Tricky Question: How to Catch Raw Materials That Are Spread Out

[Firefly 2-2-2]

OK, so I have this question for ya all. Suppose I need raw materials for a Steel Plant I just bought. But then all of them are in far away, spread out sources.

I know there's a method, if there's a definite flow of resources from one gradient to another, that can manage to channel most of the dispersed raw material output into single key areas where I can just build a station and have tons of it available to ship elsewhere - in this case to my own industry, even at a loss since I use 1.06 and that industry might pump out quite a profit. BUT what if there's no such flow of goods? The resources will just sit atop their dispersed mines, or farms, or whatever, and I'll have to either build up my stations very close to several individual keyponts or... well perhaps you have some good ideas?

Is there a way, say, to drive price gradients up to a single "bait" location near a cluster of mines/farms/chemical plants so they can start shipping the raw materials there, and just before they reach the bait location, they come to a single or maybe two well placed stations of mine where I can just gather all the funneled resources and ship them elsewhere? And what about Iron, most specifically: once Ammo, Weapon and Tool & Dies stop accepting iron, it just sits there, I mean, but somehow I want to channel all that iron from different mines into a single place where I might be able to ship it to my own mills.

EDIT - I mean, a good case in point would be the Southeast USA scenario. All these cotton farms in the red gradient areas ship their raw materials to Mobile, forming a nice flow or funnel that can be easily caught by a well placed Large Station. Then once you build the station, there's loads of cotton to ship elsewhere, namely New Orleans where you might have a cotton mill. But then that's only possible because the two ports in Mobile drive prices up and so they create this flow of resources from the cotton farms to the coastline.

Comment.

[Gumboots]

One trick I've used is to build a station on top of one pile of the resource (pick any mine, in other words) and run a train direct from that to your target industry. If the train goes directly to the target industry, with no intervening stations, the price will transfer to the station out at the mine quite rapidly. You can leave several copies of the train sitting there with a set minimum car count, to auto-load more resources as they arrive, but it's important to kick it off with that first train direct to a high price area.

[Firefly 2-2-2]

I'll try that. Yep, I mean somehow placing a station does help get the price gradient *a bit* higher, but there must be something more effective. I mean.

One of the things that might work would be to work with three steel mills. One to catch the coal, the other to catch the iron, and the third one to actually make the Steel. Since Steel Mills make quite a hefty profit, esp. if upgraded, and Steel has a high demand up in the production chain for several very profitable products, it might be feasible to run two mills at a loss just to catch resources with favourable price gradients. The freight profit plus the industry profit from making cars, goods, weapons and the like will more than make up for that loss.

[Gumboots]

It's not just placing a station. That, in itself, will only have a slow and gradual effect.

If you want to speed things up, you have to actually grab a stack of the cargo that's sitting around, and haul it directly to a high price area.The higher, the better. Price differential is a lot more important than distance, in this case. It is the first haulage that results in a price spike back at the station in the low price area. The effect can be quite rapid and dramatic.