Workers and Resources is a complicated game, when you are new (or newish) it is very easy to struggle with basic things like getting public transport working.

There are video tutorials but not only do you have to invest 10 minutes or even as much as an hour, but they might never mention or just gloss over the specific thing you wanted to know. The simple series about provide a bite-sized chunk of information that you can skim through in a minute to get what you want to know.

The simple series often provides a single opinioned way to do things. not because it is the only way or even the best way, but just because it is easy to explain concisely.

• Use large heating plants
  
• Build large heating plants between 800m and 1500m away from your city
  
• Pumping stations are two pipes in, two pipes out
  
• Heating is a test of your public transport network. If you can't keep your heating plants running during winter, then you need to improve your public transport

You should use large pipes with large heating plants and small pipes with small heating plants. The same goes for the pumping stations and heat exchangers.

You should generally avoid small heating plants. They only cover around 3-4k people, whereas the large ones cover 12k-15k. However, small heating plants do cause less pollution.

Every building that produces, transfers or requires heating has a heating tank. This is the round dial on the bottom right.





A large heating plant has a 1050 hot water tank. Heating pipes can transfer 300 at a time, and large heat exchangers can hold 300. This is why a large heating plant can support a maximum of 3.5 large heat exchangers.

The hot water tank temperature should be 90 or close to it. If it's 0, you probably have an electricity issue (check your pumping stations), or your pipes are not connected correctly.

Calculating heating consumption in buildings is trickier, which is why I used more general figures in the previous section.

Heating pipes have a max length of 1k. To extend the range further, you need to use pumping stations.

You should always set up heating pumping stations with two pipes in and two pipes out. A large heating pipe has a maximum throughput of 300. If you put one pipe in and three out, only 300 would enter the station.

A large heating plant can support about 3.5 heating exchangers at max.

So that's

I'm using overground pipes in the screenshot because they are more visible.

You should mostly use underground pipes because overground pipes are very awkward and because underground pipes lose less heat over the same distance.

It is, of course, faster and cheaper to build overground pipes.

Within 1.5km, you probably won't notice the heat loss unless you are hitting the limits of the large heating plants e.g. 15k population.

There is also heat loss between the heat exchange and the residential buildings. However, it only becomes noticeable if the distance is > 300m.

Heating plants causes pollution, which can kill your population.

You must keep large heating plants at least 800m away from your residential buildings (service buildings such as shopping centres don't matter). Small heating plants produce less pollution but still need to be at least 500m away.

The pollution a heating plant creates depends on how much heat it produces. For example, it will produce twice as much pollution for a 10,000-person city as it does for a 5,000-person city.

Look at how I'm setting up my first industry from around 2:00. At around 2:50 I'm putting a 1km distance between the heating plant and the limit of where I'm placing my residential buildings.

https://youtu.be/bm_h0sFHolk?t=120

Heating plants must be manned at all times during winter, or your population will get sick and eventually die.

Rather than keeping your heating plant separate, it is better to group it with your other industrial buildings. This way, you'll have a line that regularly delivers 300 people (or whatever) to a bus stop, which is more reliable than a line that delivers 30 people to a heating plant.

It can be helpful to have a two-micro bus (6-11 passengers) line in addition to the normal line, just in case. It's likely unnecessary, but having it can be reassuring.

If the normal line is
Then the micro bus line should be

You can use "where should citizens be going" to ensure that workers always work at your heating plant before working at other buildings.

Here, 85% of them will always go to the heating plant before trying to go anywhere else. If the heating plant is full with just 10% of them, the other 75% will go to "Other buildings".



I put a blue circle around the button you need to press to add "Other buildings" as another location.

During winter, snow covers the roads, significantly reducing vehicles' maximum speeds. Snow affects all road vehicles, excluding trams.

You will need to use technical offices and snow ploughs to clear the roads so that your buses are not slowed down too much, as that could cause your heating plant to stop running.

Building a technical office at the midpoint of the road between the city and industry is an easy way to make your snow ploughs keep that road clear for buses.

If you enable complex traffic, you can use special signs to stop snow ploughs from ploughing specific roads so your snow ploughs can focus on the critical roads, such as the bus roads.

Since trams are not affected by snow, you can use trams instead of buses for public transport if you struggle with heating during the winter.

With seasons enabled, crops can only be planted in spring, and must be harvested and moved into storage before winter.

The Biomes DLC added Tundra (Siberia), Tropical (Asian) and Desert (Arabic) maps.

Tropical and desert maps essentially disable all the heating mechanics. Crops can be harvested all year around, heating is not required, and there is no snow.

Tundra maps increase the duration of winter (September - February) and cause heating pipes to lose more heat over distance.

On Tundra maps, it is better to use small heat exchangers instead of large ones to minimize the distance (and thus heat loss) between them and the buildings. You will also need to build more heating plants than normal.


I suggest using three pumping stations instead of four to compensate for the heating plant worker count sometimes being less than 100%. This is generally less important on normal maps where dropping from 24 degrees to 20 degrees at times doesn't matter.

If you keep your heat exchangers within 150m of your residential buildings and your heating plants between 800m and 1200m, you should be able to keep the temperature of all your buildings at 12-16 degrees during the worst of winter. Then, just ensure you have enough hospital space for all the people with colds.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2896268854

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2882904800

Heating - Workers and Resources Wiki[workers-resources.fandom.com]

More detailed explanation of the heating system
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPJRglSoAqY

Guide on heating on the Siberia map
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-2TmtmGmYY