Manual construction feedback

[Bufnitza]

Hey, it's me again, I thought manual construction warrants its own topic.

Going deeper here. I just kicked off a test map to understand how manual construction works before I switch to it on my main playthrough. I am delighted to see such depth to the simulation!

However, there are a few quirks which seem out of place, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on this. Apologies if this has already been discussed somewhere else or is already on the dev roadmap.

The first thing I wanted to discuss is mechanism transport. I love the fact that you can store a couple of flatbed trucks in the CO so that they will automatically transport slow mechanisms to construction sites. Traffic would had become a nightmare otherwise. However, it seems that after a construction phase is over, the mechanisms will attempt to return to the CO on their own, slowing traffic on the way. It would make sense for the CO to send the flatbed trucks to retrieve the mechanisms, just as they had delivered them.


Secondly, it looks like there is some inconsistency in how different construction types use workers.
Buildings need workers and (optionally?) one or more mechanism. So far, so good.

Roads (and by extension, power lines), though, seem to only need mechanisms (first bulldozer, then paver, then roller for roads, and a crane for power lines), despite the worker count being a max of 50. No worker ever reaches the site and the construction halts if there aren't available mechanisms.

For roadworks, this causes the unwanted effect of the Construction Office sending empty buses to the roadworks construction site, bloating traffic on the one hand, and starving my building constructions of workers on the other. IMHO, if roads only require mechanisms, then the max worker count should be set to 0, or buses shouldn't try to deliver workers if they aren't needed.

For powelines, it gets worse. Because cranes only improve construction speed instead of replacing workers (as is the case for bulldozer, paver, etc), and because no workers ever reach the construction site, the power lines never get constructed. It is stuck in a limbo with the materials and crane on the site, while the bus mindlessly runs empty with no workers between my platform and the construction site. This effectively makes power lines unbuildable!

Here is a screenshot of the powerlines under construction between the already build transformer and substation, with the empty bus going to the substation (where I assume is the closes point to where the powerlines start). You can see the crane (I tried both this tower crane as well as a diesel T138 crane) and the materials already on site, and 0/50/50 workers.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2115738067

Later edit: Nevermind the second point above, I discovered upon closer examination that my small bus platform was swamped with "passengers", therefore not allowing any "workers" to board the bus. Once I disabled the "passengers" and "students" on the platform, the buses started to ship workers to both roads as well as power lines. All cool, PEBKAC.

[JimBarracus]

I think returning slow vehicles with a flatbed is not implemented yet.

Some general tips for manual constrution:
-specialize:
build several construction offices and specialize their vehicles for certain constructions like road construction
-bus co: busses are stupid. They bring workers to constructions without sufficient material.
I would recommend to only have one 7-seat bus or even only a car on a building CO.
Building constructions can be accessed by local workers. And they will come and do nothing without material. I usually cut the workers to 1/4.

You can easily compensate the small amount of workers with a crane.
(My favorite is the yellow W50 road crane).

build a bus CO that uses busses with a capacity around 20-30 and only assign it manually for big constructions that need a lot of manpower. This is something for later. It takes a lot to build a steel mill with your own material.

dont use busses for road construction. Its a waste of workforce. They barely help on larger strips. Arriving vehicles also interrupt asphalt paving. This is very annoying.
Reducing it to dump trucks helps a lot.

[Bufnitza]

Thanks, these are all very good tips!

Originally posted by JimBarracus:

I think returning slow vehicles with a flatbed is not implemented yet.

I guess that's fine as long as yet is the key word here.

I noticed that the game is doing very poorly when it comes to delivering workers to work sites. I have opted to manually control that aspect of the work. For roads, I reduce the work force productivity to 0%, since in all phases workers can be replaced by a mechanism. By reducing it to 0%, no buses are sent and no workers are expected.

Another problem is that for each project, 50+ worker slots are allocated. This causes a lot of people to cram around various bus/train platforms and just wait there to be picked up and taken to the work sites (if not in range). Reducing the workers to 0 avoids this issue, whilst still allowing mechanisms to do their jobs.

[Argelle]

Dumb question: to regulate manually the flow of workers collected by CO, one need to open each construction project and set the amount of workers ? There is not automatic setting that say "no worker ever on foot path construction" ?

[Bufnitza]

Originally posted by Argelle:

Dumb question: to regulate manually the flow of workers collected by CO, one need to open each construction project and set the amount of workers ? There is not automatic setting that say "no worker ever on foot path construction" ?

You can't do any of that. The most you can do it set a specific number of buses with a specific carry capacity to be used by the CO. That gives you some control over how many workers you funnel to work sites... kind of... sort of...

In reality, it's crude at best. The buses will run between the pick-up location and the work sites continuously, regardless of whether the work site needs 2 workers or 500 workers.

What I ended up doing for most construction sites is reducing the Worker Production setting on construction sites to 0% so that they require 0 workers and let the machinery do the work. That way, buses only go to important construction sites.

[Storpappa]

If you do a search on your issue

There have been prior discussions about CY planning

1. a single jack of all trades CY
2. 2-3 CY's with some minor specialization such as a road CY
3. 6-8 specialized to the point of a CY just for dumpers

Each has its pros and cons

Construction sites require workers. If there is enough need, a machine can replace the workers
You will not see a tower crane being sent to work on a small footpath