This is a guide for the cash-strapped town councils, who care about saving money... or at least wants to pretend as conservatist gevernments always do.

Information included here should help you in choosing appropriate storage for your both zonable special industries or Industrial Areas (any of these storage units will be filled in with products from industry specialization zones (those growable, pre-Industries DLC) and special industry extractors, which you can mix and match).
It should also speed decision making process and allow frustration free time spent on this game - sometimes people spent few minutes here and there checking all these tabs, trying to figure out what's more expensive.

I was going to say that one of the mods would be very useful here (Customize It) in adjusting some values, but as it doesn't provide settings button for Industries buildings, we need to rely on asset creators to add some sensible values ( a sort of common sense, although I long have argued there's as many common senses as people are out there). Otherwise we get some either well expensive or super efficient products (unrealistic as they are some people will like them anyway).

Values taken into account are all available but scattered, throughout the menus:

- area - tiles it takes from your precious land

- cost - investment, not the most important of them all, it's a one-off cost and unless it's unusually high, we shall pay no attention to it (apart from absolutely poor councils)

- upkeep - price per week, most important of them all as it directly affects the budget every single week after you plop the building and are satisfied (or rather not) with your investment, it is for years to come so be careful

- pollution and noise pollution - that's more for aesthetics, so it won't be influencing the overall picture, unless you'd like your industry storage in the moddle of your residential area

- utilities: water and electricity - indirect cost to you, makes you spend money on new water pumps, sewage (it doesn't seem that these buildings return any dirty water though) and electricity

- capacity - you may have a cheap stuff but if you run out of storage quick, than you need to add more and more and more - refer to the area it takes up to see if it's worth

- freight truck count - may help you change your mind if you are inclined to see less traffic and more capacity of your trucks - check AVO (Advanced Vehicle Options - possibly the regular mod, I think it includes Industry DLC trucks) mod for changing the values

- workers - workforce that can show you how efficient the warehouse/silo is or how much work they have per person (same value, different point of view)


Obviously that's a raw data that everyone sees in game, although still has to come through each building seperately. What's more valuable is what follows - a bit of data manipulation to show you more interesting bits, and my own indexes - described below.

Each of the assets will be also seperately evaluated - only my opinion for enjoyable reading. And also will be provided with links, so one can find them easier than by using the search engine.



So let's get started with farming.

I have downloaded quite a few storage types, I will definitely make sure that the list contains all storage types available in workshop - there's not many of them.


Starting with farming, here's a screenshot of basic... raw data for each one.

* for future reference: cost = investment[/i]

This is the basic information. Fun? No, not really. At least not as yet.



* cap = capacity

... and for those who struggle with moving comma around (all in comparable 1ton unit, appropriately):




Now this is what we all love ;) What we are looking for in here is usually the lowest value. That's not the case for these values: tons/truck and max workload or efficiency (capacity/workplaces) - where the highest value would be most beneficial... but up to a point I would assume. That means to the point of the truck's capacity itself - again, check what trucks you have and their capacity using AVO.



- in-game Industries DLC stuff:
small grain silo
small barn
large grain silo
large barn

There's not much to say about them:
1) the cheapest in upkeep per tile are small barn and large grain silo - useful when every tile counts
2) but the cheapest in upkeep is small grain silo - usually the cost drops with the size increase, this is not the case here, the smaller the better
3) in terms of utility bills or your water and electricity infrastructure - small grain silo wins again
4) this time it's not a winner in its trucks capacity - small barn's trucks can send them most in one go
5) and the most interesting: employees wellbeing, efficiency or workload - the highest workload per person (so the highest efficiency) is in small grain silo - I'd say wellbeing is the lowest here and the highest in the large barn (or are they the laziest? ;-)) . One thing worth of noting - if someone wanted to charge people for getting the Industry Areas by using Park Areas at the gates (see my other guide), then having more workers employed (and lower productivity/efficiency/workload) would be more beneficial.
This is regarding the maximum value, when storage is 100% full - and that value is almost never there if you keep it at balanced storage mode.

- workshop created stuff (evaluation includes in-game stuff for full comparison):

small grain silo - decorative
casolare
deposito fieno
huge grain silo
kokkonen grain silos
porcilaia
rusty warehouse
stalla vacche


1) the cheapeast investment out of all of these items, is stalla vacche, followed by porcilaia - both italian styled buildings, but that doesn't mean the Italians are the cheapest, these are simply run by mafia that enslaved poor migrants from Africa who crossed the world in a search of a better life, running from wars and hunger; on the other hand the most expensive are in-game assets: small grain silo and small barn - not all the smallest thingies are the prettiest here;

Also investment with regards to the building size comes out a bit differently - the winner is that huge Kokkonen Grain Silos - the name seems a bit Germanic to me, not sure why because a translator tells me it's my favourite (one of) language: Finnish! And the least palatable is stalla vacche - that's probably because mafia cows get well too horny... I mean rough during the transport to the new site that you have just plopped down.


2) upkeep per size (don't take me wrong here!) - sweet little small grain silo is not that sweet anymore - the land it takes comes as the most expensive (8 dollars/drachmas/euros/pounds per tile); porcilaia, followed by huge grain silo and rusty warehouse lead the cost in here... yeah! Pigs rule!
And upkeep per ton (storage) - kokkonen grain silos, the bigger the better, it will make your day! Especially if you compare it to that mafioso cow lair - stalla vacche (30 times more expensive!)

3) utilities... again, go for the size: kokkonen grain silos beats everything else. The next best thing is ... well... it's huge as well: huge grain silo.

4) trucks and their capacity - here all but 2 assets have very similar values and are left well behind by: huge grain silo and kokkonen grain silos (the latter being twice as efficient as the first one)

5) if we dropp all the weekly cost of maintanance on trucks (as if there was no building or in other words - I can't distribute the cost between buildings and trucks), the cheapest is: small grain silo. Try to play with beef (stalla vacche) and that will cost you 15 times more :)

6) and my favourite, that doesn't have any influence on anything (I suppose) apart from my ... wellbeing ;) Workload, or work efficiency - All these assets are in range of 14-20 tons per employee. Outstanding is huge grain silo - with making their workers do 31 tons.
Oh... hold on! Wait a minute - kokkonen grain silos! Whopping 150 ton workload per person! This is the true gem - we call it amazing Amazon - work hard and get nothing!

The easiest way to rank it each of these assets is to go by category, such as upkeep per tile or how much electricity is used per unit of storage. But that still doesn't give a full picture and doesn't help in making up your mind. Example is below, starting with farming and their first 2 categories (I'll skip investment as this is a one off cost and it doesn't influence your budget throughout the game).


Here is farming storage by upkeep per tile (the space they take in game, the valuable and expensive area) and by upkeep/storage (1 ton)

And here is the index:

Let's compare them now this way - below is the table - upkeep index - and what was the same ranking in each of these category separately (some have same ranking as they got the same value):



An index is obviously not the price you pay - in here it helps you to understand the upkeep cost in relation to storage capacity and area the asset takes and what would be the cheapest option to run it.




Let's have a look at our utilities (in relation to their capacity as well as area - looking at both as we haven't got such proper information as capacity in cubic meters).
Asset creators take quite a freedom in creating their storage data, sometimes that doesn't correspond to the picture attached and an asset looking larger may actually be much smaller than a tiny dot of storage placed on your map.

We can start here - storage capacity per tile:


While kokkonen grain silos is really large and we can see that when we place it in game (it's tall and takes a lot of area as well), small grain silo comes second largest and still way ahead of the rest of assets - although it's tiny, taking only 2 tiles and visibly it is a small asset as well.


The table below shows usage of water and electricity per capacity unit (as seen before) and also per area unit (tile):


Some of us are looking for just one specific bit of information - that can be found above - and below let's have a general outlook on our utilities in a form of another index:


With the most efficient Kokkonen grain silos in this category, we may start covering our cities with this huge "beauty".




U2 - utility and upkeep or double U - a mix of of them two:


Hope this is helpful so far.




The last two indices are including trucks:

- UTU - upkeep, trucks and utilities

- UT - upkeepa and trucks

I haven't come up with anything creative with regards to them, due to lack of data - their upkeep can be found in one of the first tables, but as they have same capacity (unless changed using AVO), the ton/truck ratio doesn't seem to be very important; what we all probably want is more trucks available per storage asset, in case of very long journeys - therefore i have simply used truck count.






This index ommits utilities cost:






Index consisting of upkeep, trucks and efficiency.
As we already know, some of the asset creators didn't allow to employ more people in their absolutely enormous storage units :) We can only assume they don't complain and they do their job with ease - the more, the better - and here is the outcome:



Having said that, the upkeep, trucks and efficiency index would bring us a different outcome, although not a very useful since the game doesn't count how much your employees are overloaded with work or how efficient they are; this index is more for fun than anything else:

Right... this is the most neglected tab, section, whatever you call it, of the workshop - no user created storage for our hard working humble lumberjacks.

There is only game content here, so let's have a look at it.


And here we get more interesting picture - not a big choice but now you may know better what to choose (especially when your game is limited to one tile only or you have a tiny island and every square counts:

Ore industry gets some attention from the asset creators, and there is something to add on, although the choice between the types comes down to just one item and its extension - set in 3 variants.

Let's have a look at these assets - general information:


And the more meaningful information:


As i said before, the choice comes to the visual one, the additional assets are all the same (which is understandable here, it's what is delivered that is different).

Bulk storage combined with at least one of its extensions (I have it below as a "bulk storage extension - combined"), makes a bit different picture, and adding more extensions of your choice (mix and match, whatever you like, make a chessboard out of it), will lower the cost even more:


The assets presented here:

bulk storage - coal
bulk storage extension - coal
bulk storage - iron ore
bulk storage extension - iron
bulk storage - bauxite
bulk storage extension - bauxite

One of asset creators decided to create a storage for processed instead of raw materials - petroleum - that normally goes to a warehouse. But here we go, we have something new.

Storage for oil raw materials presents a bit more choice than farming section, and that's nice. What changes here is unit - ton changed into a barrel - which is just a different name applied to the same mechanics (I hope oil trucks have different capacity though).

Fixed roof oil tank comes with 3 brands (or shall I say producers?) but beside the name on the face of it, the rest is the same for all 3 tanks.
And the medium oil tank - fixed roof - seems to be much more power hungry than its copy with a floating roof (shouldn't that be the other way around? but still... 960kW when storage is so small???).

Let's start with raw information:



And this is a bit clearer picture:

Warehouse! The beauty in the beast... if anyone can see anything beautiful in any of them - ugly monsters, at least those created from second the half of 20th century onwards.

One thing to mention at the start - I have put on the list 3 items here, but each one of them is over 105 MB heavy file - if you download them.... pray that you and your PC can get along!
These are: modified large warehouse, modified large warehouse - 100 and modified large warehouse - 200 (I've managed to run a game with them but ofor obvious reason will defo remove them from my PC soon after writing this article). They also don't seem to be well thought through with regards to their capacity (area is large but they can contain only tiny amount of goods, they are extremely power hungry, and they have more trucks than they need to deal with virtually no stock in there - which I assume is helpful in long distance travels from one of the map to the other).

And the Coop alsace logistics center - although it's huge (684 tiles in game) it is fairly small for your computer - just below 10 MB. Also it is constructed differently - there is area that is building/occupied area and without mods you can't normally place anything there (as with any other building in game), while the rest of it - you can have a hospital, zonable buildings there, roads, cargo station or an airport in it. Screenshots below:




Now let's begin our feast - raw information, the same as in the game:


And processed (or manipulated) information:


Now, detroit warehouse, as well as chicago one - they are very expensive with regards to area they take up (with the former being very very expensive). But when it comes to upkeep price per capacity unit (ton or barrel), the latter warehouse is a pretty decent one as for its look - neither expensive, nor the cheapest one :)

None of these assets has more efficient workers (or with largest workload per employee) comparing to game assets. But there is quite a few that have larger capacity per tile than any other warehouse, so if you are short of space you may find them very useful - especially these 2: DU47 warehouse and detroitwarehouse with area of 12 and 8 tiles respectively.

The list below contains all these tested assets with links to their websites, they are in the same order as in the tables and as they appear in the game menu (at least in my game). The names (with all their quirks) are as they appear in the game menu for warehouses and not as on workshop - this way it should also help you find them in game (in case you had hundreds of these assets), especially when using Find It mod.

old brick warehouse
warehouse 1
warehouse 2
warehouse 2 - colored
warehouse 4
warehouse 4 - blue
DHL distribution centre
distribution center - corner (CIM, DHL, DPD, FedEx, GLS)
distribution center - long
distribution center - medium
distribution center - small
distribution center - UPS
distribution center 2 - corner
distribution center 2 - long
distribution center - medium
distribution center - small
DU47 warehouse
detroitwarehouse
small brick warehouse less DLC
chicagowarehouse
medium warehouse 四海仓库
modified medium warehouse
two level distribution center
coop alsace logistics center
modified large warehouse
modified large warehouse - 100
modified large warehouse - 200
山九 - warehouse

There is also Armazem Supremo warehouse in the workshop - apparently I need to have a DLC to have it in game - most likely Natural Disasters as that's the only DLC I am not tempted to buy and never bought it. And it is like a huge unnatural disaster - the file to download is 210 MB in size - good luck with that!

Credits go to all these assets creators, for all their hard work, attention to details (usually but not always) and making our game more... varied. It adds flavour to it, makes it more fun...

... but I am too lazy to mention you all in here ;)


oh... actually, I'm not that lazy - just discovered copy and paste option :D

Thank you all listed below and those who are not (although i shouldn't have any single one of you skipped and unmentioned here):


Feindbild
KingLeno
Avanya
TheArkerportian
M-ito
luminou
theorangeangle
Moofers
CRISGAMES
Tomas13TO
Mayor
GiometryE
mat_public
cieran84
UbiTube
SvenBerlin
Weatherwax81
jens
Grizzlord
Moch
DisneyModels
marxxone
KingBob
Ligne 7
Amonkey5
trist14222
BadPeanut
ChiliadSun
Eyescar
XDBX
ron_fu-ta
muereteja
Claarin
borg2003
Emperor Li
targa
sebnichols
EerieEden
Jerenable
Patrick_777
amamIya