The ore industry area from the Cities: Skylines Industries expansion opens up your game to a lot of different supply chains, and can grow your city’s economy in a massive way.
Getting your ore industry up and running involves the following steps:
- Getting ready to build your ore industry
- Creating your ore industry area
- Obtaining and storing ore
- Producing metal
- Leveling up your city
- Producing glass
Let’s get started!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Step 1: Getting Ready to Build Your Ore Industry
To unlock the ore specialization for industry areas, you’ll need to have hit the Boom Town population milestone.
You’ll also want to make sure you have enough cash to spare. To build the first ore industry buildings available to you at level 1, you’ll need ₡57,500.
| Building | Price |
|---|---|
| Main building | ₡25,000 |
| Small ore mine | ₡6,500 |
| Ore grinding mill | ₡20,000 |
| Sand storage | ₡6,000 |
Don’t forget to factor in the money for building roads, water pipes, and power lines to supply the area.
Also, note that ore is by default a non-renewable resource in the game (as is oil) so the natural ore resources in your map will run out. But if you’d prefer it to be unlimited, the game has a built-in ‘Unlimited Oil and Ore’ mod that you can switch on in the Content Manager.
Step 2: Creating Your Ore Industry Zone
First, scout around your map for the locations of ore natural resources.
You can do this by clicking on the Natural Resources button on the info view panel.
Once you’ve found your ore resources, paint your industry area around it.
Build at least one road leading into your new area. As with any specialized industry area, you’ll ideally want it to have easy access to a highway.
Next, place down an Ore Industry Main Building. Hook it up to power and water.
Tip: the main building doesn’t need to be placed on top of ore-rich terrain; only your mines do.
Placing down the Main Building will automatically designate that area as a level 1 ore industry specialized area.
Step 3: Obtaining and Storing Ore
The first thing to do in your new ore industry area is to start producing its raw resource material: ore.
For this you’ll need ore mines.
At level 1 you have access to only the small ore mine.
Place the small ore mine somewhere ore is present. The darker the blue-gray tint on the map, the more abundant that spot is in ore.
Soon enough you’ll start seeing your ore mine produce ore, and its trucks start exporting outside the city.
As your ore industry area levels up you’ll unlock the following ore extractor buildings that produce at a higher rate:
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| Extractor Building | Level Unlocked | Build Cost (₡) | Production Rate (units of ore/week) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small ore mine | 1 | 6,500 | 4,800 |
| Small ore mine underground | 2 | 10,000 | 6,400 |
| Medium ore mine | 3 | 13,000 | 8,000 |
| Seabed mining vessel | 3 | 25,000 | 8,800 |
| Large ore mine underground | 4 | 18,000 | 9,600 |
| Large ore mine | 5 | 35,000 | 11,200 |
With your mine now up and running, it’s a good time to build a storage facility for ore, so you can start stocking up on it to supply your metal and glass manufacturing facilities.
If you don’t have any ore storage facilities, your ore mines will automatically try to export all the ore they produce.
The only ore storage building available to you at level 1 is the sand storage.
Each storage facility also has its own fleet of trucks to supply your different buildings.
You unlock larger-capacity ore storage facilities as you level up.
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| Ore Storage Building | Level Unlocked | Build Cost (₡) | Capacity (Units of ore) | Trucks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sand storage | 1 | 6,000 | 300,000 | 12 |
| Ore storage | 2 | 10,000 | 400,000 | 15 |
| Ore industry storage | 4 | 15,000 | 500,000 | 20 |
| Raw mineral storage | 5 | 21,000 | 600,000 | 25 |
If your chosen map doesn’t have ore, or if you just don’t want any mining in your city, you can actually forgo building ore mines.
Your metal or glass manufacturing facilities, as well as your ore storage facilities, will automatically import ore (although it would be less profitable for you than if you produced the whole supply chain locally).
If you do choose to import instead of mine, make sure to build your ore industry area near a highway to facilitate the import trucks’ arriving in a timely manner.
Step 4: Producing Metal
Now that your supply of ore is growing, you can start producing the first processed material (also known as ‘special goods’) that you can make from it: metals.
Manufacturing metals requires the ore grinding mill, which is unlocked at the same time as the ore mines.
Place one within your industry area.
It’ll take a little while, but eventually the trucks from your ore mines and sand storage will start delivering ore to your ore grinding mill so it can start producing metals.
A similar but more productive building, the rotary kiln plant, is unlocked at level 3.
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| Metal production building | Level unlocked | Build Cost (₡) | Production (units of metal/week) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ore grinding mill | 1 | 20,000 | 3,200 |
| Rotary kiln plant | 3 | 30,000 | 6,400 |
Step 5: Leveling Up to Unlock Buildings
To level up your industry area and unlock more buildings, you’ll need to hit milestones in terms of resources produced and workers employed (each building in your ore industry area hires a certain number of workers).
Reaching the required units of resources produced usually just means letting your ore mine and/or ore grinding mill do their work for a while until they hit the number.
Reaching the number of workers usually means building several of certain production or storage buildings.
For example, you might want to build a few small ore mines and sand storages to reach level 2.
Of course you’ll also need to make sure you have enough population, and enough educated citizens, to fill the jobs.
As well as new buildings, you also get productivity and pollution reduction bonuses each time your industry area levels up.
Step 6: Producing Glass
You’ll need to reach level 2 to be able to produce the second type of ore industry processed material, which is glass.
Build a glass manufacturing plant in your industry area.
Your delivery trucks will then start to supply your glass manufacturing plant with ore to turn into glass.
A similar but more productive building, the fibreglass plant, is unlocked at level 4.
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| Glass production building | Level unlocked | Build cost (₡) | Production (units of metal/week) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glass manufacturing plant | 2 | 25,000 | 3,200 |
| Fibreglass plant | 4 | 35,000 | 6,400 |
Auxiliary Buildings
Apart from your extractor and processing buildings, each industry area type also comes with its own set of auxiliary buildings.
The ore industry workers’ barracks increases the productivity of your ore industry area, while the maintenance building increases the storage capacity of your ore storage facilities (e.g., sand storage, ore storage).
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| Building type | Level unlocked | Building cost (₡) | Effect on Ore Area |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ore workers’ barracks | 2 | 14,000 | +5% production rate per barracks, up to a max of 100% |
| Ore maintenance building | 4 | 32,000 | +5% storage capacity per maintenance building |
Both the barracks and maintenance building also hire workers, so building several of these can also help you towards your worker milestones for leveling up.
Using Ore Industry Area Products in Unique Factories
All of your ore industry products (ore, metal, and glass) can be exported as-is for profit.
However, special goods like metal and glass can also be delivered to unique factories. Unique factories turn special goods, often from multiple specialized industry area types, into luxury goods.
These luxury goods are then brought to your commercial zones to be sold to consumers, or exported. You can get great value out of your ore industry area this way, especially if you source all your raw resources locally.
Below are the unique factories that can make use of your ore industry’s special goods (metal and glass), as well as the other industry area types and special goods they require.
- Industrial steel plant: metal
- Lemonade factory: glass, crops (agriculture industry)
- Electronics factory: metal, glass, plastics (oil industry)
- Petroleum refinery: metal, petroleum (oil industry), plastics
- Car factory: metal, glass, plastics, animal products (agriculture industry)
- Modular house factory: metal, glass, plastics, planed timber (forestry industry)
- Shipyard: metal, glass, plastics, planed timber
Guide Navigation
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Cities: Skylines
- Complete Ore Industry Area Guide for Cities: Skylines
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