal with the space problem by increasing capacity. There is a lot of good discussion on this thread. Let's examine some of it in hindsight.
David replies to avengerbg, asking if he sees any reason why either solution 1 or solution 2 wouldn't work to address the problem of space. The main selling points David is pushing are ease of implementation, requiring no new interface elements. Also, David writes, " With 10 cities, it may be enough space to build factories to produce most of the products. But a certain percentage of players within this group of players prefer playing with a fewer number of cities. Because of that, the problem of insufficiency of space will surface." His assumption is if you play with more cities, space shouldn't be a problem. David acknowledges neither solution 1 nor solution 2 may be suitable for players who play with fewer cities.
Let's agree, playing with more cities affords more space. What playing with more cities doesn't solve is the need the manufacture AND sell some goods in the same city because of the freight cost index. It makes more sense to build a bed factory in every city versus building 5 bed factories in one city and paying freight to ship it across the world. If you take a similar approach for other products with a high freight cost index, you begin to quickly fill up that space.
Avengerbg's idea of being able to increase the capacity of a specific factory stroke of genius when I think about the limitation of the Factory Capacity Modifier which is set by script and locked in for the duration of the game. At the same time, a real-time capacity adjuster probably hurts the training aspect of the game. Here is an idea I'm opening to, being able to adjust the capacity of a factory down from a level already achieved or given via script. For example, if the factory capacity modifier is set via script at 200, which is double, that would be equal to a level 4 factory. Being able to adjust down from would make the feature way more useful. Avengerbg acknowledges that increasing capacity doesn't solve the problem of mods growing, adding more products.
In my own reply in this poll, I proposed to David a what-if scenario, i.e., the retail capacity modifier, to address the issue of limited, high-traffic, downtown real estate. In it, I acknowledge that it would work and that developers had already given us an elegant solution, now proven in retail and warehouses.
Leveragedbuyout points out this it should be done by script only and that if was a part of the new game menu, people may wonder other buildings don't have a capacity modifier. In this post, leveragedbuyout hits upon something: modifying the capacity of factories, but not the other buildings that interact with them.
Colonel_truman, advocating for solution 2, wanted the A.I. to be able to choose their factories better. David replied that he would forward the suggestion to the development team. Since colonel_truman was leaning towards solution 2, solution 1 leads to exactly this quote from colonel_truman: "Fantastic. They often become unprofitable and then spiral down to bankruptcy because of the factory size" Indeed, I ran a test using the factory capacity modifier at 500. The result was AI competitors going bankrupt, The increased factory production produced way more than it could ever sell. Avengerbg hit on this same point later in the thread writing, "Hope the Ais won't keep building largest factories with this increased capacity, thus making them work always on loss .... Actually another thing comes to mind, maybe even don't touch capacity, but make all factories 2x2 in size, that will reduce greatly the space need to build factories, especially in modded games."
The end result of this thread was the announcement that the factory capacity modifier had been implemented as of version 6.4.02.
Going back to Avengerbg's original post, he makes a
compelling visual argument for multiple floors using farms to show how large farms or factories eat up space. Image that scene each city.
GnoSiS discusses firm density, suggesting buildings with the same footprint 2x2 or 4x4, with more production. This is basically the factory capacity modifier with more in-game flexibility. Avengerbg counters with the right point. It isn't about production capacity. It about the sheer variety of products.
Yimmy points out how the factory capacity modifier set at higher than 100 percent eats through suppliers that are only operating at 100 percent. That is another issue.
All this is to show how this discussion evolved from a space argument to a capacity argument. Even on
Script - Special Rules, it is presented as a solution to the capacity problem. The idea is if you increase capacity, you also decrease the number of factories that are needed. Why it works, it fails when a factory serves a single city. It fails because if you double a factory capacity by DEFAULT (via script), you cannot, in turn, double the capacity of a farm, mine, oil well, logging camp, or warehouse.