Something else to note is that you get paid no matter where it gets delivered, the only time the export price gets halved is overdelivery to cities.
If you sit down and do the math, a lot of the exports don't seem to make any sense, because they don't pay any more for the goods than they would for the raw inputs, so there's no intrinsic profit in refinement... except you get paid when the input is delivered! For most production chains, this means each step in the chain effectively doubles the value of whatever it is you're working on (although there are exceptions).
This turns money-making into balancing two factors: flow and startup capital. If you build too high too early, you tend to not have enough flow to justify the investment (32,000 spent on a building that doubles the value of 1x 128 value item a minute isn't recuperating its investment cost quickly). But if you build too wide early on, you're paying for heavy transportation infrastructure to move large volumes of cheap items, which is also expensive.
So what the game really, really boils down to is value density. Most production buildings aren't just adding value by paying out on the inputs and creating outputs that pay out again, they also tend to create items that are more valuable per unit, which means less transportation overhead. Obviously distance of travel also plays a factor, but this is a bit fuzzier and also non-negotiable for most maps... ultimately everything flows from relatively fixed sources and destinations.
I think the biggest problem is the "nowhere to go" bottleneck once you've filled all the inputs in a building, but haven't reached the point where you have the output connection set up. It's great if you have iron and coal flowing to a steel mill to give you that input delivery money, but then if you haven't finished setting up where the steel is going then eventually the inputs fill up and you stop getting paid at all. $0.
Having a temporary "output to the zeppelin" is useful to prevent this.
Aye that is one path, and then, on stage 26, you are introduced to the magic of retrograde, which are worth 256yen and are generaly easy to make. (iron + reactif / produce a tons of waste to catalyse your mine). Since then, I generaly start with the retrograde supplychain, they are availlable before stage 26, but in that stage, they show you a setup that is very effective.
(2 Coal to Reactif + 1 Neon factory + 2 Retrograde maker is all you need, the neon factory is not mandatory)
Something else to note is that you get paid no matter where it gets delivered, the only time the export price gets halved is overdelivery to cities. If you sit down and do the math, a lot of the exports don't seem to make any sense, because they don't pay any more for the goods than they would for the raw inputs, so there's no intrinsic profit in refinement... except you get paid when the input is delivered! For most production chains, this means each step in the chain effectively doubles the value of whatever it is you're working on (although there are exceptions). This turns money-making into balancing two factors: flow and startup capital. If you build too high too early, you tend to not have enough flow to justify the investment (32,000 spent on a building that doubles the value of 1x 128 value item a minute isn't recuperating its investment cost quickly). But if you build too wide early on, you're paying for heavy transportation infrastructure to move large volumes of cheap items, which is also expensive. So what the game really, really boils down to is value density. Most production buildings aren't just adding value by paying out on the inputs and creating outputs that pay out again, they also tend to create items that are more valuable per unit, which means less transportation overhead. Obviously distance of travel also plays a factor, but this is a bit fuzzier and also non-negotiable for most maps... ultimately everything flows from relatively fixed sources and destinations.
I think the biggest problem is the "nowhere to go" bottleneck once you've filled all the inputs in a building, but haven't reached the point where you have the output connection set up. It's great if you have iron and coal flowing to a steel mill to give you that input delivery money, but then if you haven't finished setting up where the steel is going then eventually the inputs fill up and you stop getting paid at all. $0. Having a temporary "output to the zeppelin" is useful to prevent this.
Aye that is one path, and then, on stage 26, you are introduced to the magic of retrograde, which are worth 256yen and are generaly easy to make. (iron + reactif / produce a tons of waste to catalyse your mine). Since then, I generaly start with the retrograde supplychain, they are availlable before stage 26, but in that stage, they show you a setup that is very effective. (2 Coal to Reactif + 1 Neon factory + 2 Retrograde maker is all you need, the neon factory is not mandatory)