Auto-replacement of tower cranes?

[HGFSS]

Hi comrades. How to quickly replace tower cranes in realistic mode. I have 40 construction companies, each with 4-8 tower cranes, all of them have served for 50-70 years, and are now completely broken. Auto-replacement for tower cranes does not work? Do I have to manually replace ALL OF THEM?

[esbenmf]

Yes.

[HGFSS]

It's terribly inconvenient to do it manually. Dear developers, could you please improve it?

[MrKrabs]

I just figured that out as well.
I was wondering about my cranes having more than 90% tear.
But they still seem to work fine.

[Greybeard]

You should be able to do it semi-automatically. Haven't actually tried it myself recently, but something like this might work:

1. Purchase a bunch of new cranes at the customs house and leave them there (important, you'll see in a second)
2. Set a line of X open hulls capable of transporting your type of crane to, starting from CO as first stop, to custom house (unless you have free space in CO, then it doesn't matter):
a) at CO load only _used_ tower cranes; drop off _new_ tower cranes
b) at Customs House, the other way round: load _new_ tower cranes, drop off _used_ ones

You can filter the type of vehicle to load/unload in your line settings if you click the little truck symbol next to its checkbox

[Silent_Shadow]

As soon as you drop them off into the CO, they become "used," so this setup would just cycle through all the cranes until they are all sold.

I don't think you can automate crane replacement right now. The closest I got was have a truck with a crane wait to unload into a CO as soon as a slot freed up from a scrapped crane, but another vehicle in the CO getting scrapped would also free up the slot.

The new CO logic also makes tower cranes a lot more niche now since they can't be sent to a lot of constructions, so I think it is fine to expect the player to replace the few they'd have manually. Checking condition can be done easily with the handbook too.

[Greybeard]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

As soon as you drop them off into the CO, they become "used," so this setup would just cycle through all the cranes until they are all sold.

Right. Good point. Well in that case the whole task would have to be split in first picking up all old cranes and then bringing in all new ones. Still better than micromanaging every single journey, but of course nowhere near automated, either.

[Greybeard]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

The new CO logic also makes tower cranes a lot more niche now since they can't be sent to a lot of constructions, [...]

Can you elaborate on that? How has the logic changed?

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by Greybeard:

Right. Good point. Well in that case the whole task would have to be split in first picking up all old cranes and then bringing in all new ones. Still better than micromanaging every single journey, but of course nowhere near automated, either.

The problem is that there is no way for a line to determine when a crane is worn out. "Used" can't distinguish between wear levels as all cranes in service count as "used," so splitting the replacement into two lines wouldn't work.

I think the best we can do right now is to have a central storage for cranes with a nearby road depot for a truck to wait in, and then make a line for each CO with a crane like so:
1. Load old crane at CO, wait until loaded (crane may be on a job).
2. Drop off old crane somewhere for disposal.
3. Load new crane from a space for vehicles.
4. Drop off new crane at CO.
5. Return to depot (and don't repeat stops).

Make sure to rename each line so they persist in the List of lines, with a name including the name of the CO you want the crane replaced at for easy look up. Then you can just look in the handbook every now and then to see if a crane needs replacement and if one does, then all you need to do is select the line for the CO from the List of lines, select the "set line to vehicle" command, and Ctrl-click on the delivery truck to send it out to replace that CO's crane.

Originally posted by Greybeard:

Can you elaborate on that? How has the logic changed?

A while ago the developers changed the construction logic substantially. I don't know all the changes, but there are a few big ones:

• Tower cranes are pretty much restricted to large buildings and cannot work at "path" type infrastructure, like bridges, power lines, conveyors, etc. I think they also ignore construction sites with less than 100 or so workdays remaining too, but I am unsure.
  
• COs will no longer send out all of its dump trucks to a single road. I believe this was done to prevent a bunch of asphalt trucks all going to one road and sitting there doing nothing while a single paver slowly works its way through them.
  
• Trucks that had been loaded with materials before being sent to a CO can now be dispatched straight to a construction site, including with concrete and asphalt. Previously if you tried this, the trucks would clear their storage before going to load more material at a source.
  
• In conjunction with the above change, COs no longer require a source for a material to be assigned in order to dispatch a truck with material to a construction site.
  
• CO buses (and helicopters?) will now account for the phase's remaining workdays and whether a crane is at a worksite when loading workers. Not perfect, but much better than simply loading as many workers as possible.
  
• COs will pull mechanisms from low priority construction sites and redeploy them at higher construction sites (I don't know how rigidly this is enforced though.)

All of these changes can be toggled on or off without losing eligibility for cheats by checking or unchecking the box next to "CO cooperate" in the cheat menu. So if you really want your tower crane working on a road or all your dump trucks to be bringing asphalt to a remote road/airstrip, you have the option.

[Greybeard]

Thank you, that's a really useful summary.

[Delle(DK)]

regarding tower crane and autoreplacement.
i think an easy fix would be if the cranes simply would auto upgrade/replace on the spot in your CO when they are idle.
And the old crane should automatic teleport itself to a vehicle recycle center OR if non is avaliable delete them self for free before the new one spawn in.

[MrKrabs]

Me personally I don´t like any teleport whatsoever.

[bajecznie nawdychany]

Again, idea with Technical Service or Scrapyard being able to use flatbeds to replace vehicles would solve the issue. Please, support it! Devs ARE listening.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/784150/discussions/0/4844273660404317106/

[Rauk]

The game could use a new "tow office" or an update to the distribution office and/or the repair station with some similarities from following tow office idea.


A tow office would probably need a "rail", a "sea" and a "road" vehicle office or a combined one. For the air vehicles I don't have a solution for that yet. Maybe if the helicopters and planes can get a new heavy and wide vehicle transport truck with escort vehicles that close down roads etc. But that would probably require a really big new complex game mechanic to get that to work or if every air vehicles get a some similar system like the first rail construction train, but in reversed.

Anyway! Some tasks a tow office could do is:

1. When a vehicle needs repair, a tow vehicle goes out and get the broken vehicle and tow it to a repair station.

2. For vehicles that are the vehicle replacements. The tow vehicle can go to a "vehicle storage" or "the border" to get and the new vehicle and then go to the place where it needs to be replaced and then get the replaced vehicle to the scrap yard or a vehicle storage or just the border to sell it for the remaining value of the vehicle.

3. Broken vehicles. Similar to "2" task.
If the vehicle is "x" years old and has "x" wear and tear it tows it to the scrap yard or a vehicle storage or just the border to sell it for the remaining value of the vehicle.


On another note, the vehicle storage and the cargo container system could use some love to.
Distribution office should be enabled to be use vehicle storages with a advanced loading/unloading system, that you can choose one or several "specific" vehicles/containers to be loaded/unloaded in a vehicle storage or other buildings. Would benefit vehicle production with vehicles and/or for the tow tasks.
For the cargo containers, you could use it to unload them on various storages and also to bigger stores with some new storages with a smaller workforce or forklifts to unload them with like 1-5 cargo containers spots.

You can also have stores with cargo container spots and that uses the store employers to unload "from" them. The container unloading facility is quite big and slow, and don't work for all resources without mods.
Tried to to a small one with the ingame mod creator with just 1 container spot and I saw quite fast that there where issues with it. I felt like I needed like 30-60 employers to make it unload 1 cargo container. Another problem was that I had to make an internal storage that was a lot bigger than a cargo container could store.
And that's because the "whole" cargo container gets unloaded and if the internal storage don't have enough space, it can't be unloaded or resources vanish. That's why cargo containers should be loaded/unloaded bit by bit instead of the whole container at a time.
Oh and you can't unload from a cargo container directly to a storage/building directly with a factory connection.


"Rauk hits you for 10000 of wall of text!"

GG