LOGistICAL - Sublime Logistical Strategy Puzzling

Over the last few days, you'll have seen your Logistical 1 games get updates in Steam. They are being transitioned to the Logistical 2 feature set, which is about 200 builds beyond 1. This means that you'll need to import your saved games through a save game menu option, to get the old 1 games into 2.

But otherwise, this is great news, as the old games will have the new features with only minor changes. For example, in the original game, NZ was part of the game; now it's not and the trucks that came with a connection to NZ are now available in Auckland. Stuff like that, minor changes. Also, the road nets in the L1 games will not be made more complex for L2, so they will retain some of the old feel as well.

Anyway, very cool transition that I've been waiting for for a while.

Yeah, I've been putting the game on hold until the transition is complete, so this has been great to see.

Also the Vampires thing is coming out soon too, apparently.

What's interesting to me is that each game after the first few has noticeably different mechanics, so that people who prefer a particular play style can find one or more that caters to them. With more styles coming, for more variety. That's a smart move on Sacada's part, because it widens the audience for these game, peculiar and niche as they are. I love them, very relaxing to play, so I'm glad that they are doing well.

Okay, half-price sale on Logistical 2 and a bunch of modules, this week and next. Different assortment of modules each week, and varying levels of discount beyond the main game at 50%.

So if you're curious, try one of the free demos and give it a shot! Note that there are many disparate modes of play. Each module focuses on a different mechanic; Belgium is all about "mailboxes", while Nevada has distribution depots that can take goods and automatically disperse them. France has a lot of roads that need fixing, and so on for all the modules.

Of course, the Vampire one has been delayed, but it should be fun when it arrives.

Oh, and the original ones have been upgraded to Logistical 2 features, so there's that. No lost investment for people who bought in earlier, and that will continue with time.

If I just have Logistical 1, the base game, does it stay that way or does it get magically converted to Logistical 2? I got confused with how the modules got updated and everything went to Logistical 2.

So, the Logistical 1 game modules, including the base, get the enhancements that are part of the game engine, BUT don't get any special gameplay changes beyond those. In the original, you had one mode of play, essentially, which was fulfilling small places to supply medium places to build factories so you can surge supplies to big cities and complete regions. L2 has all sorts of other modes of play, depending on the module.

So I believe L1 has the pathing enhancements, better graphics and so forth, but has not been enhanced with different play modes or anything like that. Put another way... Sacada has said that Logistical 2 is the new base game, and will play all the modules, from the original Logistical to the L1 modules and the newer L2 ones, within the L2 engine.

So I'd buy Logistical 2 first (after trying a demo, perhaps), and then buy Logistical 1 if you like Australia.

Great, thanks!

I'm going to finish up a few things before I drift to new things, but I appreciate the clarification. I'll pick up Logistical 2 when I'm ready to start on it.

Logistical 3: Earth is out! The entire planet, with beautiful satellite imagery, almost 50,000 towns and cities, and over 165,000 businesses and resource sources. The engine is updated from L2, with more clear info on locations and a bit less ambiguity in the UI. Tutorial is modular at game start in New Zealand and takes you right into the drag and drop stuff you'll be using most of the time.

Oh, and according to Sacada himself, there are no for-pay DLCs coming for this game, but he does plan free updates and content additions. Hence the $30 price tag.

IMAGE(http://sacada.bravesites.com/files/resized/499371/960;540;9b40b33653ca4847489299bfc78f13a6cab57d6b.jpg)

Satellite and other map backgrounds
Large truck list
Truck flags indicating the depot they came from
Ability to park trucks so you can buy more
Images for many of the towns and businesses
Hyperlinks with more information about the towns and businesses
Clusters showing the number of towns and businesses within that area
Filters to turn off parts of screen
Search to find any of the 50k towns or 180k business including many with local language search
Trucks, trains and ships
Large amount of contracts
Goals: Complete towns, complete businesses, complete clusters, complete contracts, complete regions, complete countries, complete EARTH

Interesting. I tried revisiting Logistical after a long hiatus and found myself struggling to find fun in the updated mechanics and couldn't motivate myself to start over to relearn.

This might be the kind of clean break to get me jazzed again.

Weird. Steam Store crashes when I search for anything Logistical/Earth related. Had to open the store page in a browser to see it.

The game is easier to play, in some useful ways. As you run along roads you have not visited, if there are new resources available on attached sites, they show up in a persistent popup. So you can run a truck down a highway and any new resources available down connected side roads will pop up for you. Prevents the massive map hunts every time you open a new area.

There are now "floaties" for trucks which you can use if you don't want to wait for ships with goods to arrive. $10k each, only large trucks.

Apparently, you can build road connections where ferries would normally exist? I read something about that. Costs hugely in materials, though.

If you get within a few percent of 100% on a town supply, it'll still turn it green. Prevents having to go get another 8t load to fill in 0.8t shortfall.

The various levels of map zoom have different and useful information, so check them all out. For example, if you have a large town, there will be a "cluster" number that tells you how many demand areas there are in that, well, cluster to fill with goods. Helps you with tracking your area finishing.

The road grid seems simpler, and pathfinding seems better because of it. You can still use "shift-m" to show paths.

If you need a good for a business input, but don't yet know where to get it, it will have a "?" superimposed on it, so you don't have to zoom out and search for a supply. That will change when your scouting trucks find a source.

Just a lot of little quality of life changes, I think, but it has put new life in the game for me. This is a Zen game, light logic puzzle solving but mostly just capable of completely distracting you from your daily whatever.

I've been playing the demo -- will likely buy it soon -- and it definitely feels more like L1 to me, which is a HUGE bonus. L2 added too much needless busywork.

D'oh. Just after I purchased Version 1 and Version 2 in the Steam sale...

Been holding out for Earth to drop.

Noodling around with the Demo now I'd I'm enjoying what I'm seeing so far.

Game engine feels super-fragile (mostly refreshing while scrolling around), but I seem to enjoy that kinda jank these days.

GB, V1 is actually part of V2 now. It's been subsumed and uses the same codebase, I believe. So that's not a loss; you can still play the V2 scenarios and have a good experience. Earth is V3, but I suspect some of the UI enhancements will make their way into 2 in the Fall, perhaps.

Robear wrote:

GB, V1 is actually part of V2 now. It's been subsumed and uses the same codebase, I believe. So that's not a loss; you can still play the V2 scenarios and have a good experience. Earth is V3, but I suspect some of the UI enhancements will make their way into 2 in the Fall, perhaps.

Oh. So there is no version 1 anymore? I bought a little bit of the DLC for both versions during the Steam Sale, mainly because there seems to be a good number of people who like version 1 better than version 2.

Couple rando questions.

1. I've been going through the tutorial Contracts in New Zealand. I appreciate the direction and will likely stick with them to unlock new vehicles, stat buffs, etc. But I'm curious if there's a Sandbox Mode that will let me pick any location on the map and dig in? Places of residence, past & present aren't gonna supply themselves!

2. I know there's a search bar (ctrl F) that lets you find any location on the globe, but is there a way to search or display commodities on the local map you're working on? I'm slowly uncovering the nodes in NZ, but for example when I happen on a new business that only needs Flowers, I remember that I've already discovered a production node for Flowers, but not the exact town or location. Seems like I have to randomly click various shops looking for them and was wondering if there's a more direct way to locate resource locations.

GB, all version 1 games are now playable with the Version 2 engine, as I read it, using the updated basic features. They won't get added features like mailboxes or loading docs, but they are still playable. You don't have to worry, in other words. Check Sacada's blog for more info.

Aaron -

1 - If you try to hop out to the Globe, a popup tells you that "Zen mode" is not yet enabled. So at some point, but not today.

2 - Just as you can click and drag on a supplier's resources to see where it's in demand, you can click on any demand resource and the production sites will pop up in blue with current stock amounts. Continue and drop on one of those sites and your currently selected truck will begin the route. This is a *very* minimalist UI lol.

I like that it's easy to get to really fast trucks; makes the game fly along. And different map levels offer differ info. That's helpful when you're trying to complete an area.

Got it.

Thanks, Robear!

That drag and drop is the only way I assign jobs to trucks now. Either set up a pull or a push using the resource drag and drop from one location to another. Easy.

Robear wrote:

GB, all version 1 games are now playable with the Version 2 engine, as I read it, using the updated basic features. They won't get added features like mailboxes or loading docs, but they are still playable. You don't have to worry, in other words. Check Sacada's blog for more info.

Got it, thanks Robear!

Anyone know how boats/railroads work? Beyond opening up the locations and buying one, that is (which I’ve not yet done). Do you need special stockpiles? Do they demand certain goods and auto-ship them? What’s the deal?

Edit - Found Sacada's pinned "Learn Logistical" topic in the Steam discussions for L3. Ships and trains and airplanes are abstracted. Open the dock, port, train depot or airport (one per region? Country?) and you can then buy stockpiles. Each stockpile is an abstracted vehicle. Just transfer goods to a stockpile, then transfer them to another one in a distant location served by the connection. Some towns and industries are only accessible by rail, btw...

Yeah, I thought the 'one airport per country' was kinda strange, but I guess it's an abstraction/concession in service of game-flow and engine complexity.

I think, by the time you get to actually using the airport, the need for small and frequent transfers out should be low. So it's probably designed to assist with stuff that needs to come from an area to fill a gap where you have not built certain industries yet. Or not; just speculating.

I've had this on my wishlist for a while, but never jumped. Now I'm looking, and there's a v2 that's free to play with a bajillion DLCs, and v3. I'm assuming if I wanted to see if I liked it, I should get the v3 demo? Is that a good intro, and enough to know if it's for me?

Yes, it is. The demo that is.

V3 has all kinds of enhancements and improvements, quality of life stuff mostly. V2 has a ton of interesting scenarios, mostly focused on different types of play. You will want to buy them one at a time, really. Each one is potentially hundreds of hours of play, and some probably won't appeal to you in their mechanics (vampires? Really?).

In V2, regions are deeply detailed, and can be accessed through a globe interface. V3 spreads the action out across the whole globe. You still go by regions, but you can open up regions while still working to finish the first one, and so forth. V3 is a more polished experience; V2 is a mature, well-developed set of scenarios that cater to variations in play that only players will really understand.

If you like V3, and want to try a V2 scenario, don't buy all of them lol. Just try the one. If you don't like the subject matter, but the system interests you from the demo, then buy V3. Otherwise, you could probably place a number of V2 scenarios, and early on in that process you'll buy V3 just because you like it. Or, you'll bounce off hard, but then you're only out a few bucks.

Just don't go hog-wild on scenarios until you know you like the system. (And if you have questions on specific scenarios, ask here, we might be able to help. For example, Russia is huge and requires a lot of cross-region activity, while Belgium is small in area but has about 12K "mailbox" locations that require individual targeting. Texas has "loading docks", where you can drop off goods for multiple sites at one location. And there are all sorts of other variations.)

Within a few hours, you'll either be saying "WTF?" or you'll be thinking about how to open up a new town to get access to a new resource while you're falling asleep that night. You'll know whether you like it or not.

Kind of a rando question, but is it possible to paint yourself into a corner by overextending supply chains?

Like I should have used source material in spot A instead of B, but now I can't finish A because the source has run dry and I can't see how to get more of that source manufactured & resupplied because it requires a component I'm not seeing (i.e. ingredients to make steel, etc.).

Still in NZ and I've got about 10 open Contracts but I feel stuck. Maybe I need to dig deeper and really study the map but it feels like the remaining easy-gets for completing a node (1 or 2 items) are locked behind materials that I haven't discovered yet. All roads to new spaces, say far north & south of the country, are also blocked by undiscovered materials (dynamite, etc.).

Perhaps I need to look more closely at the complex demand nodes with multiple required items or see if there's any side roads that I might have missed.

Yes.

First thing to do on any map is to run around with one or two trucks and go to each "end of road" red circle, to see what's past it. You'll notice that opens up new goods (and you'll find ore soon enough, that way). That lets you map out the road network.

When you are ready, you can actually cross the oceans via a "road" connection (actually a ferry, I guess) and the use of "Floaties". To equip a truck for the water crossing (permanently), just pull into a depot and click on the depot title line in its window, to refresh and show the floaties as purchase options. I missed that last bit and it caused me no end of grief. That's how you will first access the South Island.

In sum, yes, if you are stuck at this point, you need to uncover all the roads, methodically. You'll quickly be rewarded with lots of new goods and places to send them.

(Remember, the "main" contracts are the important ones. The others are mostly informational, but the main ones will get you into other countries and similarly big advancements.

Note that your depot is constrained in the number of trucks you can have? For every ten towns you open, you get another truck slot.

Thanks for the tips!

I haven't even purchased a second vehicle yet, lol.

But if I'm understanding you correctly, it's more a matter of exploring the roads more to uncover the map resources? And that's the ultimate solution?

I haven't technically screwed myself over and I won't ever have to restart the game if I feel my progress is stalled?

Guess I'm worried about analysis-paralysis if the game is preset with optimal solutions that can make you soft-lock the game.

No, and no. There are no optimal solutions unless you choose to min/max fulfilling a site, for some personal reason. That's why there is a completion efficiency counter lol, for players like that. And that's still just for one site. This is a wide open game where your options increase every time you find a new production site or cross a border or buy a new vehicle

First, though, explore all the roads you can reach with your vehicle. As you do that, you'll see a small popup in the top center of the screen telling you about the new resources you have available, and green-bordered businesses will pop up that provide them. That's fodder for your later work. So is your knowledge of the map.

Then, start filling orders for the small towns and such that are easy to reach and only take one or two small quantities of goods. That will in turn help you complete cluster areas (like Hamilton or Wellington in the North Island), which will ultimately help you complete them so you can access stuff like railroad stations. That's the general progression over time.

Now, that's nowhere near the ultimate part of the game. You can build your own industry, eventually. Once you get an industry to level 3, it can be built elsewhere if you need it;

Spoiler:

for example, in a region that doesn't have it, across a quarantine barrier that prevents it from being shipped.

If you can't get your vehicle across a road (say, you buy a 100t truck and want to move 3500t of tomatoes, but a road in the path tops out a 20t capacity), you can upgrade the road. Or you can use rail or ship or planes to move goods, even between regions. Some towns and businesses are only accessible by one of those, usually rail, so you'll likely find some goods "hidden" behind the need to buy a train and activate train stations.

You will never be in a position where you need to restart. That would be a nightmare design for this game. Instead, what you're going to find is that there's always something else you can do, you just need to understand the mechanics. (Now, obviously, you could continuously burn your cash on things like buying the most expensive trucks all the time, or buying ships with only one port opened, but I'm assuming you won't do that, and anyway, that's what saves are for...) The game is very forgiving in that regard, if head-scratchingly puzzling at times. But then you break the mental logjam and you're off again.

As i mentioned, the general progression is that you'll start with small businesses sending small amounts of goods to small consumers. For this, remember to turn off the "dump it all" green light on the truck dash, so you can use one load to feed several sites. That's important at the start when resources are scarce.

As the production sites ramp up, you will see them request special materials in the center icon in their input/ouput box. This happens after making a certain amount of output. So once you've pulled out, say 15t of gravel, the gravel pit will request 8t of steel. Bring it, and it will upgrade itself to level 2, and suddenly, it's input and output storage are doubled, and production efficiency (output per unit input) goes up too. This will happen again and again, up to maybe 4 or 5 levels for some industries. Some, however, are limited to one or two levels. It varies. Also, some industries that are functionally identical but in different regions will use different goods for leveling up.

So part of what you're doing is to prepare for the places that want 6 different items at 250 units each by increasing the output of the producers beyond 15 or 60 units, so that they can keep up when you decide to blitz the city with six trucks.

There's a lot more depth, stuff that I have not gotten to in 100 hours or so, but that should give you an idea of the depth of the game, and the creative thinking you have to use to get through what seem like insurmountable obstacles. It's quite a challenge at times, and utterly distracting and relaxing at other times. I love that mix of frustration and satisfaction.

Wowzers, this game is amazingly complex. Sounds glorious.

Thank you so much for taking the time to spell out these tips. It helps a TON.

So I get what you're saying about for example not dumping 15T of gravel into a source that's looking for only 8T by clicking the green button on the dash. But lets say I don't have anywhere to dump the leftover excess load.

Can I take that extra gravel back to the source I got it from and bank it back into the reserve? Do you have a strat for dealing with partial leftover loads?