Suggestion: building roads/rails through construction offices should be faster.

[MachaQueso]

I think building roads or rails using construction offices should be way faster... like 2, 4 or even 10 times faster. Specially for rails which currently seem to be ridiculously slow.

[Octavius]

+1

Especially when upgrading a road that's already in use you're kind of mad not to outsource it. The difference is like 10 seconds vs 10 minutes.

[Drop Table Humanity]

-1

I like the fact that rails are slow to build and that you have to bypass existing roads when upgrading.

[Hvetemel Gibson]

Rails are slow to build, that is OK.
But when upgrading roads it has to be done in sections, a bit pain to do. I am happy with the fact that you have to bypass if a section of road is actively being upgraded, but if it is not, the road should be passable in my opinion.

[Shtahetta]

Originally posted by Maegfaer:

Especially when upgrading a road that's already in use you're kind of mad not to outsource it. The difference is like 10 seconds vs 10 minutes.

Well, that's why outsourced construction should be 60 times slower.

But I do think that we should be able to add multiple sections of road to a single construction zone, or at least queue the sections in construction building.

[vantuz58]

Can't say anything about rails yet, but the road construction speed is fine IMO. The game just should treat incomplete roads as passable but at low speed.
That way you:
-don't have to build bypasses (annoying and not always possible)
-will be able to upgrade roads in the city without all the inhabitants leaving due to the lack of food
-don't have to babysit the construction site to assign the actual building to a construction office after that tiny peice of road is done.
(The idea is not mine, so i don't take credit for it)

Oh, and allow multiple excavators/pavers/rollers to work at the same time if the road is long enough.

[SBGaming]

One of the issues I'm finding with road construction is that for instance with Asphalt Roads with Lights, there are four construction phases. Gravel Laying, Asphalt Laying, Asphalt Rolling, and Finally Electrics and Steel.

Buses will often bring workers to a site that does not yet have Gravel. They stand around doing nothing, and by the time the gravel shows up, 80% of the workers have gone home. On top of that, even once the gravel is there and work on that phase begins, Dumpers hauling Asphalt don't get sent out to pick up Asphalt until AFTER the Gravel Laying is Completed. So you then have workers standing around doing nothing.

Multiple segments of roads should definitely be queued together as a single work project. Intersections and footpaths create additional segments that have to be completed separately. I'd really like to utilize the manual Construction aspect of the game, but I find myself hitting the button to just get it built.

I'd like to know how the Rail Construction Office is supposed to work. Built one, stocked it with all the supplies, purchased four rail construction machines, have 40/80 workers at any one time, but nothing is happening. I have a whole network of rail to be built, but nothing is being done. No error messages being reported either. I'd rather not have the game auto build what I've laid down so far, but I tried removing and rebuilding a section of track just outside the Rail Construction Office, thinking that it only gets to work on rail that was laid down after the Office was built, but nothing so far.

The Rail Construction Office has a button to assign construction to it, but nothing rail related can be assigned to the Construction Office, unlike Roads can be with the Construction Office.

[Rockrnger]

Let traffic thru at mud speed at least.

In real life road construction still lets traffic pass.

[gjvanderwolf]

Yeah, I had to babysit road construction as well. With the game engine overriding the projects for my construction buro because I have auto search on as well. When I have multiple construction buro's I expect that construction moves faster accordingly. More workers on site, more mechanisms available and in use. Also the planning is indeed very blocked.

I agree that it could use some rethink, rework. On the other hand: I really love the animation and the extend of the animation. It is one of the selling points of the game for me. Next to its dedication to an as big as possible realism. As big as possible with the game physics. You could say that all the language is there, now the stuttering needs to get addressed.

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by SBGaming:

The Rail Construction Office has a button to assign construction to it, but nothing rail related can be assigned to the Construction Office, unlike Roads can be with the Construction Office.

The assign construction button should work with the construction office if used on rails that need building. This is how I have been doing my rail building. They cannot however build train stations or other train related structures; just the rails by themselves.

Maybe try connecting the other side of your construction office to the rail network. I read someone else reporting a bug where trains could only leave the rail depot from one side and not the other for some reason. So it could be something similar.

[SBGaming]

Originally posted by Vimpster:

Originally posted by SBGaming:

The Rail Construction Office has a button to assign construction to it, but nothing rail related can be assigned to the Construction Office, unlike Roads can be with the Construction Office.

The assign construction button should work with the construction office if used on rails that need building. This is how I have been doing my rail building. They cannot however build train stations or other train related structures; just the rails by themselves.

Maybe try connecting the other side of your construction office to the rail network. I read someone else reporting a bug where trains could only leave the rail depot from one side and not the other for some reason. So it could be something similar.

Currently my issue is that I have a lot of rails being planned (white/black with Auto build turned off). There is effectively no rail network to speak of, and want it entirely built by the Rail Construction office. If I turn auto-build on, it will spend the money and all the rail will be built, making the Rail Construction Office useless. There's no option that I can see to only select certain rail to have it be constructed, and it's an all or nothing sort of thing as far as I can tell.

Same goes for Power Lines, Pipes, Conveyors, etc. Do we just have to eat the cost to auto build these, or is there some way to have them constructed by our local workers and resources? How do we turn them into construction projects. I've read a bunch of the ingame help screens, which have been an interesting read, but I don't remember reading anything specifically about this, or didn't get to it, so I must be missing something. I just figured when I had a rail construction office up and running that it would get to constructing the rail network starting at the construction office itself, and I'd just have it build in the background without having to do anything further.

[gjvanderwolf]

There might be another option as well. I once designed a part rail system and placed the signals straight away on the rail design. The worker trains from the depot reacted to the signals already even when the rails needed to be build. They would stop or stay inside if the signals were signalling a train is in the block between signals. I design the rail system, have the rail construction mechanism lay the whole track and then place the signals. Plus, if you at one point created two lane traffic, the rail construction mechanism will work only in the direction that the trains are supposed to go. I had to create crossings and signals to get the mechanisms to work.

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by SBGaming:

Same goes for Power Lines, Pipes, Conveyors, etc. Do we just have to eat the cost to auto build these, or is there some way to have them constructed by our local workers and resources? How do we turn them into construction projects. I've read a bunch of the ingame help screens, which have been an interesting read, but I don't remember reading anything specifically about this, or didn't get to it, so I must be missing something. I just figured when I had a rail construction office up and running that it would get to constructing the rail network starting at the construction office itself, and I'd just have it build in the background without having to do anything further.

I see the problem you're having now. You haven't actually made them ready for building yet if they are still white and black. To not have them auto-build you have to uncheck the box that makes them get built with money and then click on the bottom left button of the corresponding window (a road project for example requires you to have the road menu window open to see the button that enacts all road projects in the bottom left). Once you enact the projects you can then click on the construction office and assign it to work it. Be careful not to have any planned infrastructure when you save and exit the game other wise there is a bug that makes the game auto build the plans when you load the game again.

[SBGaming]

Originally posted by Vimpster:

I see the problem you're having now. You haven't actually made them ready for building yet if they are still white and black. To not have them auto-build you have to uncheck the box that makes them get built with money and then click on the bottom left button of the corresponding window (a road project for example requires you to have the road menu window open to see the button that enacts all road projects in the bottom left). Once you enact the projects you can then click on the construction office and assign it to work it. Be careful not to have any planned infrastructure when you save and exit the game other wise there is a bug that makes the game auto build the plans when you load the game again.

That was the bit I was missing. If there is a button to click on to turn the plans into building projects without turning on Auto build, that would save having to trigger it by temporarily turning on Auto build. I had seen the buttons next to it to fund construction with dollars or rubles, but didn't even see that button.

I had it trigger once by clicking to turn on Auto build with dollars, unpausing and pausing, but spent the entirety of my dollar amount. I then had to go back over and click each segment to cancel or suspend the construction of any rails that didn't get completed, but that's an awkward method, but if you have drained one of your currencies, it's an option.

The annoying thing now is that rail construction machines can only get to rail construction projects if they can path directly to them. If you have a fork/Y junction and the rail construction machine is coming down the left fork, it can't build anything up the right fork, it can only continue along the main branch. The machine won't turn around when on the main branch to continue up the right fork to continue construction, because construction on the right fork cannot be assigned to the rail construction office, unless it can get to it via some other route.

It's technically not a bug when reloading a game that the game auto builds. It's because when you first load the game, the game defaults to have Rubles selected as an Auto build and the game starts unpaused (really annoying). You can avoid planned constructions being auto built by pausing the game immediately on loading, going into the infrastructure or construction menu, unselecting Rubles, and then continuing on. From what I can tell though, if you exit to menu and load a save game after doing this, the game remembers if you unselected a currency to auto build with previously, atleast until you restart the game.

I'd like to see two game options added. A check box that the game remembers to either start a new map or save paused or unpaused, and check boxes that the game also remembers to either have Auto build with Rubles or Dollars turned on or off as desired.

[uber.aegis]

With regard to assigning workers to building projects I assign a bus station in the construction office but I find I only get a trickle of workers to the site.When I assign the building site as a destination through the bus station menu that is more effective.Also I cannot get workers to build roads, I rely on the excavator to get the job done, should I be assigning workers to that project through the bus station as well or am I missing something.

[SBGaming]

Originally posted by uber.aegis:

With regard to assigning workers to building projects I assign a bus station in the construction office but I find I only get a trickle of workers to the site.When I assign the building site as a destination through the bus station menu that is more effective.Also I cannot get workers to build roads, I rely on the excavator to get the job done, should I be assigning workers to that project through the bus station as well or am I missing something.

I find I have to ramp up my population to get decent numbers of construction workers to show up. Also, when assigning housing to workplaces, assign as many within range to the bus station, and crank up the number to around 50%, meaning half the workers in the housing unit go to the bus station looking for work. You can assign up to 5 workplaces for each housing unit, and the ratio where people will go typically splits equally. If one workplace is assigned, 100% go there, 2 workplaces 50%, down to 20% per workplace if 5 workplaces are assigned. In a 150 unit residence you can have upwards of 75 per day (25 per 8 hour shift) showing up. Multiply that by 4 buildings, and you can have on average 100 Construction workers at any one time. Numbers may of course vary.