Trade Depots not exporting/importing

[TinyBigJacko]

My thanks to cagestooge for his fairness. XP duly delivered, pal.

As a background to my comments about interrogating the staff, I did make it clear (so I thought) that you might actually have to click on individuals and examine their 'follow' screen (to see what reasons they gave for leaving work), and perhaps even follow them to the type of home they went to (because the land-value of this home will indicate what $-rank they are).

My rationale for this exploration was because someone else had commented that he'd seen staff going into buildings, and immediately turning round and going back to a home, with the explanation about leaving work early after picking up their paycheck, skipping work and suchlike. We deduced that it may be to do with the wrong wealth-level or education-level staff taking jobs at the plant when no other staff was available. Sure, it was an early-day hypothesis, made very soon after game-release - and it may still prove to be relevant - but who knows for sure? Certainly for some folks, the issue of staffing (mainly overall numbers, but in some cases, proximity of a building to a nearby population centre of the right wealth-level) HAS proven to be a critical factor in getting their building(s) working. Not everyone, for sure - but for some folks yes. Some folks didn't even consider that they NEEDED staff, or know how to check that the buildings were staffed at all (Population overlay). I've had one or two 'thankyous' precisely on that score, so it wasn't a completely wasted trip.

And to be totally fair, 30+ pages of people yelling "heyitdontworkmaxisfixityoulamers" doesn't exactly constitute 'evidence'. It constitutes noise. Evidence comes from examining the factors - sometimes even quite seemingly unrelated or non-obvious factors - in a Sherlock Holmsian kinda way, until you've eliminated all chance of PEBCAKery from the equation. It seems a lot of people are resistant to doing that, because it involves work, or thinking, or for reasons I can only guess at. I can imagine those same people trying to operate heavy machinery or pilot an airliner in the real world - and I have to laugh. I'm not addressing anyone on this thread with that comment (but if you're reading this and the cap fits, well hey!)...

I would however make the same comment here as I have on another thread. If you have a 'broken' trade-depot or port, why not get someone else to have a look at it as a spectator and see if they can help you PROVE that it's a bug. Many eyes are better than one, and all that. Tell people these three bits of info and we MIGHT be able to find your city and look at your problem first hand.

•  The SERVER your city is on
•  The REGION name on that server where your city is
•  Your CITY name.

Given those three bits of info, there is a chance that some of these cities can be found and checked, to see whether there are overlooked outside influences or whether, hey, yeah buddy, you're absolutely right, this is a grade-A, starin'-us-in-the-face, hot-darn BUG, chap.

But my last call for this kind of info met with equally scant attention-to-detail (on another thread) - so far, not one person has managed to provide ALL THREE bits of info, making it virtually impossible to even find their cities, let alone check them. And if people can't even follow such simple instructions, it again makes you wonder whether the bugs are ALL down to the game, or its handling by its players.

As cagestooge said - don't shoot down the people trying to help you - instead help them to help you. It's clear that Maxis/EA aren't listening to this forum in the slightest (maybe all the feedback they're listening to is coming in via Facebook, or Twitter, or at their local t*tty-bar, perhaps). So in the meantime, we have to help ourselves if we can. Step one, is provide data - and there's usually too much to fit into a single forum-post, or you'll miss stuff out, so the easiest thing to do is to share your city's info in the hope that others can find and examine it. That alone is not easy, thanks to Maxis's lack of search-facility on the servers, and there being so many servers now. But that's all we can do. One more time:

SERVER - REGION - CITY. Anything less than all three is a waste of everyone's time.

Good luck out there. It's madness on the streets of SimCity right now.

[dumeka]

In all "Fairness", you shouldn't set things as solved when they aren't either.

As about Server and everything, I had created a other topic with specific informations yesterday.

The trade depots are taking in the normal goods (crates from the industry) and as they come, so they are going aswell which shows that this part still works and the workers as also the trucks are working aswell.

However, OIL doesn't work. My oil pump was full till I bulldozed the thing and went with culture ignoring that I even have oil and my two trade depots that are still there are filled with oil that is NOT getting exported no matter what.

It's like the recycling center issue with the materials it seems.

On the other hand, great works are gaining materials and then all of sudden losing them which ends up with us not being able to finish a great work due to the lack of materials.

Had metal up to around 1100 at traders ridge (Dumekas Region on NA West 1 server) and it dropped down to 210 in front of my eyes.

We had oil almost filled and then it all of sudden dropped down to the half.

[tinybigjacko]

dumeka - just for reference - I didn't set the topic as solved. Only the original poster can do that. Not me.

[Flarestrike]

Just as a heads up I have this same issue with trade depots not exporting or importing. Only work for inner city things. Completely destroyed my city since it was my main source of income and then had a couple of disasters.

Experimenting I plopped down a trade port on the rail line and viola, it works! So trucks wont export from my city but trash, police, fire, ambulance and everyting else will go to other cities. But trains are working just fne for me. They come by every few hours. (Approximately 360 minutes or 6 hours but more often if you plop more lots).

I hear some people have a glitch with the HQ that even if they get the trade commerce upgrade they cant get the trade port lots to unlock but I didnt have that issue in this case. Just a heads up it may work. Hope this helps out some people. Better yet, I hope they patch these issues soon. >.<

[aluc82]

Not sure if everyone was aware of this already but I thought I would mention it just incase. I too have ran into alot of exporting and importing issue. I did some experimentation and notice these things.

- you can turn off all delivery trucks at trade depot and still be able to export. It appears a seperate truck visits your city and once it loads the goods you see the green money up animation and some inventory disappear.

- the delivery trucks being ON do not seem to affect the export truck visit rate.

- trade centers (the bigger version with freight and train option seem to have higher export truck visit rates.

- the more trade depots on export the more exporting trucks visits.

- maximum export of tvs by boat per visit is 20000.

- if you set two type of goods as export at the same trade depot or center the ship will only pick up the first one you selected.

As for importing (assuming your traffic in and out of city is good)

- setting a resource to import will affect your local delivery of resources. I m not sure why yet but I assume your trucks are being used up (need to test). If you have a full tech city like me try to turn on import at a few of trade depots and watch all the factories blink red. Then turn off import to use local and watch them all go back to normal. Maybe maxis meant to do this to give peeps an incentive to make parts, but importing anything but ore coal and oil can be devasting to your production line.


Thats all i can think of atm. Hope it helps.

[OMGPotatoe]

I have 2 trade depots and one trade harbour, the harbour delivers frieght once or twice a day. but the trade depots just sit there full of materials. they used to export goods then they just broke. wheather or not its a bug i do not care, if it is it needs to be fixed, if it is not  then it needs to be made clearer what to do to rectify the problem, some kind of advisor warning in one of them thought bubble jobbies. we cant all just be stareing at broken frieght depots not doing a dam thing and not acctually know why, like thats a part of the game!!!

[osense]

You destroyed my simtrading game! Now my multi million dollar city has gone bankrupt because my TVS and Computers are not selling! Boozie Coozie on Antartica , now its in processing both our citys 50 hours each of game play has about 4 citys in the region in processing , What a waste of our lifes! 

Recyclying centres broken also .  Half way through our Achology build! 

I hope the next patch will resolve these issues , I am still going to continue but may give it break now for the next few months till it is a complete game

[brotocat]

I'm having the recycling problem now, all was working fine until I had a water shortage problem. After I got the water up and running well again, my entire recycling centre just refused to send out any material yet continue to make it's daily collection rounds. I have the max amount of collection trucks yet my collection rate dropped by almost half and I can't even collect 70% of what my city makes despite being a pretty small population (100,000) when it was fine before. I've tried to keep my city afloat to see if it will fix itself, but after days I just can't keep it up and nothing's changed. It was my money maker and now it seems all I can do is start a new city after spending days of time on this one - bug or not, it's a sour dissapointment and it's going to lose players.

Oh while I'm at it, regions with "max water level" should rain more than once every 3 years so people are not forced to use recycled poop water. Just saying.

[Blackdragonbird]

A screen of one of my cities with this problem. Look at the connection of the Arcology, all trucks of my trade depots are stuck in the highway, and no, the traffic is not blocked, the trucks simple got stuck in its spawn point. Only the trucks of my Trade Port are working, but, not the train.

http://i712.photobucket.com/albums/ww121/bdragonb/Games/SimCity%202013/2013-03-2909_54_16-Greenshot_...

[VexSWTOR]

Post update 4 this problem persists on the Antartic server.  My city will not import oil or coal and my city will not export anything from the trade depots.