my factories aren't working?

[AlphaQ23]

I had two gold mines built about ten years ago.  I built a Jewelry Factory 2 years ago.  I'm making no profits.  The Jewelry factory has to input while the gold mine is about making 20,000 combined.  The factory has been upgraded to all the possibilities and is well supplied with electricity.  I have two teamster buildings.  Why won't my factory produce any jewelry and profits?  The RSPC's or whatever cost me 14,000 a year, its a major economic drawback but i make my industrialists happy when i have.  Papaya, Gold, and corn are the only good things that i ahve on the island.

[caddet]

I had a situation where logs were going to the dock, instead of to the lumber mill.  I had placed the lumber mill pretty close to a teamster's office.  It turns out that the logging camp was slightly closer to the dock I built for tourism than to the lumber mill.  Since I hadn't set the dock to "Service Yachts Only", the logs were exporting from that dock.  I fixed that problem real quick!  Maybe you have a similar situation.  Check your distances from gold mine to factory and gold mine to dock.

[Pete61]

Alpha,
Can you clarify that a bit more for me.  Do you mean that if my jewelry factory is further than the docks from my gold mines, the gold will go straight to the docks instead of to the factory?  I'm currently getting no input to the factory, while 2 gold mines are producing output.

Thanks

[caddet]

Well, that's what I thought.  But as it turns out, that wasn't correct.  Having a lumbermill should have made the logs go there first, regardless of how close the dock is.  I don't know what was happening before.  Your jewelry factory, if it is staffed, will automatically get the gold from your mines.  The only time you should export gold is if the factory has excessive input stock for the number of workers it has.  I can't explain why my logs were getting exported, and don't know why your jewelry factory isn't getting it's gold.

[schmoo]

Laborers take goods to the docks and those goods sit there until they are loaded onto freighters.  It is possible for some goods to sit at the docks for several years (if you have quite a stockpile there).

That could explain why logs were being sold even though you had a lumber yard.

As for the two goldmine thing...one of the biggest mistakes I made early on (and still make sometimes) is building industry too early.  Industry has high (very high) maintenance costs, and require a steady stream of input to generate a steady profit.

It almost always takes about 2 years for profits to begin, but if you don't have enough supply, or skilled workforce, the costs to maintain it outweigh the profit.  I've built industry before building a church or school thinking that if I can get profits early, the other stuff will come even easier...boy was I wrong!!

One other thing is how skilled your workers are.  Just because you have a worker at the factory, it doesn't mean they are all that good at what they are doing.

[Vailaji]

Hey Schmoo, i think youre onto something, but how do i train a worker?  Just leave them in the factory for years on end wasting resources?  I did this for like 4 or 5 years, and rsrc still ate me alive.

[Coconut Kid]

The Factory Workers have to be actually present in the factory in order to be productive. If they are "elsewhere," the factory by itself will be producing a little less than one unexperienced worker.

You can't tell by the worker slots with the building selected. You have to look at the yellow arrows which highlight the workers connected with that building.

Workers gain experience when they are at work. The Literacy Program Edict causes both students and workers to gain experience faster.