TechFindings

I started playing WRSR. Here are some findings I made.

Antonopol

My first republic started with a zero population, and I started building a coal mine, coal power plant close to the NATO-border with the intention of exporting electricity for dollars.

• Coal Power plants use Coal, not Coal Ore. I ended up importing Coal, not using the Coal Ore of the connected mine, for a long time without realising my mistake.
• It is imperative to make sure there are always enough workers in your Coal Power Plant.
• Dollars are nice, but a positive Rubles cash flow is probably a better thing to aim for first.
• A central heating station does not use very much coal. Completely unecessary to connect it to a mine, or as I did, build a railway to it.
• Trains have huge capacity, and it can be tricky to make them load/unload/leave as you want.
• Since I intended to have plenty of electric power I used electric trains. You can probably save money going with cheaper lines and locomotive in the early game.
• Kindergarden, after a while it is not enough with one.
• Buses: I built one residential village, with one bus station. From there I built bus lines to my specific industries and mines. The workers get on the first bus that arrives, regardless where it goes! For the moment I think each bus line should first go to a small important work place (such as the powerstation) and after that to a large less important work place (such as a mine). That should maximise the chance that your key workplaces are well supplied with well educated workers (this needs to be tested).
• Electricity: perhaps it is better to just import electricity from the soviet border (and start your republic with some factories importing raw materials).
• Starting with population is probably a better thing. It seems you get “dormant villages”, with a church that you can otherwise not build, that is probably quite fine.

Bokovskopol

My second republic starts with some villages. Trying a Coal/Iron/Steel economy.

• Trying to supply 2 power plants and 1 steel mill with Coal, I ended up in a situation where the power plants were not properly supplied and regularly had to buy Coal.
• If two trains load Coal the same resources at the same aggregate loading, both may be half full, and none ready to leave.
• If connecting a power plant and an aggregate loading to the same Coal processing plant, there is a risk that the powerplant will be starved by the loading trains, despite there is product.
• It is tempting to use trucks instead of trains, perhaps easier, but I am not sure it was so smart.
• It is fine to start importing electricity from your neighbour. But you can’t import that much from a single neighbour. If you build a refinery you may realise that you soon need more power.
• Don’t forget walking paths!

Caterinagrad

I try an Oil-empire relying on imported energy (for a while). Starting close to the Soviet border where there is both electricity and railroad, and in an area with many oil resources seems good.

• Bauxit Mines benefit much from buying excavators!
• You can chain aggregates and storages to essentially make them larger. You still need to plan, and perhaps plan for the future.
• When you build an advanced industry like a refinery or an aluminum plant, it will take long time before you have scaled up to full resource input and full work force. Make sure you always have all input resources available.
• When borrowing money you start paying back immediately. So you cash flow will be bad, and you must likely need to borrow more money to repay the first loan. I tend to borrow money monthly, enough for paying back my old loans and for the investments I need.
• Refineries are good
• Trains are good, and not weather dependent as trucks
• Heating stations (and other essential buildings) should be allowed to buy their inventory if you fail to supply yourself.
• Stockpile everything you consume and produce in industries. It is rather cheap. A steel mill requires power, people, coal and iron at the same time. Don’t be out of coal or iron.
• Have many gas stations and technical services.

Dorkutsk

Dorkutsk is a Nuclear republic exporting electricity. After 5M Rubels of investments on an empty map I have what it takes to run a single reactor nuclear power plant on full power and export electricity for profit.

• Creating mechanical components out of steel seems very unprofitable
• Importing resouces instead of mining them is fine, but for very inexpensive resources (Coal) loading times become significant with trains.

Etrinka

Starting with an Eastern European map trying to bring life to the current dormant villages and cities. I know this game is going through active development and I think I am now significantly upgraded. So some hard learnings from before seems to not be valid anymore.

• Oil is the way to make initial profit
• Dont expect the factories to work at more than 75% capacity, very hard to get 100% workers in them. Just accept it (or tell me how to do)
• Even a lesser coal source is plenty to run a Coal Power plant
• Cable cars (heavy) are quite cool for transporting things like Iron. One Iron Mine connected to an Iron Processing plants can satisfy at least two full Cable Cars line (in parallell). So think big, but it is quite nice when working. Taking unprocessed Coal Ore down from a mountain with Cable Cars will turn out to be a production bottleneck.
• Clothing Factories are pretty good: they consume just 2.4 tons and produce just 1.2 tons of quite high value goods, so a Clothing Factory close to a border can be served by a single truck (the same covered truck can be used for both raw material fabric and ready made clothes).
• A challenge with making use of small dormat villages is to bring heating from far away. Sure, the houses heat themselves, but your Grocery store or Kindergarden do not.
• Busses now work as I would expect (you can make several bus stops, make a line, travellers will get on of the bus is going anywhere they want to go). Passengers stay on a bus for at most 4 hours, so you can’t bus them to a university very far away.
• Food is important. People will queue for food until they get it, and fail to satisfy all their other needs. If unexpectedly people have very little satisfaction despite you have attractions and services, check the queue outside the grocery store.
• Chemical factories are nice, after you have researched them.

Finoslavl

I started with a random map with some cities, with the intention of building farming and making the town(s) self sufficient and prosperous. My first industries were a Gas Power Plant, A Food Factory and a Distillery, and I focused on truck-deliveries. I also started with “little” money (3.5M Rubel).

I managed to get the first town quite fine, with hospital, fire fighters, bus lines. However, achieving profitability and growth seems very hard with this approach (you kind of need trains and high volume businesses).

• WRSR is about logistics, and low margin profits. When you have not so profitable factories like Food or Alcohol, and you ship things with trucks to and from the border (needing to import fuel) it becomes quite questionable whether you make any money what so ever.
• I had a not so little town with 5 bus stops in a circle line, with different facilities (Cinema, Shopping Mall, Football field, Hospital) on different parts of the line. I think people end up spending too much of their time waiting for a bus and travelling the bus. Aim for walking distance to most things from home.
• AgroFarm: I connected an AgroFarm to 4 big fields. That seems to be kind of what it can manage. Use large covered hull vehices for harvest! I connected my AgroFarm to two grain storages via a single forklift garage. During harvest the 4 forklifts were not enough, and the harvest could not be unloaded in the AgroFarm.
• A rough estimate is that an AgroFarm with 4 big fields can produce 1000 tons of Grain per Year. A food factory can use 40 tons per day, so one AgroFarm would supply it for a month. Thus, you need roughly 10 AgroFarms with a total of 40 big fields, for a single food factory. A distillery or a textile factory is not so different. While building 10 AgroFarms and 40 fields with roads and electricity is not that hard, the grain logistics become a true challenge.
• It seems easier to build homes close to workplaces, and have people use public transportation to church or the pool or whatever, than to make people commute to a workplace far away.
• You can export electricity also with a Medium Voltage Line.
• A practial logistics pattern if you produce for example food is to take to food from the factory, visit a few stores, and end up in a customs building to export the rest. Note that (road vehicles) skip “Drop” stops if they have no cargo, and proceed to next “Load” stop. It does not seem to work the other way around.
• Typically you can build a storage facility (grain storage, oil cistern) directly on a source (farm, pump jack) without some transportation (forklifts, pumps). However, in general, forklifts, pumps and conveyer engines are recommended. Especially forklifts are worth avoiding when they are not necessary since they have quite limited capacity. An extra convoyer engine is just waste of money.