rsqviper wrote: Place a recycling center, it says hiring. Then after it hires sims (you can see them walking around) it goes to no products to recycle. It never sends the trucks. This is BROKEN.
With respect, I don't think this is broken. I think maybe you've misunderstood it, possibly, and mean that in the nicest possible way.
When you've first plopped the centre and it's staffed, there is no recyclable material there yet because none has been collected - so the 'nothing to recycle' warning is appropriate at that time. I think we're both agreed on that, yes?
However, the crucial point 'it never sends the trucks' is - in my experience - not true. It can depend on when the centre has been populated; what time of day things are at. You may have to wait a bit - worst case, maybe even a whole game-day.
The recycling centre normally sends out trucks at 5am in the morning. I'm not sure whether it'll make you wait all day for that time to come around again, or whether it will immediately start sending out trucks if, say, you plopped the recycling centre at 5:05am and had a full complement of staff in place by 5:10am.
But in my experience, the collecting trucks leave the centre at 5am and enter their 'collection-phase' and then at around 4 or 5pm (I need to clarify that for myself), the 'collecting phase will end, all trucks will return to offload and garage for the night.
During the collection phase, trucks will gather until they are filled (3 tons). If they are filled, they will return to the centre and drop off whatever they can: the full 3 tons if there is room; if not enough room, then it'll drop as much as it can to refill the hopper (if the intake hopper at the centre is nearly filled, say to 18.6 tons, a filled truck will drop off 1.4 ton, fill the material hopper and leave with 1.6 tons on board, and continue collecting, return again when it's filled itself to 3 tons once more).
Also, the existence of 'walking around sims' at the recycling centre is no guarantee that it is fully populated. Graphically, you can't be sure - the only way you can really tell is to pop up the data view (Population) and see how many workers are there. The RC will take around 60 staff, and I believe that the quantity and distribution of that staff directly affects the speed of the reclamation-production cycle (i.e. less workers or wrong balance of workers = slower production process = intake hopper emptied slower = trucks unable to drop off). Similarly, on the output phase, if there is no downstream demand or space for the output materials (alloy/plastic/metal) then an output ramp's storage area will be filled, and the entire production process stalls, until there is a place for the delivery truck(s) to take that output material.
The reclamation process runs all night, if necessary, even after the collection-phase is over and the trucks are all garaged. The trucks will keep trying to offload their cargo of recyclables well into the night, if the production process is slow/stopped, but they generally do it to completion if it is possible. They will garage with less-than-1 ton on board if necessary, possibly even fully loaded if the production is entirely stopped - but I think all overnighted loads are lost in the morning at 5am when they leave on another collection phase.
Once the intake materials hopper is empty (ie Materials is zero on the dialog window) the RC plant will show the original red warning that there is no recyclable material and production is stopped. As soon as the first truck returns with some material sometime after leaving at 5am, this will go away again, and production will restart.
The only time I have seen a real bug with this so far, is when the output stage has been blocked due to nowhere downstream to take the output goods (e.g. a Trade Depot with plastics/metals/alloy storage areas and room for new deliveries). In the one time it glitched for me, the orange floating icons showing that the output process had stopped, didn't go away (though the processes themselves appear to have restarted). I simply went into edit mode on the RC, and selected each ramp in turn and then turned them off and on again. Icons cleared, production cycle (end-to-end) was working again. Not had any problems since.
I'm not totally convinced there are major, game-breaking bugs with recycling yet. There are some tricksy things to watch out for, and some impacting elements which are not made overtly clear by the game GUI, but that's not quite a gamebreaking bug to me. It could be better, though, I agree - but knowing its vagaries has helped me make a few million Simoleons out of my RC plant, and so far, so good!
Hope this helps.
