Because of popular demand, we do shipping distances at branches instead of factories.

As such, the game technically uses sourcing distances. We refer to it in the game and the documentation as shipping distance because we created much of the game material before we made this change.

What does this mean? Each vehicle model at a branch has a distance in which it will source the model from factories. We refer to this distance as Shipping Distance.

Any factory within the shipping distance can ship that model to the branch.

You set shipping distance by clicking "Shipping" in the Branch Distribution window. 

If you’re using the World Map, you’ll see a visual representation of the shipping distance.

Moving the slider adjusts the distance that the branch will get vehicles from. The cities in green are within the shipping distance.

When you have the distance you want, click return to go back to the distribution window.

You also must click Apply to save the changes to the vehicle.

There are some additional tools to do distances in bulk, but we'll cover those in another video.

So how does it work?

Let's say we have a branch in Paris and three factories in London, Berlin, and Detroit.

If we set the distance to 1000KM, London and Berlin are within the shipping distance of this branch.

The selected vehicle model can pull vehicles from the factories in London and Berlin, but not the factory in Detroit.

The factory closest to Paris will ship vehicles first. In this case, vehicles from London will ship to Paris before vehicles from Berlin.

If we add a second branch, selling the same vehicle model, things get a little more complicated.

Let's say there is a branch in Leeds. And it's shipping range for this vehicle also overlaps London and Berlin.

Who gets their vehicles first? The branch selling the vehicle for the highest price gets their orders first.

So if Paris is selling the vehicle for $2000, and Leeds is selling it for $1800, the game will fill Paris’ orders before Leeds’.

What if they're the same price? Then the branch closest to a factory supplying the vehicle will get priority. In this case, Leeds will get their orders before Paris.

What happens if a factory runs out of vehicles? The branch will get the rest of its order from the next closest factory.

The branch will not order any vehicles outside of its shipping distance. So if the branch exhausts all vehicle inventory within the shipping distance, then it will lose the unfilled orders.


Finally, if you use the Auto Production system, it will override all shipping distances you set in the game. The Auto Production defaults to global shipping, but it also has additional features that allow you to restrict the shipping system. 

We cover these in the shipping costs video tutorial.