General Thoughts on upgrading factory production

[Barkmi4 (Mike)]

I’ve seen a lot of posts on factory production lately, and didn’t want to hijack another thread.

I’d like to hear people’s opinions on whether to upgrade production factories.

My opinion is based on a long game. Assuming I have collected all stars, I would probably only fly for launch fuel, and to adventure destinations. Launch destinations would realistically be cape carnival, north observatory, south observatory or pletesk. The drops from Baikonur and Jiuquan aren’t as good. Personally I’d do pletesk for red launches, and north observatory for the better fuel drops. This leaves a longer requirement for blankets and flight catering.
Adventure flights don’t need flight items, and you could easily earn more tokens from here than channelling resources into getting 1st on a destination in a ranking.

We all know this game is for the long run. With this in mind, I see the life of these factories as short term - therefore i’d argue it isn’t worthwhile. Once you have all the stars, why would you return to these destinations? The drop rate on collections is pretty bad. I would say as long as you have a diverse fleet, you can manage keeping all planes in the air without upgrading these.

Admittedly there is an argument for upgrading a slot rather than building another facility if it’s cheaper than a land expansion.

Normal stars are just factor of time really. The main benefit I can see, is the few extra items you can use for S3 flights - pretty minor in the scheme of things.

My FC facility is fully upgraded - I did this way back when my city was fully expanded (before a change in the game). Its pretty rare I use these now, and I have a stock just sat in the warehouse. It feels like a waste.
I also have one additional slot in my sweet factory - I can’t remember why/when I bought this 😅

My factories spend a lot of time sat not producing - I don’t know about other people?
I must say though, if they were the same cost as FC to upgrade, I would probably buy more slots. Contradicting myself I know 😂

What do others think?
I’d be interested to hear from those who have upgraded.

 

[andy8758]

Production upgrades - lets start with Condors.

120 green cash to upgrade each factory production by one? 720 green cash will double your sleeping pill production, but is it really worth it if you have to spend $$$$ to get them? So I spend 40,000 (free) coins buying Condor excavation maps every week instead. And when the sleeping pills get short - I fly those and the adventure maps. The alternative is to ask for gifts of the pills - I do that sometimes too.

Furniture factories want 80 green for 1st upgrade - again it is not worth the real money (not everyone needs to agree - happy for the very rich to spend their cash without worry on this game - keeps the developers in work😁).

I still spend real money - buying land, and Vintage weathervane bonuses from the Duke. But I don't think spending on anything else is justifiable in my case. I need the money for whiskey, wine and holidays in Europe (when I can get out again🤣 ).

I did spend money upgrading the flight catering and laundries but that was much cheaper. I also had a windfall and reached deep to upgrade my sweet factory - loved those falcons, worth every penny and my pax doubled in no time at all. 🙃

 

[cazmillon]

You have forgotten alliance tasks which can eat up some of your resources too
I have partially upgraded all my production buildings. I don't ask neighbours for any production item, but I do ask for in flight items such as EP and VR
Your rule about not spending more greens than a land expansion is good except I use the price of an on sale land expansion as a general guide
At your point in the game I doubt you need to change your strategy

 

[VdW]

I dunno, I personally think they're too expensive. And if you can mix-up your planes and have good neighbors, you can always keep an eye on your stock, when it gets low, ask for them in your gift name to restock.

But then again, I'm not a very "hardcore" player for AC. So for me, if I build 6 of them, it can be enough if I strategize a bit.

I upgraded 1 slot of my Flight Catering Facility, (it's 'only' 10 greens) but now I'm regretting it a bit. I don't really need that 1 extra slot. A waste of 10 greens. But that's part of the game I guess, learning by doing.

 

[jpm-wv]

I dunno, I personally think they're too expensive. And if you can mix-up your planes and have good neighbors, you can always keep an eye on your stock, when it gets low, ask for them in your gift name to restock.

But then again, I'm not a very "hardcore" player for AC. So for me, if I build 6 of them, it can be enough if I strategize a bit.

I upgraded 1 slot of my Flight Catering Facility, (it's 'only' 10 greens) but now I'm regretting it a bit. I don't really need that 1 extra slot. A waste of 10 greens. But that's part of the game I guess, learning by doing.

It depends to upon what you are doing. All my catering facilities have 3 slots. While I can question the wisdom, I did this because I fly 5 Ravens as well as Eagles. Jumbo's, and Giants. I wanted to accommodate speed-ups if I feel it's needed. If I did not do this, I would be capped to 12 flights every 12 hours.

 

[Harcourt]

I started with a strategy of finishing each of a plane's destinations before moving up and repeat. ie All the Owl destinations, then Hawk etc etc.
This meant I needed maximum production of Flight Catering, then Blankets, then Lollipops. This was all before the hundred limit.
I sold off 5 each of Catering, Blanket and Lollipop production buildings, keeping one of each for old time's sake. My current stocks are 10000+ Catering, and 4000+ Blankets and Lollipops.

I am now left with Thunderbird and Condor destinations. So now I need Beds and E-readers, and VR and Pills. I have 6 Furniture Factories upgraded to 2 each = 12 beds I have 6 Sleeping Pill factories producing one pill each. For the E-Readers and VRs I either fly to Pyongyang and Macau. or request gifts from neighbours.

The 100 limit certainly makes a big difference and I now fly excavation flights when I need to build stocks.
Occasionally I fly to Macau and another Condor destination equally. (ie 4 and 4) so I can keep VRs in stock.

The effect of all this is to slow game progress down (Or rebalancing as GI like to call it)

Regards
Harcourt

 

[VdW]

It depends to upon what you are doing. All my catering facilities have 3 slots. While I can question the wisdom, I did this because I fly 5 Ravens as well as Eagles. Jumbo's, and Giants. I wanted to accommodate speed-ups if I feel it's needed. If I did not do this, I would be capped to 12 flights every 12 hours.

That’s why I said you need to strategize. Mixing up your planes, asking gifts (keep an eye on stocks), flying excavations, etc.

But then again, it all depends on your game. Everyone has different strategy 👍🏼

 

[BrentCrude]

I agree with the plane mix comments. I did one upgrade on each Flight Catering building so I could collect 12 every 12 hours and this supported flying 9 jumbos. I did the same with blankets and 9 giants.

But I felt the greenie cost was too expensive to do that with the lollipop, bed and pill factories, so I only collect 6 of those every 12 hours which meant I needed to fly a mix of falcons, tbirds and condors to go for stars on those destinations, as that production doesn't support more than 4 or 5 of any one plane type. The main difference is a tougher time winning a weekly ranking for gold tokens, but I still get some 2nds and 3rds.

 

[Dan]

I think that you answered your own question by referring to the factory production buildings as short term and the game as long term.

Yes, upgrading a slot might be cheaper than buying an additional plot of land for an additional building but then what? You have invested airport cash into your short term building which will do nothing in return for you when you are not flying/using that item. Putting the airport cash somewhere else will almost always have a better return in my opinion.

Diversify aircraft like everyone else said already will be the 98% solution for the masses.

The only one thing that I can think of (and my game play isn't there yet) that multiple upgraded facilities would provide would be a large(r) almost instant output of the items. This output would only be beneficial to an event where there are flight destinations available for a very limited period of time, but a period of time that is long enough to produce multiple iterations of flight items every 12 hours (1-2 weeks). Of course if you have no intention of 3-starring and doing instant returns to the destinations during the event then the upgraded facilities would be worthless.

I also think that where the airport cash is coming from (CBMs/my wallet) will have the largest impact on how to answer this question and where to use the airport cash.