LOGistICAL - Sublime Logistical Strategy Puzzling

Oh, pretty sure there is one on North Island. Doesn't look like I built it... But anyway, a bunch of contracts will take a long time to finish. The one you mention, though, can be fulfilled with just what's on the two islands, I believe. Don't assume that the contracts need to be done in order; some of the first ten contracts I have not yet finished and I'm well stuck into it.

The product needed by the town is

Spoiler:

mutton.

All the goods in a module are identical, so everyone playing Earth sees the same stuff as everyone else. Any differences are created by the order of opening stuff, what you build, what you explore when, etc.

Quiet week this week. Worked more on Northern Europe, and opened up more of the USA (that's a good deal of work). Even got into Cote D'Ivoire and discovered a source of cocoa!

But I've been doing it casually, finishing some quest cities as they come up to open roads. Which ends up being expensive, so I think I need to go back to Oz and Japan and South Korea to get some real cash going with size 2 and three cities.

I wanted to mention that although I didn't lock onto playing LOGistICAL right now, playing it gave me an incredible itch to do a real jigsaw puzzle. I ended up doing 2 1,000-piece puzzles in the past week. Itch scratched. Go figure.

I think that one thing that would have helped me lock onto it better would be if you could "finish" an area in a more reasonable time frame. The more I played the more complex New Zealand got, and I felt like the universe was expanding faster than I was solving things. I love "finishing" sections of puzzles, and this never quite gave me that zing.

I'm sure I'll come back to it at some point, though. It's quite a unique game.

Hah! I get that feeling. What you find is that there are several ways to scratch that itch. The first is setting up a simple production line, raw material sources leveled up and factory leveled. Then there are the town clusters, groups of geographically associated towns, mailboxes, etc that you see as small circles with numbers in them to tell you how many you have left to fill. Then there are region/national major cities, and national capitals, and then the designated region center (usually the hardest to fill). So tons of incremental goals if you want them. Not to mention road discovery, finishing contracts and so forth.

It can be a lot of busy work, but breaking through a situation that you thought you'd never get past is an amazing feeling and pushes you on to the next thing.

I'm at 1150 towns complete today, or a bit more actually, and about halfway across the USA, which is my current focus as its standalone (does not require imports for opening up the various areas within it, to my knowledge). Which means you have to get crafty with resources and very painstaking with road opening. Fun and frustrating both.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. It is, as you say, unique.

New countries added, including China, Nepal, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Vanuatuu and others. An easier starting area (Martinique) has been added so as not to scare off new players lol. It ends with a contract and truck in New Zealand. Also, the hesitation after completing something has been optimized away. And there are now some interesting statistical screens, like a heat map that compares the places you have completed with those completed by other players. So if you get stuck, just pull that up and head for the bright yellow areas.

Oh, an easier starting area sounds interesting. I might start again.

I believe it can be fully completed. If you've already got the game, it should update with a truck there for free.

Humm...that was unexpected.

I started a new game and had a blast working through Martinique, then I kept going to New Zealand. For whatever reason this time things really clicked, probably because I had a better sense of what I was doing with trucks and the interface. I ended up playing about 3 hours straight. Only a few things left behind in Martinique and a good start on New Zealand again. I think I'm at 19 towns and 40-50 businesses.

Nice! I was going to report that you can finish all but four of the locations in Martinique without outside goods. So it's almost self-contained.

It's interesting that it helped you get a better understanding. I figured you'd bounce off it again. But once you get the flow, well, you can start and stop playing as the mood hits, and there's no real loss if you spend a month not playing at all and then pick it up again. It's not like you'll have forgotten some strategic plan or something lol. A look at the map will refresh your memory and you're off again on a plan.

Just for anyone who is interested,

Spoiler:

I did have to upgrade to a pair of 8 ton trucks to finish the last two spots. Probably could have done it with one, but two was convenient.

Yeah, understanding truck sizes helped a lot. I had two going at the end of Martinique, the 1-ton that they start you with and an 8-ton truck I bought. The 8-ton truck was handling the mid-size runs, and the 1-ton truck would zip along and pick up the deliveries in the 1- to 3-ton range. Worked pretty well.

I think I have a half dozen or so towns and business left to do there. Some I could have done, but I wanted to push on to New Zealand. And like you said, there are a handful of 1000-ton+ deliveries that look like I'd need to upgrade factories for.

Nah, you can do them with the pickup, but it takes time. In my case I only did those two because I'm running at 16x game speed lol. Otherwise it would have taken a workday instead of like half an hour.

I may have played a bit last night. I think I'm at 38 towns, 178 businesses, and have opened up Australia.

I got stuck for a good bit trying to figure out how to get to the southern island on New Zealand. I had no clue what the rotating circle of icons meant, and none of my trucks could cross the water. Figured out that a couple of them needed floaties, but that didn't solve the problem. Then I finally figured out that the circling icons represented a product quarantine, so no trucks can cross carrying those goods. Even with that, none of the trucks could cross. Then I did something, no idea what, and one of my trucks crossed to the southern island. The other two still can't, no matter what I try, and one of them is identical to the one that got across in every way. Baffled a bit on that part.

That lead to getting stuck on both islands until I figured out the whole Level 3 industry to build an industry thing. Once that got sorted out, things continued to move along nicely.

I went to bed right as I got stuck trying to open up the initial part of Australia, where you have to feed one town with rock and gravel. I don't think my truck is fast enough, so I feel like I'm missing something.

I might need to be very careful with this game, however. I had no self-control once I got started.

Okay, so the trucks need floaties. Take each one back to the truck store, click on the name of the store to refresh, and you'll see an option to add floaties. Put them on, and they can cross between the islands. They can carry stuff that does not violate quarantine, too. The stuff that's prohibited, well, you'll need another way to get them from one island to the other (or to produce them locally as you did).

As you fill museums and mailboxes and other small-circle spots, you'll get random bonuses that last for a period of miles. Get enough and you can have 6x speed and faster loading and unloading.

Don't be afraid to do infrastructure stuff before towns, and to buy another truck if you need it. And if you need to build a storage unit, just finish some small one resource town in the area and stuff it full.

Robear wrote:

Okay, so the trucks need floaties. Take each one back to the truck store, click on the name of the store to refresh, and you'll see an option to add floaties. Put them on, and they can cross between the islands. They can carry stuff that does not violate quarantine, too. The stuff that's prohibited, well, you'll need another way to get them from one island to the other (or to produce them locally as you did).

As you fill museums and mailboxes and other small-circle spots, you'll get random bonuses that last for a period of miles. Get enough and you can have 6x speed and faster loading and unloading.

Don't be afraid to do infrastructure stuff before towns, and to buy another truck if you need it. And if you need to build a storage unit, just finish some small one resource town in the area and stuff it full. :-)

Thanks!

That's the thing, though. I bought floaties for each of my trucks. Do I have to put them on in some way after I purchase them, though?

The truck in Australia is new, without any speed bonuses and no contracts that are fillable except for the main one. I don't think I can buy another truck yet in Australia, I'll check. Does completing jobs with other trucks that are maxed out at 6x transfer somehow to the new truck? I thought it was a separate truck thing.

Oh, so storage units hold stuff so you can move lots of it quickly?

You have to buy floaties for each truck individually. They are then installed. Maybe the later trucks are larger and the ferry needs to be upgraded? See if the b key shows anything for the ferry link.

Storage units are essentially staging areas. Cheap and somewhat disposable. Remember, the biggest factors in filling a town are round-trip time to the source(s), and loading/unloading time. So if you have like 6 resources to fill and 90,000 people are chewing them up while you do it, having a set of depots in a nearby finished town will let you do the job, where running out to each original source will be far too slow and result in failure.

The only bonuses a truck gets are the ones it earns. So it looks like you'll be doing some smaller jobs before you can do that contract. You might even need to build an industry or something, I forget.

Still grinding away here. This game is great, and GB, you are 100% correct about the jigsaw puzzle analogy. So much scratching the same itch.

I spent a bunch of time yesterday googling North Korean Museums as a result of my peregrinations across that country. Absolutely working as intended. I wish the in-game web browser was better.

I’ve found a few area-opening contracts I can now complete, so I’m going for those. But as usual, I’m burning cash and also have one stupid resource that can’t get through a quarantine but is needed on the other side... Oh! Hang on, I’ll check, might be a place to put it after all lol.

And so it goes lol.

Robear wrote:

You have to buy floaties for each truck individually. They are then installed. Maybe the later trucks are larger and the ferry needs to be upgraded? See if the b key shows anything for the ferry link.

Storage units are essentially staging areas. Cheap and somewhat disposable. Remember, the biggest factors in filling a town are round-trip time to the source(s), and loading/unloading time. So if you have like 6 resources to fill and 90,000 people are chewing them up while you do it, having a set of depots in a nearby finished town will let you do the job, where running out to each original source will be far too slow and result in failure.

The only bonuses a truck gets are the ones it earns. So it looks like you'll be doing some smaller jobs before you can do that contract. You might even need to build an industry or something, I forget.

Whoops! Thank you for these answers, Robear! I read through them shortly after you posted them and meant to reply right away, but got called away and just now realized I didn't thank you.

Much appreciated, as always!

I finally tried out Logistical 2. I don't know what to make of this. The UI is kind of obtuse. I eventually figured out how to read the inputs/outputs, how to upgrade production buildings, and how to complete businesses or whatever.

I'm doing whatever map is free and marked as tutorial. I opened up a route to some island way out northwest from the main island. They're the only source of stone that I've found, and I've got a bunch of things that need stone. But it's a really long way to get over there, and trucks move SO SLOW along the water route. There's no way I'll hit the various stone requirements for the different roadworks I need to open up.

What I haven't figured out is how the trucks work. I bought as many as the game lets me (6 I think?). What keeps happening is I drag an input or output resource over to a node that has/needs it, then either a truck does a bunch of deliveries, then stops because one or the other is full/empty, or no trucks go do it. I'm assuming that's because they're stuck waiting on a repeating route or something. I can't tell from the vehicle list, and can't figure out how to get them to stop wanting to repeat whatever they're doing.

I'm sure what I'm actually trying to do is set up routes between the various production buildings with a few trucks, then have another few to deliver finished goods to places, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to make that happen, either mechanically, or with the limited number of trucks. That's without trying to figure out how to make those long sea routes navigable.

Even just reading the map is a pain. I'm kind of hoping there's some filtering and stuff that I'm missing, because right now it's just a mess of icons that I have to hover over/click on to figure out what's what.

So what am I missing? How do I get over the learning curve on this?

Was on sale so picked it up. I played a few hours of the original and for the most part thought it interesting. If the UI was improved even just a little I'm hopeful I'll stick with this one a bit longer.

Okay, so both of you should just go with the Logistical: Earth demo. The older games have been updated with the new interface, but some still have mechanics that have aged out of the game (Logistical 1) or are focused on mechanics that might not be to everyone's taste (as in some of Logistical 2). Logistical 3 (Earth) takes bits and pieces from all of them and is the best so far (although, if you enjoy the system in 3, some of the others will certainly entice you).

Chaz wrote:

I'm doing whatever map is free and marked as tutorial. I opened up a route to some island way out northwest from the main island. They're the only source of stone that I've found, and I've got a bunch of things that need stone. But it's a really long way to get over there, and trucks move SO SLOW along the water route. There's no way I'll hit the various stone requirements for the different roadworks I need to open up.

As you finish towns and mailboxes/museums, your trucks will gain bonuses to movement, loading and unloading speed. Over time, the entire game can be sped up. I'm running at 16x now, for example. So this is just early-game stuff.

What I haven't figured out is how the trucks work. I bought as many as the game lets me (6 I think?). What keeps happening is I drag an input or output resource over to a node that has/needs it, then either a truck does a bunch of deliveries, then stops because one or the other is full/empty, or no trucks go do it. I'm assuming that's because they're stuck waiting on a repeating route or something. I can't tell from the vehicle list, and can't figure out how to get them to stop wanting to repeat whatever they're doing.

Stop the repeat by turning off the round arrow in the truck control panel.

So, you can't reassign a truck that has goods in it (loading, moving, unloading). In that case, turn off the repeat button (circular arrow) then wait for it to finish. Or pay to dump the load. Then, you can do the assignment as you did. If it fills the production input, the truck will either dump the rest of the load (green light on) and power down, or keep the rest of the load and power down (green light off).

If the truck is just stopped, waiting on output, it will fill itself up over time automatically. If it's stopped filling input, it powers down, so wait until some goods are produced, then turn it on again and it will continue. Or, drive it somewhere else where the input is needed.

I'm sure what I'm actually trying to do is set up routes between the various production buildings with a few trucks, then have another few to deliver finished goods to places, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to make that happen, either mechanically, or with the limited number of trucks. That's without trying to figure out how to make those long sea routes navigable.

That's what I thought, too, initially. Ain't gonna happen, and you probably don't want to buy your trucks all at once, in case you get access to bigger ones. But that's okay. The game is about working one or two locations at a time, not setting up a continuous production network.

Production inputs, labeled ports, small towns/mailboxes and museums - small circle locations are the latter two - you can fill up at your leisure. It's the large circle towns and cities that are timed. So you'll only very rarely run both ends of a production set at once. The idea is to promote the industries to level 3, to get the most efficiency out of them (most output per unit input), and then you can move lots of goods to the towns that need them. If you can't get the goods there fast enough, fill a nearby town that you can do and buy a depot or three there to hold the various goods you need. Fill that leisurely and then blitz the town with all your trucks running a short route and dumping the goods off quickly. That'll get 'er done.

Even just reading the map is a pain. I'm kind of hoping there's some filtering and stuff that I'm missing, because right now it's just a mess of icons that I have to hover over/click on to figure out what's what.

In the upper left of the map there are some icons. Click on the... second one?... and it becomes a map filter. You can use Ctrl-M to change the map to something simpler (there are 3 or 4 choices), mostly used to make finding red circles at the ends of roads easier. But you can filter all kinds of stuff with that. (The Truck List one can be clicked on to enable you to select truck colors and sort the trucks manually, too.)

So what am I missing? How do I get over the learning curve on this?

I hope that helps. There's other info in the far lower right hand corner. Hover over the ? to see some basic map info, like road tonnage colors, and then click on it to get to the help info. And of course, ask here.

Where's the demo for 3? I couldn't find it on steam, but maybe I'm blind.

Chaz wrote:

Where's the demo for 3? I couldn't find it on steam, but maybe I'm blind.

It's right on the "LOGistICAL 3: Earth" main store page - there's a button to download the demo on the right side of the screen, between the Friends and basic game features sections.

Gave it a few hours last night.. definitely more of the same, but I did like hopping from Martinique to New Zealand.

New Zealand is interesting wtih only the two trucks. I don't think I've found 10 towns I can supply (missing whatever resource it needs) yet so looks like I'm stuck with that for a while.

Couple UI questions, can I make the truck panel less transparent and why are there some roadworks that don't have the orange square to see what it needs to be repaired? Am I missing something? I know I can fiddle the mouse until I see "roadworks" but maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Maybe you have not found the good the roadblock needs to be fixed...

Remember to run an empty small truck to each red circle, to discover the road network. That’s essential. Use Ctrl-M to change the map display if you have trouble finding red circles.

Maybe. I'm focussing on all of the roadworks and I do have a decent chunk of the (top) island opened up. I just want to get a 3rd truck to help with my supply issues. With only 2 trucks I don't like sending one to the far reaches of the island but I know this is not a race.

Why would you not want to run a truck around? No reason not to, unless you literally have like $10 in the bank...

You need to find every road and location you can, then fix roads to find more. Always. Everywhere you go, getting the road network identified and opened is job 1.

merphle wrote:
Chaz wrote:

Where's the demo for 3? I couldn't find it on steam, but maybe I'm blind.

It's right on the "LOGistICAL 3: Earth" main store page - there's a button to download the demo on the right side of the screen, between the Friends and basic game features sections.

D'oh, I am blind. I was remembering at some point where the demo would be in the middle and look like a purchasable bundle or something. This new layout with the demo off in a sidebar is throwing me.

Robear wrote:

Why would you not want to run a truck around? No reason not to, unless you literally have like $10 in the bank...

You need to find every road and location you can, then fix roads to find more. Always. Everywhere you go, getting the road network identified and opened is job 1.

I know... its why I stink at RTS.. scouting isn't fun

Yeah, but it’s nice jolt, finding new resources you can exploit. It’s part of the puzzle. Each new town, each new resource, is a possible money-maker and also can get you closer to your ten town increment. Every site is useful in time.