Optimised HUB layout guide - Frostpunk 2 Tips and Tricks

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Thanks to all your comments we've figured out the HUBs do not affect the buildings on a district. The game tooltips is bugged at the time of recording leading me to believe the hubs were more overpowered than they actually are as it shows the heat being dropped to zero when in reality it is only dropping the district's heat to zero but not affecting the heat requirement of the buildings in the district. A similar concept applies to all other hubs. TLDR: HUBS only affect districts not buildings!

[@kevkas]

Nice video, I now realize I made quite a few sub-optimal decisions while playing the Story mode.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

I finished story on normal difficulty and never used a single hub...

[@kevkas]

@@DataEngineerPlays yeah same here, in fact that's exactly why I checked your video, I was like "what IS even the point of hubs?" but I get that it's probably meant for higher difficulties. Still, I made a few mistakes on district layouts so the video came in handy.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

@@kevkas It's for captains difficulty. You can see purpose, even though its unnecessary for the easier difficulties. Having 3 fully expanded districts with buildings that consume no demand, just paying the demand for like 3-6 hubs is a super useful concept imo

[@Mister_Taxman]

STUART! Excellent and efficient!

[@disneyjohnarroyo]

As a co-engineer, your guides are awesome! This is also what I initially plan to do when I tried the game, good analysis.

[@DJDELLANNIE]

For a new player like myself this is great. I finally understand how these things actually worked

[@zeldascottgc]

everyone is a new player blud the game came out last week

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Yes I'm also learning so many things as I play and make these videos!

[@RamenEnjoyer404]

I was in chapter 4 by the time I realized the true power hubs had. But it's cool to see how much nuance there is to building in this game and the trade offs

[@DataEngineerPlays]

I didn't use hubs for the whole campaign lol

[@nakkihammeri]

Yo. I also came up with same idea but I personally find single line district layout better it allows 1 hub to hit 4 districts and it has more space to add more hubs if needed.+ its expandable you can make the line fatter and so add more districts and hubs.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Like two lines of districts on each side of the hubs? That's a cool idea! I'll test it out

[@SciFiMangaGamesAnime]

In my game, I am always trying to make house districts to shield food districts and vice versa. Usually by building them line by line (with some variations). At least before watching your video. Thank you for explanations.

[@Tinyuvm]

Great video, I'm all in for in depth game mechanics!

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Well get ready for some crazy maths coming your way real soon!

[@Keandros]

26:06 three of those delta housing districts with a final housing district in a 12 hexes triangle formation in the center of the three deltas would be the maximized version. The final district in the center of the three deltas would be catching 2 out of 3 of each of the centeal hubs of the deltas.

[@prizepig]

Awesome! I will definitely utilize this info.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Please do, show me some awesome configurations you come up with!

[@champadin1755]

So good - thanks! More game elements please

[@tsunam1ss]

Thank you!🤍 Now I want to rebuild the whole city😅

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Do it!

[@Keandros]

10:55 Do the other hubs work the same as the heating hubs? Do they stack when placed on the "tails" with the ones in the centers? Such as if I were to put down 3 maintenance hubs on the tails of the 3 industrial districts? Hence have the benefits of 4 maintenance hubs on the industry. Or a mix and match of different hubs.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Hub benefits stack as far as I'm aware or what the tooltip shows. So yes if you can get 4 maintenance hubs hitting 3 tiles in each district then the effect would stack. However, you can't put the same hub DIRECTLY next to each other, so whether you can actually get 4 maintenance hubs down is the main question.

[@Keandros]

@@DataEngineerPlays I linked this video of yours on the 11bit Frostpunk 2 support channel. I mentioned the discussion in the comments of your videos and your latest video about heating hubs being bugged and the other hubs not affecting buildings. Hopefully someone at 11bit notices and we can get a concrete answer on what their intention for hubs functionality is.

[@moldock40k]

A little off topic but is it better to have a single extraction district covering a lot of resource nodes or is it better to have more districts covering fewer nodes?

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Situational. Ultimately a single district expanded with 2 buildings is the most resource efficient. But obviously early game you're kinda forced to build multiple districts due to lack of tech and deficit in resources

[@Ridesdragons]

increasing the number of resource nodes only increases the longevity of the district. since districts refund most of their construction cost when tearing down, and since you're limited to only 2 building slots per district, you're almost always better off with more districts than just one. that said, more districts means more workforce, and even if you cover a lot of resource nodes with a single district, it doesn't last all that long, especially if you add buildings that increase its output, so it's usually not an issue to cover many nodes with one district. it's only really an issue when dealing with "infinite" nodes that contain millions of materials. you never, ever want to have a single district covering 2+ of those nodes at the same time.

[@Keandros]

Would you save this layout design for the mid and late game? Or is it possible to build from the beginning housing districts with this in mind? On Story there is no adjacency bonus to the generator so you only have the crevasses to get placement bonuses. On Utopia Builder, I wonder how to take advantage of pre planning your first districts to include hubs. I believe that playing the long game can be beneficial. Of course it depends on our cities' needs and what difficulty we are playing on. Short term solutions to avert immediate disasters. So far I'm playing on Officer, still familiarizing myself with everything.

[@letroll8954]

Take care that hubs are bugged right now and don't affect the buildings inside districts, even if they say they do. They only affect the resource drain of the actual district itself. So if you have a building with 40 heat requirement inside a district with 60 heat requirement, and you have an 80 heat boost from hubs, the heat cost of the district becomes zero but you're still consuming the 40 heat of the building even if the tooltip says you're consuming 20 heat overall. So you would be wasting heat unknowingly. Once that's fixed, in my opinion definitely do leave space for at minimum one hub near every residential district (for a heating hub), and 2-4 hubs for industrial and extraction districts. The other residential hubs (other than the Heat Hub, which I consider mandatory) are for only when you need them. In general, while setting up districts for adjacency bonuses, think ahead for a couple hubs and leave a few spaces so you can build them later.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

It's very hard to build something permanantly in this game. For example early game you're trying to harvest non-infinite resources and hubs aren't unlocked, heat stamps are scarce, so I wouldn't build delta patterns with 3 spaces empty in the middle waiting for hubs. I'd just build delta patterns as per my districts guide video without hubs in mind Mid game as my resources run out, since I have to deconstruct some districts anyway, I'd look at removing the existing early game districts entirely, then looking for infinite resource nodes and plopping down this hub optimised build. Finally late game, people have suggested a new build entirely which I might cover in another video since they might need 8 different hubs hitting a district, there's a better build involving lines and 4 districts (2 on each side). To transition you'd just have to delete all your districts and start again!

[@Keandros]

@@letroll8954 Thanks for the heads up on hubs not affecting buildings due to a bug. Them affecting buildings is the biggest reason to use them as buildings are the biggest drain on resources, especially workforce. The Air Transport hub is my favorite as it frees up 15% of the workforce.

[@NKGerydos]

Ah i just noticed that you have a hub vid too. Than consider my hub comment on your previous video non existent. :D

[@samuel.andermatt]

Can I stack maintanance hubs to the point where I get stuff for free, without any material upkeep?

[@DataEngineerPlays]

No maintenance hubs don't affect other maintenance hubs so you'll always be paying something. But it's a very worthwhile trade if you're trading 25 heat for 40x3 materials or something like that

[@MeowBeep_]

No, because they reduce demand, but not requirements.

[@DavidGuild]

To elaborate what ​@@MeowBeep_ said, maintenance is a different category than industry usage. You can't reduce the materials used to make stuff, you can only reduce the passive drain of districts (and maybe some buildings, not sure).

[@samuelbras1]

Does two or more research hubs increase research speed?

[@DataEngineerPlays]

I believe more research buildings increases research speed

[@retros1]

I believe it's mentioned in some in-game tip, when I saw that I've immediately built 2 more :D

[@quangtrinh7119]

yes, there is an achievement to it.

[@dgatos42]

I’m wondering if this could maybe be improved further (for builds where you are space limited rather than resource limited), by getting partial bonuses on a “second layer” of inlaid deltas. So for a tri-hub ABC, will a second layer district on the side of BC be able to get those specific bonuses? This would also come with a partial heat bonus from the first layer district. I’m on the phone right now though so I can’t do the hex grid math in my head.

[@purpledevilr7463]

This is good. But also kinda just ugly. I think I just prefer Adaptive Communism to reduce the heat demand. Also to not need industry.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Yes the tiles in frostpunk 2 don't line up. I've given up on aesthetics, I'm going pure functionality!

[@enfieldli9296]

Man, the tile useage of this layout is killing me, sooo many are wasted XDDDDDD

[@DataEngineerPlays]

what'd you mean by 'wasted'?

[@enfieldli9296]

@@DataEngineerPlays well, you can't really use them since they're leftover from such layout

[@enfieldli9296]

@@DataEngineerPlays Can you make a video on reasearch route/preferrence guide?

[@faded_taco1816]

This is actually a bad layout you can do better ones 😊

[@Verdantrift]

kinda mid layout

[@dragongrannos9535]

Where's your video about hub layouts?

[@Verdantrift]

​​@@dragongrannos9535 if you think it is good layout batter chech your brain

[@dragongrannos9535]

@@Verdantrift You edited your post and still spelled "check" wrong? Why should I listen to anything you say.

[@lostfan10000]

I feel like my eyes have been opened! Thanks for the video, going to take these lessons into my game.

[@dann5480]

Nice, just watched episode 2 of the playthrough

[@MeowBeep_]

I see you've used an open area with fairly consistent hex tiles in your examples. Because the game uses voronoi tiling, rather than pure hex tiling, you won't be able to do that layout everywhere. Sometimes, if the tiles are just right, you can actually do much much better. I have a pair of heating and maintenance hubs both hitting 6 districts, which was so strong it easily carried my early max difficulty game with the huge efficiency value it gave. I found a good approach is to count the numbers of tiles a hub can hit from a certain placement, then divide it by 3 to know how many districts it could optimally hit. Generally I aim to hit at least four. I think your method is a good baseline, though seldom will it be the optimal solution. Because the lay of the tiles is inconsistent, there probably isn't any universally optimal layout. My other main issue with your layout is future expansion, as being able to add more districts in an optimal way is fairly important. I haven't worked it out yet, and mostly just solve each particular area in some bespoke way. But I think of the two promising approaches generally as 'triangles' and 'noodles'. If every district is a triangle, and you put hubs at the points, then every hub hits 3 triangles, every triangle hits 3 hubs, and every district gets 3 cuddling bonuses, and it can easily be expanded. This along the same lines as your current approach leads, I think. Noodles on the other hand are harder to conceptualize in an expandable way, but offer higher potential for cuddling and hub bonuses. In practice I'm using a combination of both in my bespoke layouts, so they're useful as framing concepts if nothing else.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Great points. I think the concept is sound, but of course the result of execution may vary. And yes in terms of future expansion this build is not tilable in anyway, you just have to find a new open space to build a second one. But I don't find that to be an issue since most of the time you'll be trying to hit some resource node somewhere

[@CorerMaximus]

Do you have a picture of the 6 district bonus you could upload to imgur and drop a link to? I'd love to check it out.

[@MeowBeep_]

@@CorerMaximus I'm a bit lazy for that, but I"m about to hop on twitch. If you can find me I'll be happy to show you it in action.

[@TheCreditFrog]

Awesome tutorial! Well done 👍

[@johnpawlak7350]

Dude you deserve way more than 2k subs

[@DataEngineerPlays]

@@johnpawlak7350 thanks. It's a new channel so more than happy with 2k for now but hopefully that number will increase over time!

[@kw3565]

Just curious if you will show some demonstration on realistic housing layout? I can't seem to get a similar 3 hubs affecting 3 district layout when considering special zones for extra housing/heat

[@osaasd8018]

The "bonus zones" are only 6 tiles if I remember correctly, so you can only have max 2 districts which both use the zone bonus and the adjecency bonus. Also I do not think there is any food close to them, so the best you can do is 3 housing districts with 2 in the bonus zone(unless you want the squalor). You could also just use the bonus zones in the beginning and focus on getting 2 housing districts with all bonuses and use these advanced techniques later when those starting districts in the bonus zones arent enough and you need to expand.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Housing zone are free placement, if you can find an open area you should be able to build the exact layout in my video. I can't imagine a triple housing district setup with 3 research 3 housing blocks not being useful in any playthrough. Potentially you can replace one housing zone with a food zone instead

[@GTexperience_Channel]

I really hope they change the adjacency mechanic. It should not be district based, but tile based approach. As maximizing surface area to get the best heat modifiers, is counter intuitive.

[@codychatary2982]

Man learned a lot of great things to do in my next play through

[@Sharploner87]

The only hub we're missing from this is a Squalor hub. That would greatly help out. Otherwise, this is a fantastic optimized hub layout! Brilliant idea!

[@Keandros]

This is giving me all kinds of ideas. Thank you for making this video.

[@St34mPunkPrivateer]

I like the game but the tutorial, tooltips, and UI need work. I'm in Chapter 3 and its now time to dozer my entire city to make it hyper efficient.

[@Flynnor]

Excellent tip, and great explanation, thanks.

[@HIM17]

as a hypothetical engineer this video helped me survive my current food and energy crisis. thank you

[@Dragonriderperson]

This is a helpful guide for efficient building

[@zeonvalo]

bro u r breaking the game😂

[@IlluMusic]

Might be fixed soon, but the heating bonus from hubs seem NOT to apply to buildings inside the district, despite the ui suggesting otherwise. You can see for example at 11:50 that the overall heat balance of -50 doesn't change after activating all these hubs..

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Seriously? I need to check this out more carefully. The tool tip in the district is certainly showing that the heat reduction is applied. But does it then not actually reduce fuel consumption?

[@IlluMusic]

@@DataEngineerPlays Yes, at least thats what I think is happening, there is also a reddit post about it. Would be intersting to see if that also applies to other bonuses.

[@igorengel7801]

@@IlluMusic Certainly also applies to Maintenance with materials demand, probably applies to all

[@DavidGuild]

​@@igorengel7801Maintenance (demand) is different from consumption (requires). Industry requirements get first priority, will always be fully satisfied before other demands, and aren't affected by hubs. Maintenance demand then uses whatever's left, using the same system as food/goods/housing, i.e. you take a penalty if you don't have enough but everything still works. Whereas if you don't have enough even for industry requirements then you don't produce as much goods/prefabs.

[@igorengel7801]

@@DavidGuild I meant Maintenance Hub, for reducing materials demand. The test case was Extraction Districts with pumpjacks, so no hard industry requirement

[@windoverwaves6781]

But why would a heating hub be necessary when one could've just adjacency bonus away the heat demand altogether? Especially the industrial/extraction districts, those only demand 20 heat

[@DataEngineerPlays]

@@windoverwaves6781 temperatures can drop to -80 degrees

[@xzardas541]

Well, if you have space for it you can build 2 lines of districts with empty line for hubs betwen them this allows for 2 hubs each type to hit 4 districts at once. My favorite for resource independent districts.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Yes, I have a 4 district hub layout showing exactly that! It's hard to find 12x5 lines of perfect tiles in a normal game though

[@propjam2]

That was brilliant, but what about the air hub in residential, does that not give a bonus via worker commute?

[@DataEngineerPlays]

I don't believe so

[@phonomime]

but when is it optimal to start researching these? i mean i barely have time to develop the other things

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Excellent question. Ultimately it depends on many factors, but generally after you stabalise your demands. So after you get a sawmill, mine, hothouse and factory, you should be positive on everything. With that being said, in my captains playthrough I didn't start grabbing hubs until chapter 3, because with stable demands you don't really need efficiency/material hubs... When i started getting disease and trust issues I started researching the corresponding hubs

[@whatbear]

Holy shit. LFG!! Thank you

[@phill2065]

thanks for making these

[@ray6937]

Great video! Thank you

[@KuzuhaSama]

Perfect. Thank you very much !

[@johndoe7063]

I find this layout to be quite suboptimal because late game there are far more hubs than 3. Industrial districts for example can benefit from 7 different hub types, and residential can benefit from up to 6. It's far better to have a straight line of hubs with 2 lines of districts on either side.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

You're the second one to mention this straight line concept, I might explore it. With the 2 straight line build on each side you will lose the free triple adjacency bonus instead having 2x2 districts adjacent. But in return you're getting each hub hitting 4 districts. Is that how I'm reading it?

[@johndoe7063]

@@DataEngineerPlays yep, but the other downside is you need a large area to implement and irregular non hexagon blocks can throw off your pattern, which is why you need straight lines so you can skip the irregular tiles and still have enough.

[@lsh32768]

I don't feel rail hubs are worth it TBH. Insane amount of heat and material requirement yet only yields like 15% productivity boost

[@DataEngineerPlays]

It's only worth it late game if you have 2 steam core powered buildings. eg 2 advanced drum hothouses + expanded food district is like 300 food per district x3. So you're trading 40 heat + 50 materials for 3x 300 x 15% food = 120 food

[@fugitiveunknown7806]

That or if you are at the max for locations. If you have burned off all the materials/food and are running on metal/deep deposits, you don't have the option to build more and any boost is helpful.

[@jabbott6748]

Great guide!

[@lov2529]

is having more research institutions gives you a speed boost on the research ?

[@DataEngineerPlays]

yes

[@lov2529]

@@DataEngineerPlays is there a limit?

[@DataEngineerPlays]

@@lov2529 I haven't done the maths tbh

[@Nonamed70]

aaaand now i feel dumb.. lol.. insane video, gonna try this on the weekend after i finished story in my first sandbox run 😎

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Good luck I'm sure you'll come up with some cool district/hub/building combos

[@alanhuynh2000]

Is it worth destroying districts to then rebuild them with the 3 hub bonus?

[@Spegando]

I dont think so, huge waste of time

[@pilmdonlonter]

so, all same hub its stack? at max 3 cell?

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Yes I believe so

[@RexSmith97]

Fun fact: heating hubs don’t seem to actually reduce heat requirements from buildings atm. Even though they say they do in the district screen, they actually don’t change how much fuel you’re spending at your generator. Not sure if this is a bug or intended, would like some clarification from the devs.

[@andrewtran4237]

Weird, if you turn your hubs off, do the heat requirements for the district change? Often times, if you plan your housing or industrial areas well enough, the mutual heating bonuses from each other can cancel out their heating needs until a whiteout comes or you place a building down. If a housing district has a 40 heat demand and it already has the benefits from two other districts next to it, a heating hub won’t change the fuel demand until conditions change.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Yes it's been mentioned a few times... I think it's 100% a bug. Why would the tooltip show the building is consuming 0 heat, but then contradict itself and actually consume heat?

[@MeowBeep_]

Hubs reduce demands, but not requirements. I spent a while yesterday getting my head around this with materials because I thought my industry districts were being charged twice. Then it clicked that they're two very separate things.

[@knusperkeks2748]

Do hubs benefit buildings inside districts?

[@danzansandeev6033]

They do but only up to 3 tiles. So you should build 2-3 districts around the hub to maximise it’s efficiency

[@DataEngineerPlays]

@@knusperkeks2748 the buildings in a district affect the total demand of the district. So yes. Eg if you build something in a district that adds +40 heat then build a heat hub next to the district, it would -40 heat and negate the effect of the building

[@kw3565]

​@@DataEngineerPlaysYou are absolutely correct, but just for clarification: Hubs only affects districts, while building affects districts Which means even if u hv 2 buildings in a district, 1 maintainence hub affecting that district only reduce 40 materials use once (not thrice). This does not matter where the building is located or not. However, if your added building increase your district material cost from 0 to 40, you can now build another hub to reduce that 40 cost.

[@IlluMusic]

I tested it and have to disagree : At least for heating it is bugged right now and does not affect the demand from buildings in district. In the district ui it shows that it should, but in the overall calculation the - heat from the building is still fully taken to account, no matter how many heating hubs you place next to it. You can easily test this with a housing district and the research lab - just watch the total demand at the top of the ui.

[@knusperkeks2748]

@@IlluMusic Yes, thanks for your feedback. I'm asking because I hear conflicting reports on this. Some people claim that the Heating Hub works on buildings, some claim that they only work if the actual building is within the range of the Heating Hub, and I'm just confused as to how things actually work.

[@igorengel7801]

I noticed hubs are actually much less useful than they claim to be - as can be seen at 11:49, after building the six heating hubs, heat demand doesn't actually change, despite the district menu showing that it does (still -50 net coal). Because apparently, hubs don't reduce demand from buildings, only base district demand. Not sure whether it's a bug or intended this way, but it sharply limits their utility.

[@DataEngineerPlays]

Someone else mentioned that as well. Apparently it's a bug hopefully they fix it. The tool tip is not reflecting the true consumption