[2020] Tractors and farm storage - we've hit a wall, and it needs a fix with the next patch

Does anyone else think that with the release of Bright Harvest, even despite the much needed addition of another upgrade level to warehouses, carts still cannot unload goods fast enough to keep up with the production boosts?

Take the example of the coffee plantation: at 100% efficiency it takes 60 seconds to produce one item, so 2 minutes to fill up the storage. That's the time the cart has to go unload its contents at a warehouse and come back before the farm starts dropping efficiency due to full storage.

At 450% efficiency it takes ~13.3 seconds to produce one item. Farms have a maximum storage of 2, so that's ~26.6 seconds for the cart to make it to the warehouse and back again before the plantation is backed up. This is cutting it really close, considering that the cart takes around 1 second to cross 1 tiles, then around 14-15 (!) seconds for the unload. By the time the cart makes its way back and forth the farm will be full and not working. Farms however have 2 carts attached to them, so taking that into account and assuming the warehouse is right next to the farm and never full, it will be all right as long as the cart journey takes less than 26 seconds.

https://i.imgur.com/2gD3mxb.png

But lets work this through a "real life" scenario where you may have multiple farms running at 450% in one location being boosted by a trade union with multiple warehouses present. Like in this image:

https://i.imgur.com/UnXrBh8.png

Note that this layout does not attempt to fit as many farms as possible into the range of the trade union as you might be tempted to do, because putting warehouses outside of the trade union range increases cart travel time substantially.

Lets say you fit all of your warehouses between your farm buildings. Remember that the cart has an upper limit of 26 seconds for the journey + unload here. Everything is fine as long as the cart picks the warehouse closest to it, however that same warehouse also has 3 other farms that are closest to it. That makes a total of 8 potential carts trying to unload at that warehouse at the same time. This means if all of the farms are producing at 450%, they will quickly overwhelm a New World warehouse with carts even at maximum possible level.

There is a selection process for the cart to drop off however, and I think it will try to pick closest available warehouse to drop off its goods. This means that its very easy for it to pick a warehouse where even if the cart does not have to wait at the warehouse for its unload slot, the journey itself will add up to more than 26 seconds and make the farm start backing up with goods. Note that this is a problem that itself creates an upper limit to how much actual efficiency (vs. reported ingame efficiency) you can get from your farms, and if you take 4 farms to every max level warehouse in the New World (4 slots) that efficiency currently peaks at around 375% (~16 seconds per item) because the farm will keep shutting off and dropping its efficiency due to producing faster than carts can unload above that. And this is assuming your layout is optimised and all farms have best possible journey to warehouse each taking only 1 tile. If they have to travel further at any point, this maximum actual efficiency drops even further.

In conclusion: With the release of Bright Harvest we have effectively hit a wall in terms of farm optimisation due to the mechanics of carts. Using just fuel stations usually avoids this as long as you have enough warehouse slots available (1 per farm) unless your layout requires carts to travel long distance (5 road tiles or more). Using fuel stations + trade union items to boost efficiency above 375% on 60 sec production time farms is effectivelly a waste of your influence. Coffee and grain are two examples of 60 sec farms, and potatoes for example are a 30 sec farm, but since their maximum storage is 4 their maximum actual efficiency is also at 375%. However, this "magic number" still discourages late game optimisation as you hit a wall with warehouses due to it becoming impossible to build a layout where all farms are exactly 1 tile from a warehouse, and because they are so big they end up occupying a very substantial amount of precious space. To be honest I think it should be addressed for gameplay's sake, and there are a number of options that can fix this issue:

1. Make carts unload faster at warehouses. ~15 seconds to unload before travel time is pretty extreme to be honest.
2. Add more storage to farms. Doubling farm storage capacity for example will largely alleviate this problem as long as carts can carry more than 1 ton at the same time. Each unit of storage at a farm will add around 125% to the maximum actual efficiency of a farm in a layout of 1 farm per warehouse slot. Storage of 4 tons on a 60 sec farm (so 8 on 30 sec, etc.) will put the maximum actual efficiency at 625% which is beyond what you can reach with any available items right now.
3. Make the tractor module change carts into motorised vehicles at farms, per what happens with electrified factories. This will completely eliminate the issue as steam trucks unload extremely fast, and it's the reason why industry doesn't run into this problem at all.

What do you guys think about all this? And /u/Com_Raven if you are reading this can we get this addressed in the next patch?

edit: fixed some minor errors in the text

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