Quick question about shipping workers to building sites

[Leigh]

Will I have to set up temporary bus routes to far off building sites or do civvies from various villages make their own way?

I do play with the intention of being self sufficient, but you have to start somewhere so any initial infrastructure is usually built with cold hard cash.

If there are ways to keep imports to a minimum right from the off and use local workforce, I would love to find out.

[Mrwissan]

So the way it works is when you have buses assigned to a construction depot, you need to point that depot to a nearby bus station/stop to gather eligible workers and then the bus will move the workers to a construction site as dictated by the construction depot.

[Leigh]

Ah so you plot a bus route from housing to the construction depot and not the building site itself? Okay thanks.

Now to figure out if importing resources to a border warehouse is cheaper than buying materials at the building site directly.

[Mrwissan]

Yup, there should be a little button at the bottom left of the Construction Depot/Office building that'll say Assign and you can either manually assign buildings to offices or set it to Automatic and increase the range at which they check for unfinished buildings that don't have their work suspended.

And importing from the border will be cheaper, you just have to transport everything by train or truck.

[TheAmishStig]

Workers who live (or get off at a bus/train station) in walking distance will walk to construction sites like they're any other type of job; other than that, in the Construction Office's "Source of Materials" section there's an entry for Workers. As long as the source is set and the CO is equipped with at least one passenger vehicle [bus, personal car, etc], it'll send the vehicle to that place to get people for the jobsites.

If you want to go "tough as nails" self-sufficient, the least I've been able to get away with is one CO, one Home, one Asphalt plant, one Open Storage, one Aggregate Storage, one Warehouse, one Substation, one power line, and one Concrete plant. As long as you're willing to throw money at new immigrants [since the existing ones will starve, get grumpy, and leave pretty quickly], you can self-build the rest using imported materials [and then work towards producing the materials yourself].

The way materials transfers work you can theoretically get Gravel from either the Concrete or Asphalt plants (as the parking spaces have access to the import storage) and skip the aggregate storage, but I don't know if the CO's rules for 'suitable sources' allow it.

[Leigh]

That is handy to know the "building balance", so to speak, to spend as little currency as possible. My usual tactic is get an end product set up and then peel back and build the infrastructure for it (except for food, I always start my maps with a farm and get a build up of crops while I'm tinkering elsewhere).

So in essence you can set up a small "builders community" right at the border, have the bare minimal of imported materials, a CO and you are able to expand from there. I may try that, I like the idea of expanding outwards as opposed to expanding backwards (from an end product industry).

As an EDIT: Can you have multiple COs working together on a single construction? I usually have two to start with, one with all dozers and one with a mix of what's needed. I only ask because I know Agro Farms can't share fields, so do COs follow that rule too?

[TheAmishStig]

For your edit: Yes, you can. On the larger buildings, it's advisable to do it that way, as trying to build something like a power plant or TV station with one vehicle of each type is a painful nightmare of a slog.

Right now I have one CO for Dumpers and Mixers, one for Open/Closed hull, one for Cranes, one for Pavers/Rollers, and one for Diggers / Buses...and I need more.

When I build my next construction complex I'll probably switch it up so that each vehicle type gets its own dedicated CO except for Closed Hull and Buses, which can share one since 12 buses would cannibalize each other very rapidly and very few constructions require a large quantity of mechanical/electrical components...meanwhile, I've sorely underestimated how much concrete gets used, and 8 dumpers / 4 mixers just aren't cutting it.

[tripodalt]

seem using many engineer site can cause trouble
as two asphalte truck and no asphalter
then only workers can complete the job by hands
this game not a rts where you start from nothing
here its impossible to growth from low to high
else infinite money setting

[Leigh]

Would love COs to be able to auto assign the various sources of workers and resources. Manually is a bit o.O

Though I had the game for quite some time in many ways I'm still in the "test map" phase, not just learning mechanics but also designing layouts I find attractive and efficient. So I'm not too attached to any map in progress and just restart when I feel like it. Though, making a farm every time is a bit sucky, should save a farm start heh.

I think starting from the very outset having a "total self sufficient" run from the start is much needed. As fun as that sounds I will probably stick to my usual tactic of getting an end product set up and relying on imports, and use the profits to build the infrastructure for it second.

[TheAmishStig]

The benefit of having to assign sources manually is that you can create specialized COs based on what resources it does and doesn't know how to find.

For example, a CO dedicated to cranes, you probably don't want any resources assigned at all. If you were to assign it a source of Steel/Bricks/Panels/Boards, then the truck will run off and deliver materials when you'd really rather have them delivering tower cranes.

And nothing wrong with the 'value add' (import basic materials, export refined materials) start, then working backwards to supplying your own raw materials! One of the more reliable starts is building 1 fabric factory, 2 clothing factories, then importing crops and chemicals and exporting the clothing.

Especially relying on the agricultural industries...the amount of farmland [and with it, the amount of money you have to spend on farm buildings, at something like $200k a pop plus vehicles] needed to support a zero-imports run is massive. If memory serves, a zero-worker farm produces an average of 0.5 tons of crops per hectare per day...so to support a fabric factory [20 tons per shift, 3 shifts] you're looking at 120 hectares...or about 80 medium fields.

[Leigh]

Just made a mockup of a major construction yard, I believe it covers all bases and of course has room to expand if needed.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1907124019

Sure it is expensive, but even on hard I think something like this could be built right off the bat (use those $$$ yo), then focus on something like clothing, oil or power to start turning a profit.

[Ach]

Originally posted by Lei:

Just made a mockup of a major construction yard, I believe it covers all bases and of course has room to expand if needed.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1907124019

Sure it is expensive, but even on hard I think something like this could be built right off the bat (use those $$$ yo), then focus on something like clothing, oil or power to start turning a profit.

Some tips:

Big open trucks from CO 1 will NOT go to pick up cranes from CO 2. So eigther have only movable cranes or have trucks with the non-movable ones in the same CO.

Bulldozers and Excavators can both build roads. Excavators can also be used at a construction site. Use excavators for both and bulldozers only for terraforming

To the setup itself in my experience that is needed to be efficent:
12 trucks for gravel and asphalt, 12 trucks for concrete, 8 excavators with 4 open trucks. 4/4 closed trucks and busses (if not used at road building).
Now to open trucks and cranes:
There are 2 options: have a mixed CO for both or have seperate ones. Advantage of mixed: you only need to assign 1. Advantage of seperate: more efficent building.

And one last thing: do not underestimate the time and work you do for assigning. Since Auto Assign is not really working too often, you will be assigning a lot. And always go to your COs and select the ones needed and then select the construction sites can be pretty annoying over time

[Ach]

And one more thing i forgot to mention: Do not underestimate the amount of money this takes. In early game it's not that big of a deal since vehicles cost around 10.000 each. Still 100.000 for 10 trucks of one type.

In the Midgame it will get nasty with trucks at 50.000 each. So there is half a million gone with 1 CO. And when buying vehicles for 4-5 COs then you are at least at 2 million. So eigther get some pretty strong income or/and go for the car manufacturing to build them yourself.

[Leigh]

Originally posted by Ach:

And one more thing i forgot to mention: Do not underestimate the amount of money this takes. In early game it's not that big of a deal since vehicles cost around 10.000 each. Still 100.000 for 10 trucks of one type.

In the Midgame it will get nasty with trucks at 50.000 each. So there is half a million gone with 1 CO. And when buying vehicles for 4-5 COs then you are at least at 2 million. So eigther get some pretty strong income or/and go for the car manufacturing to build them yourself.

I agree with your comments from both posts to a point. My maps are really just proof of concepts for the most part, testing designs. I have no real emotional link to any map I make right now and restart them at the drop of a hat.

Most of my playtime since buying the game on June 25th has been not only learning mechanics of the game, but also creating layouts not only that I like the look of, but also work well. Until recently I have been focusing on "block type" constructions for major industry workforce, such as cities for a Power Plant or Oil Refinery. While pretty basic, I've only really gone into "small town" builds this past week. I have a layout I like but I know I can go smaller, but for an initial border town, I wanted a slightly bigger one.

My personal feelings are that, even on hard, using both the USD and the Rubles you are given you can build at least the infrastructure of a decent sized town and construction facility. Even with clothing you can turn a decent profit from the off.

I mean, it may not be fast, but you can build a border town with cash and then stretch across the map from there with local workforce using the as few imports as possible, building infrastructure and towns to support them as you go.

I currently run a edited "Normal", starting in 1960 and having fuel usage turned on, but in future I think I'll start on Hard, for the simple reason I feel that these tactics will still work, albeit slowly. It doesn't take too long to turn a decent profit, so Midgame inflation should not be a problem as by then I would be well established.

Alternatively do what I normally do, get a high profit industry underway early and rely on cash to fill out your map, creating support industries for your main export industries.

I just wanna try limiting my imports for a while.

[Ach]

Originally posted by Lei:

It doesn't take too long to turn a decent profit, so Midgame inflation should not be a problem as by then I would be well established.

I had the same experience and thoughts ... then the population grew and the profits got smaller and smaller due to more self usage. ;)

[Leigh]

First time initial setup on hard mode, with just some housing and the plant to build, still plenty of cash remaining.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1907656836

Choice of building myself or using cash, once the plant is built I will rake in the dough. From there will set up infrastructure for coal, food, get some clothing made etc.