Construction Office - Vehicle Loading

[TheOverlord23]

This is a fantastic game and community - I’m hooked after only a couple sessions. The detailed systems and depth are simply amazing.

Looked through other posts and I can’t figure out how loading construction vehicles (asphalt paver, roller, bulldozer, etc) onto flatbed trucks works for construction. Do you load up vehicles onto flatbeds prior to starting construction from a CO, or does this happen automatically? When it comes to construction on say, paved roads, I can’t seem to get the specialized vehicles to leave the CO on a flatbed whether I manually load them or not. The vehicle and flatbed both idle in the CO lot even with a test asphalt road project next door (that has started, dumpers with gravel working no problem, workers being delivered by bus).Am I missing something to properly load vehicles manually or automatically? Thank you!

[vantuz58]

It happens automatically when a construction vehicle is needed for a task. Loading it manually is needed in case you want to relocate to another construction office.
The flatbed should be big enough to carry the construction vehicle.
If there's no flatbed available then construction vehicle will go to the site by itself. If it doesn't move then maybe it's too early for that vehicle. For example, for an asphalt road you first need an excavator or a bulldozer, then a paver then a roller.

[TheOverlord23]

Fantastic - good to know, thank you so much. Do you recommend 1-2 flatbeds specific for transporting slower construction vehicles, or is anything more than a single flatbed overkill?

Is it still the case that once a construction vehicle is done at a site they roll back on their own and are not picked up by a flatbed to return to CO?

[ryantheskinny]

If your on the public test branch, they should automatically teleport back to home base after completion.

I'd personally recommend at the least two flatbeds capable of transport, like the Skds with trailers. Later on the large Kmzs are optimal.

One per Vehicle is best to ensure nobody has to drive themselves.

[TheOverlord23]

Do you also suggest using the larger CO mod so you have space for all of your construction hardware? Vanilla one seems space-limiting considering the need for flatbeds alongside the heavies... thanks again, will be trying again tonight.

[TheAmishStig]

Don't forget that COs will collaborate. My most recent construction complex has 11 COs, and I'll probably bump that to 15+ when I go to build my capitol city.

[fjorkar]

I have a separate construction office for road construction, equipped with 2x large platform wagons + 2x excavators + 2x bulldozers + 6x tippers + connection to a gravel factory = he doesn't need any workers and can only build gravel roads.
For later development, I will upgrade to build asphalt roads.
The key is not only the weight, but also the full size of the machine you want to transport:
-zil 133 transports roller / bulldozer / asphalt pavers
-skd 706 = roller / bulldozer / asphalt paver
/ E302B excavator (11 tons) / 10011 excavator (11 tons)
- 256B = E302B excavator (11 tons)
but without 10011 excavator (also 11 tons)
-W50 trailer = asphalt paver + roller / excavator T174
etc. You have to experiment to find out which vehicle is the best.
All these models existed in the 60s, I still haven't arrived in the 70s: steamsad:

[olstar18]

Originally posted by TheAmishStig:

Don't forget that COs will collaborate. My most recent construction complex has 11 COs, and I'll probably bump that to 15+ when I go to build my capitol city.

Just want to check what you mean by this. Do you mean that if I have 2 construction offices one with say dump trucks and another with with the towable vehicles with trucks to carry them that they will trade off on pieces of the same job automatically instead of me having to do it manually? I've been needing to get more transport for my heavy equipment but was worried about the kind of organizational headache trying to put in a second office would cause.

[fjorkar]

Originally posted by olstar18:

Originally posted by TheAmishStig:

Don't forget that COs will collaborate. My most recent construction complex has 11 COs, and I'll probably bump that to 15+ when I go to build my capitol city.

Just want to check what you mean by this. Do you mean that if I have 2 construction offices one with say dump trucks and another with with the towable vehicles with trucks to carry them that they will trade off on pieces of the same job automatically instead of me having to do it manually? I've been needing to get more transport for my heavy equipment but was worried about the kind of organizational headache trying to put in a second office would cause.

the large platform trucks and the excavators and the bulldozer must be in the same construction office, the dump trucks can be in the same construction office or in the other construction office

[olstar18]

I know the tru k has to be in teh same building as the excavator. I was asking about the building cues as having to babysit the que for it to be effective wouldn't exactly be ideal.

[TheAmishStig]

Originally posted by olstar18:

Originally posted by TheAmishStig:

Don't forget that COs will collaborate. My most recent construction complex has 11 COs, and I'll probably bump that to 15+ when I go to build my capitol city.

Just want to check what you mean by this. Do you mean that if I have 2 construction offices one with say dump trucks and another with with the towable vehicles with trucks to carry them that they will trade off on pieces of the same job automatically instead of me having to do it manually? I've been needing to get more transport for my heavy equipment but was worried about the kind of organizational headache trying to put in a second office would cause.

Yes, I do indeed. My 11-CO setup is:

• 1 CO of dump trucks assigned to only gravel
  
• 1 CO of dump trucks assigned to only asphalt
  
• 1 CO of road cranes [towers work faster, but roads don't need transport. Downside is roads can't do the tallest buildings, so equip either roads or towers (plus trucks to haul them) as your needs warrant. Because towers don't move on their own you can get away with not having a truck dedicated to each tower, run the split based on how much you're willing to wait for the truck to go get another crane]
  
• 1 CO of mixers
  
• 2 CO each of 3x Flatbed, 3x Bulldozer, 3x Roller, 3x Paver (assigned to roads only)
  
• 2 CO each of microbuses [makes traffic painful at huge construction sites, but much better for doing a bunch of constructions at once]
  
• 1 CO of Flatbeds
  
• 1 CO of Box Trucks
  
• 1 CO of 6x Excavator + 6x Flatbed

The trick to really making the most of a setup like that is making sure to not set resources you don't want them dealing with. For example, my Diggers CO has no resources set, because I don't want the flatbeds toddling off to haul bricks leaving the digger to drive itself to a site. Same goes for the Roadworks office: If you set it to any job other than roads, then the diggers will get hauled off for the 'Groundworks' phase leaving you without equipment to build roads.

Roadworks offices you can largely get away with 1 truck per 'set' instead of having dedicated truck / machine pairs at least, since only the smallest roads will be ready for Phase X+1 before the flatbed gets back from delivering the hardware for Phase X.

For a bigger complex I'd add a second CO of dumpers for asphalt to assign specifically to roadworks, and split the Flatbeds out into dedicated COs for the 4 Flatbed materials [Steel/Bricks/Boards/Prefabs]...maybe another Roadworks office, and maybe another Groundworks office (or two, if I'm building massive stuff in the area like vehicle factories that can have 5-6 diggers each).

[TheOverlord23]

@TheAmishStig - this is fantastic advice, thank you. As I shift my economy to internal construction your recommendation above will be incredibly useful! I didn’t realize the scale of COs required for larger projects - this makes a lot more sense given your explanation.

[fjorkar]

@TheAmishStig - I appreciate your experience very much I have saved some of your long answers as a small manual.
(2 CO each of the minibuses) I cannot follow you here, the 2 CO will only pick you up from 2 stops or? this does not result in 2 stops being emptied by workers, and in other stops the workers are otherwise waiting ?

[TheAmishStig]

That scale is enough to build a bunch of medium buildings (housing units, stores, cinemas, 80-150 body factories, etc) in a decently-parallel way. It chokes if you try to do a few really big ones at the same time [like a Road Vehicle Factory, Train Factory, a Radio Station, and University all at the same time], but for a city of 5,000-10,000 it'll get the whole thing built in a reasonable amount of time as long as you've got a steady stream of construction workers (which is helped by filling the residential buildings as they get completed).

If you're going smaller...say a city of 2,000-5,000 and a small industrial park...then you can get away with about half that: One roadworks office, one dumper office, combine Buses and Box Trucks into a single office.

How many COs is too many COs all comes down to how big individual buildings are, how many you're trying to build at the same time, and how quickly you want them done.

[TheAmishStig]

Originally posted by fjorkar:

@TheAmishStig - I appreciate your experience very much I have saved some of your long answers as a small manual.
(2 CO each of the minibuses) I cannot follow you here, the 2 CO will only pick you up from 2 stops or? this does not result in 2 stops being emptied by workers, and in other stops the workers are otherwise waiting ?

Each CO can only source workers from one place, yeah...which stings. In some games I've set up stations dedicated to construction workers using Ryan's 'go here' trick [drop off at one station, set 'go here' to a second. Second is set 'go here' for the first], in this one I'm trying microbuses [the little 7-seaters], looking for a way to keep my COs from starving my industrial parks for workers.

If you send them to a New Large Bus Stop that helps the flow tremendously [as it's 'pull through', defeating the 'one in motion' rule], having a swarm of them allows many construction sites to be served at the same time, and it puts a stop to 'load an 80-person bus for a 10-person construction site'...but I'm finding swarms of microbuses aren't not very efficient for bigger sites like Shopping Centers or Universities. For those it's best to run separate bus lines, or rely on workers that live in walking distance.

[Storpappa]

wow, that's a large setup. Not something to tackle early on, as the vehicles alone for that setup would be a huge investment. But its a great planning idea. Put them down and make a large X planning and building out as you can feed the project

Have you looked at the mod CY's? I am not sure having extra parking spaces is worth losing the granular control of manual assignment to control those vehicles going astray