Workers and Resources is a complicated game, when you are new (or newish) it is very easy to struggle with basic things like getting public transport working.

There are video tutorials but not only do you have to invest 10 minutes or even as much as an hour, but they might never mention or just gloss over the specific thing you wanted to know. The simple series provides bite-sized chunks of information that you can skim through in a minute to get what you want to know.

The simple series often provides a single opinioned way to do things. not because it is the only way or even the best way, but just because it is easy to explain concisely.

Clothing.

A clothing factory requires no research, can be built anywhere and you can easily import the fabric with trucks until you have your own fabric factory.

The production chain is pretty simple: Farms (crops) => 1x fabric factory => 2x clothing factory.

You can also import the crops from the border instead or as a supplement to your farms. If you build the fabric factory near the border you can import crops with just trucks.

An explosive factory is another option.

• Ease of setup
  
• Public transport
  
• Internal transportation of goods
  
• External transportation of goods
  
• Cost and space

The local storage is rarely enough.

In many cases, the input and output storage can be the same building. Food factories can use a single warehouse to store both crops and food.

In other cases, you might be moving goods directly from one factory to another via conveyors, in this case the output storage of one factory might be the input storage of the next. For example, Coal Mine -> Aggregate Storage -> Coal Processing Plant.

If you use sowers and harvesters from the farm buildings, you don't need workers at all.

It is the same for gravel and bauxite mines.

They are a bit more expensive but getting road connections to pumping stations with overground pipes in the way is just painful.

Oil refineries have a maximum production rate of 125t of fuel and 75t of bitumen. Trucks can't handle that volume.

So you need one storage tank for fuel and one storage tank for bitumen.

Clothing and fabric are both low-volume goods so they can be imported/exported via trucks.

You can make a profit importing fabric, converting them into clothes and then exporting them.

It's not impossible to use trucks to transport crops but be prepared for traffic issues.

• A fully running steel mill requires 375t of coal and 200t of iron.
  
• An iron processing plant creates 105t of iron from 225t of iron ore.
  
• A 100% quality iron mine creates 1000t of iron ore.
  
• A coal processing plant creates 120t of coal from 210t of coal ore.
  
• A 100% quality coal mine creates 924t of coal ore.

So for 1 steel mill, you need 3.2 coal processing plants, 2 iron processing plants, 1 69% quality coal mine and 1 45% quality iron mine.

Assuming you have a coal source and an iron source nearby, the setup for a steel mill running at max capacity is.

• Coal Mine -> Aggregate Storage (Coal Ore) -> Coal Processing Plant (x4) -> Aggregate Storage (Coal) -> Steel Mill -> Open Storage (Steel)
  
• Iron Mine -> Aggregate Storage (Iron Ore) -> Iron Processing Plant (x2) -> Aggregate Storage (Iron) -> Steel Mill -> Open Storage (Steel)

So you can run a single conveyor line that brings both coal and iron to the steel mine.

These are very idealistic setups. They are too small to be used as an industrial area by themselves, and it becomes impractical to use them as is when considering public transport, goods transfer and space.

All food and alcohol need are crops so this is an easy setup as long as you transfer in crops by train.

Crops and chemicals need to be transferred in.

Chemical plants require tiny amounts of everything but oil, so it is easier to move goods to and from storage using a distribution office. I would build this setup near some oil wells.

Two coal processing plants are likely too few to process all the coal ore that most coal mines produce.

You need to plan trees nearby, obviously.

I forgot to add open storage for the prefab factory, but I'm too lazy to redesign it.

It's not a practical design, anyway.

It's usually more practical to combine all construction goods production in roughly the same area, resulting in a much more complex and ad-hoc setup.

Because you need 500 people for a fuel refinery, this one can actually be used as a complete industry area.

Chemicals, oil and mechanical components are imported.

This is from one of my saves, which is a more practical example.

This is where you can see theory and reality diverging.

Simply doubling up the "theory" setup isn't necessarily the best solution, especially when I want to produce chemicals locally as well. The lack of bypass rails (meaning the steel drop-off will block the warehouse drop-off) in the theory solution could also be a problem.

North. The single train station delivers workers to all industrial buildings.

South. Where my import/export storages and my distribution offices are.

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