Construction vehicle use summary?

[Dan]

As a new player, I can't seem to find a clear reference for this, and can't seem to find the info in-game except by experimenting.

Can anyone point to an existing guide, or summarize here, which types of vehicle are used for which types of construction?
Most cargo vehicle uses are obvious enough - they list the cargo they can carry... you check what cargo type you need to transport to a building site.
...but it doesn't seem obvious which types of truck I need for building the various different types of road, for example, because roads don't seem to list those requirements.
Pavers and rollers are presumably only needed for asphalt?
What types of construction need a bulldozer, vs. an excavator, or both?
Can cranes be used to speed up road building? (Presumably not - just buildings? All building types or only some?)

I'm sure I'll pick all this up as I go, but it'd be nice to have a reference-sheet to look at for starting out.

[Silent_Shadow]

Bulldozers - Spreads gravel on roads/paths and levels the ground (terraforming).
Excavators - Digs the "ground works" stage of constructions, works in quarries, spreads gravel on roads/paths at 70% efficiency, and raises or lowers land (terraforming).
Paver - Lays asphalt on roads/paths.
Roller - Flattens asphalt on roads/paths.

Cranes multiply the output of a number workers by ~5.5, but they can only be used after the ground works stage is completed, so mostly for buildings, but they can also be used for panel roads (after gravel is spread), conveyors, pipelines, power lines/cables, and similar constructions. Road cranes can move themselves, while tower cranes require a large truck to take them to and from the construction site but can affect more workers. The speed/level of cranes affects the number of workers that get their output multiplied.

The speed/level rating of the other vehicles represents how many workers with 100% productivity would be needed to work as fast as the machine. For example, the KT50 bulldozer does as much work as 22 workers.

[Dan]

Much thanks!
It'd also be good to know the relative material costs of different variable-length constructions like roads/powerlines/pipes etc. I realise total cost is obviously dependant on how long you make them, but it's not clear what the relative differences in cost are between say, 4,6,8,10,12MW electric lines, for example... without laying down a building plan for each one on the map, and comparing them.

Also, any way of seeing what the wage-costs of bussing in foreign workers from a customs post is in advance? Is it variable/inflation-adjusted, etc... or fixed?

[Silent_Shadow]

You're welcome.

Originally posted by Dan:

It'd also be good to know the relative material costs of different variable-length constructions like roads/powerlines/pipes etc. I realise total cost is obviously dependant on how long you make them, but it's not clear what the relative differences in cost are between say, 4,6,8,10,12MW electric lines, for example... without laying down a building plan for each one on the map, and comparing them.

If you build them manually, power cables are cheaper than power lines, and the 18 MW power line is prohibitively expensive compared to the 15 MW lines, but that is about it as far as I remember for cost/MW ratios.

Originally posted by Dan:

Also, any way of seeing what the wage-costs of bussing in foreign workers from a customs post is in advance? Is it variable/inflation-adjusted, etc... or fixed?

If you look in the "Economy and trade" tab on the left menu, the cost for each foreign worker is recorded under the Foreign Manpower heading, as "cost per workday," which is the average amount of work each foreign worker will ever do in your republic before going home.

If you have your own workers, then you can see the average cost (in terms of the aggregate cost of the consumer goods and power/water they use, etc.) for one of their workdays listed at the bottom of the "Domestic production and consumption" section of the "Economy and trade" tab.

[Dan]

Cheers. Would you say that underground power cables are still cheaper once you factor in the increased manpower costs when using foreign workers?

[Silent_Shadow]

Auto-building power lines is cheaper than cables because the large amount of workdays required to dig out the trench for the cable inflates the cost a lot (you're paying 9 rubles or $12 per workday). If you do the work yourself and use an excavator, then buying the material for a cable is far cheaper.

[Dan]

Cool, thanks again! Should be enough to get me going I think. I'll go play the game now and quit bugging you :-P

[Silent_Shadow]

No worries; it is why the forums are here.

[Dan]

Huh... and here I thought the point of Steam forums was to constantly troll people to get clown awards and hurl endless abuse at each other!

This has to be one of the *nicest* Steam official forums I've come across in a while :-)

[Silent_Shadow]

Benefits of a somewhat niche game and strong ban-hammers.

[Dan]

In case this is useful info for anyone, I noted down the relative costs-per-MW (including workdays) of the different high-voltage lines, per pylon, normalized them, and averaged them, to give a relative "value" of each type... it came out thus:
15MW 0.58
14MW 0.7
13MW 0.76
10MW 0.9
8MW 1.0
6MW 0.97
4MW 0.91

So it looks like 8MW is the best value overall, but everything from 10 down to 4 is within 10% of each other. Hadn't researched 18MW, so haven't got notes on that yet.