Manually loading excavators, bulldozers on flatbeds for jobs?

[apd1004]

I've done a little testing to see when the construction office will automatically load excavators/dozers onto flatbeds for a job as opposed to the equipment driving to the job at a snails pace. I don't have an exact distance but it seems to be quite far (over 1km?) before the construction yard will do it automatically.

My question for anyone including devs: is there a way to manually send a flatbed with an excavator to a job? I can't seem to find a way to do it. I'd like to have the ability to do that so that the equipment doesn't spend more time traveling between points than it does working the job. Or, at least have a way to pre-load the equipment at the construction yard and then when the excavator/dozer gets called for a job it will travel via truck to the job site automatically.

Yes I understand this is still early access and not all features are available yet, just want to see if this feature is on the radar at all.

[johntarmac]

I've started using a separate CO with just dozers, excavs, pavers, rollers and a bunch of flatbeds.

[jcmiller101]

They do load up on flatbeds sometimes, I assume it depends how the CO is scripting its' activity schedule - maybe it is sending the flatbed somewhere else etc. But yes it is a PITA when they block the road & take forever to travel back & forth.
I think a reworking is planned tho.

[ryantheskinny]

One thing you could try is using one of the smaller COs available on the workshop (I highly recommend gerbilskij's pack) and not allocate any resource collections to it, so the only task it can perform is bringing the equipment to the site.

Imho: We really need a way to set a vehicle as the dedicated hauler for equipment.

[jwinter]

Right now the only way to ensure open truck is dedicated heavy machinery transport is to not assign any open storage materials for that CO. But I agree this feature (like many other ones) is incomplete as there is no proper settings and trucks cannot pick up machinery on their way from the construction site. I also proposed the idea that excavator when finished with the construction would send request to pick-up to home CO, that request would be assigned to free open truck with enough capacity, if this request is accepted excavator would stop next to the road without blocking traffic and wait for truck.

[Actionjackson]

I was thinking the CO does an ok job with that, i am more annoyed by the fact that it seems to impossible for the heavy equipment to wait on site and be transported back. Sometime they respawn and other time they go back all the way on their own. They should be more inclined to wait on construcion site and be loaded and driven back to CO.

And something else. The CO should have a fuel supply(like rail CO) OR it should load heavy equipment and drive it to the gas station, watching my paver drive to the gas station is kinda unreal
Either have smal fuel depot in the CO or load up hvy vehicles and drive them to the fuel station and fuel them while they are on the trailer and drive them back to CO right away.

That what i think abou it. The way the CO gets equipment to the construction site is not so bad and the least of the problems.

[apd1004]

Originally posted by johntarmac:

I've started using a separate CO with just dozers, excavs, pavers, rollers and a bunch of flatbeds.

I just started doing this. I added a second CO dedicated to road construction and converted my initial CO to building construction only. A lot of the same equipment but I now manually go in and assign jobs to the appropriate CO.

Originally posted by ryantheskinny:

One thing you could try is using one of the smaller COs available on the workshop (I highly recommend gerbilskij's pack) and not allocate any resource collections to it, so the only task it can perform is bringing the equipment to the site.

Imho: We really need a way to set a vehicle as the dedicated hauler for equipment.

Great ideas, I'm going to try that. You are spot on about dedicated haulers.

@ryantheskinny - I've found some of your posts and photos about your border towns and starting basically from scratch, which is exactly what I'm trying to do. Any links you have to posts/guides/recommendations on what you've done would be awesome in case I haven't found more through searching. Do you start from populated maps or unpopulated? Also, do you use any of the workshop maps? I've looked at several but there are a lot out there and the ones I've looked at aren't really grabbing me.

Thanks guys!

[apd1004]

Originally posted by Actionjackson:

I was thinking the CO does an ok job with that, i am more annoyed by the fact that it seems to impossible for the heavy equipment to wait on site and be transported back. Sometime they respawn and other time they go back all the way on their own. They should be more inclined to wait on construcion site and be loaded and driven back to CO.

And something else. The CO should have a fuel supply(like rail CO) OR it should load heavy equipment and drive it to the gas station, watching my paver drive to the gas station is kinda unreal :lunar2019grinningpig:
Either have smal fuel depot in the CO or load up hvy vehicles and drive them to the fuel station and fuel them while they are on the trailer and drive them back to CO right away.

That what i think abou it. The way the CO gets equipment to the construction site is not so bad and the least of the problems.

I just had this happen - a flatbed actually loaded up an excavator and took it to the job site, but when finished the excavator drove itself all the way back to the CO even though there were 3 flatbeds parked at the CO and not on any tasks. They apparently haven't yet scripted the ability for a flatbed to head back out to the job site and pick up the excavator when it is done.

I also concur with the idea about the CO having its own fuel supply, although I suppose an interim workaround would be to just put another gas station right across the street from the CO.

[Actionjackson]

Originally posted by apd1004:

Originally posted by Actionjackson:

I was thinking the CO does an ok job with that, i am more annoyed by the fact that it seems to impossible for the heavy equipment to wait on site and be transported back. Sometime they respawn and other time they go back all the way on their own. They should be more inclined to wait on construcion site and be loaded and driven back to CO.

And something else. The CO should have a fuel supply(like rail CO) OR it should load heavy equipment and drive it to the gas station, watching my paver drive to the gas station is kinda unreal
Either have smal fuel depot in the CO or load up hvy vehicles and drive them to the fuel station and fuel them while they are on the trailer and drive them back to CO right away.

That what i think abou it. The way the CO gets equipment to the construction site is not so bad and the least of the problems.

I also concur with the idea about the CO having its own fuel supply, although I suppose an interim workaround would be to just put another gas station right across the street from the CO.

That is what i am doing right now, or at least i have it close. Still it is not always practical to do that, the CO should be able to handle a case where there is no fuelstation close by better.

[fjorkar]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2054686399
my favorite for construction offices always 2 work together.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2058449852
build only for roads (gravel roads and or asphalt roads)