What does it mean by "Workers without CO"?

[Echoes]

During gameplay, in the bottom right of the screen, there's an option that says "Max workers without CO". The tutorials I looked up told me to set it to 0 (or just a really low number), But i'm confused on what the "CO" part means.

[Whitek3t]

It allows for the workers to simply walk in the construction site without being driven there by bus. For example, you have a building project near a bus stop, the workers would go directly to the site instead of going to the bus stop.

[Elessar_warrior]

CO is Construction Office.

[Kubog]

"CO" means Construction Office. As Whitek said CO sends a bus which picks up workers and takes them to construction site. But workers from nearby buildings can also go directly to construction (they are the "Workers without CO") if these workers are meant to be working elsewhere (f.e. in power plant or university) then you want to set "Workers without CO" to 0, so only workers picked up by CO bus will work on construction site

[Silent_Shadow]

Just to clarify, this setting limits how many walkers can go to a building under construction (or repair) and how many workers can be delivered into a "path" type segment, like a road or a pipe.

[MrKrabs]

I may add one thing.
If you have your town up and running and build something in walking range of the workers homes. Make sure that you set the number of workers outside the CO to a minimum or even to zero. Otherwise you may bleed out your workforce and some other important workslots won´t be staffed anymore. Same goes for fields if they are to close to a town.

[Sirius Czech]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Just to clarify, this setting limits how many walkers can go to a building under construction (or repair) and how many workers can be delivered into a "path" type segment, like a road or a pipe.

not true for roads iirc. Rest is correct

[Sirius Czech]

Originally posted by Echoes:

During gameplay, in the bottom right of the screen, there's an option that says "Max workers without CO". The tutorials I looked up told me to set it to 0 (or just a really low number), But i'm confused on what the "CO" part means.

This tickbox is something many players have been longing for for years and it finally came this year. In bottom right corner you can set DEFAULT value for all following placed construction sites (buildings) for workers outside CO aka construction office.

As other mentioned, this is important (only) in already established areas, as workers prefer to work in walking distance of their home, so they search job there first. So if you place a monument (for example) and let your construction offices to work on it, you can easily have hiding 50 workers there without they doing any progress.

Recommended values to set (from me) are
- 0; if you want to build everything through COs only (not great, but usable)
- 2-5; so workers in the city will help with everything they see, but without it hurting much and building water switches, substations, trash cans and other stuff is then pretty easy

MY EXAMPLE
What I use is default "0" and I also use different CO groups for all materials and machinery (including cranes) and separate one for just people (buses with other cranes). Whenever I build something, I
1) Send there materials only (so they supply all materials, finish groundworks, and then supply next phase)
2) Allow workers outside CO to go there (in building menu) if it is in reach of at least some house with people already
3) Send buses if not or add them if need it fast.
Add to this I also ban autosearch for anything for all offices at the game start and only gradually let them autosearch once steady money and lots of workers are there.

[gwahazar]

Also, while playing on prepolulated map, it is wise to set "outside CO" to zero when building first amenities in untouched city, otherwise citizen will strt to work and will be unhappy because no electricity, food etc.