Trucks sitting around idle while buildings need products.

[Skala]

I've got assembly buildings that need bricks (which I have plenty of in storage), but trucks are sitting around idling. I even set those buildings the P1 Priority.

[Xenomorph Kitty]

Have you allowed export from the storage.

Have you allowed import for the bricks to the assembly buildings

[Poma]

Also if you have specified an export route from the storage, it will ignore deliveries to anywhere else

[Nudel]

There might be a truck with the bricks loaded and on the way to the building. I believe trucks put in a unload order when picking up items, thus reserving the space for their cargo.

I had some problems with this when going to big trucks, as they picked up say 180 acid to transport to a small 180 sized storage tank, but couldn't get to the storage because of overhead pipes and stuff. Thus they were stuck with a full tank, but prohibited other trucks to fill up the tank at all as the space was reserved.

I fixed it by making the big trucks only carry petrol and assign them to my main storage fuel tank to export to the other smaller fuels tanks all over the map. But it does take some time to set up, and it can break when you build new trucks as they automatically get to work.

[Kaery]

OP, is that storage full of bricks set to any level of 'keep full' by any chance? The green slider? If yes, trucks will not export from there until you have set it back down to zero.

[Skala]

Originally posted by Kaery:

OP, is that storage full of bricks set to any level of 'keep full' by any chance? The green slider? If yes, trucks will not export from there until you have set it back down to zero.

This is what was happening, thank you! I had storage buildings set to "keep full" at around 25%, thinking trucks would still grab if needed. I was under the impression that the "keep full" was intended for something else (namely, to transfer dirt/whatever from a "not-keep-full" storage bin to a "keep full" one.

[Kaery]

Basically, a 'keep full' order is 'suck any and all resources of your type up until you are filled to *this* level'. Same with 'keep empty', 'get rid of everything above *this* amount'.

But of course, full means they never take from it because that wouldn't be filling it... And empty means the never deliver because that wouldn't be emptying it. Keep Full is supremely useful for a input storage for a factory. Wood warehouse for construction parts, for example, once you have belts. Keep empty is very useful for output storages, like slag loose storage collecting with a belt from your smelter.

[jamiechi]

Originally posted by Kaery:

OP, is that storage full of bricks set to any level of 'keep full' by any chance? The green slider? If yes, trucks will not export from there until you have set it back down to zero.

I have always been able to get items with trucks as long as the slider is not at 100%. Setting to 25% or 50% should work and allow trucks to take stuff if the contents are higher than the setting. I don't believe they changed this. It still seems to work like this for me.

[Kaery]

I've never seen it work like that... But maybe I'm wrong. I'll have to experiment.

[Wanderer]

Out of sheer curiosity, because I occasionally use this tactic, I wanted to see if this still worked or not, and everyone constantly saying it doesn't on the forums has been boggling me. It does. Here's the screen shots:

Proof in the other direction that the setting does not affect truck usage past the level bar unless you set the no import/export setting for trucks. You see this a lot when you first turn this on for slag:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2989941941

So I figured I could just break my waste dumper, it didn't have enough throughput right now to be a real hassle if I paid attention, and set it up:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2989942476

After a little while, here comes the truck!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2989944160

It had enough material over the bar with "full load only" only for the pickup. If I only had trucks, it would have needed at least 60 over the bar to get there. This is less important when you have larger storages, but something to keep in mind with the smaller ones.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2989944215

Off my garbage goes to the stacker container!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2989944285

[Kaery]

Wanderer coming through again. Thank you!

I've been wrong about this for quite a while then. Well, you never stop learning. Thank you for showing it so nicely!

[Wanderer]

Keep in mind, there was a demand request on the OTHER storage as well. It needs to have a demand/pull on the far side to get the goods to move past the slider. This is no different than having two "unset" storages though. No push on the source (a keep empty setting), no pull on the target (some keep full setting)... nothing happens.

[Savage]

Another possible solution I found. My gold smelting industry was backing up as the trucks were not keeping up deliveries from the gold powder storage on one side of the map to the input storage on the other side. I had assigned Mega Dump trucks to move the dust but they just sat there.
The problem seemed to be that I had a level 4 storage on the output and level 2 on the input.
The mega dump trucks would not take the product because they could not fit it all into the level 2 storage.
I made some space and upgraded the input side to level 4 and all the waiting trucks started to move at once.
So it seems if there is enough product on the way, the trucks will not move, so over long distances this becomes a big issue.

Perhaps the programming could be changed so that instead of the trucks waiting empty at the output side, they rather wait full at the input side?

[Tregon]

Originally posted by Savage:

Another possible solution I found. My gold smelting industry was backing up as the trucks were not keeping up deliveries from the gold powder storage on one side of the map to the input storage on the other side. I had assigned Mega Dump trucks to move the dust but they just sat there.
The problem seemed to be that I had a level 4 storage on the output and level 2 on the input.
The mega dump trucks would not take the product because they could not fit it all into the level 2 storage.
I made some space and upgraded the input side to level 4 and all the waiting trucks started to move at once.
So it seems if there is enough product on the way, the trucks will not move, so over long distances this becomes a big issue.

Perhaps the programming could be changed so that instead of the trucks waiting empty at the output side, they rather wait full at the input side?

That only works if source has only one valid destination. For example if we had your situation and instead of gold you had coal. Coal could go to gold smelting. Or same storage could feed iron smelting, copper smelting or boilers.

With multiple valid destinations you would need really incredible code for it to realize where in future would be first supply need.

And making code that looks into all possible destinations and then determines if there could be multiple valid ones and then based on that changes behaviour is not really good way to use limited time of programmers.

[Savage]

Originally posted by Tregon:

Originally posted by Savage:

Another possible solution I found. My gold smelting industry was backing up as the trucks were not keeping up deliveries from the gold powder storage on one side of the map to the input storage on the other side. I had assigned Mega Dump trucks to move the dust but they just sat there.
The problem seemed to be that I had a level 4 storage on the output and level 2 on the input.
The mega dump trucks would not take the product because they could not fit it all into the level 2 storage.
I made some space and upgraded the input side to level 4 and all the waiting trucks started to move at once.
So it seems if there is enough product on the way, the trucks will not move, so over long distances this becomes a big issue.

Perhaps the programming could be changed so that instead of the trucks waiting empty at the output side, they rather wait full at the input side?

That only works if source has only one valid destination. For example if we had your situation and instead of gold you had coal. Coal could go to gold smelting. Or same storage could feed iron smelting, copper smelting or boilers.

With multiple valid destinations you would need really incredible code for it to realize where in future would be first supply need.

And making code that looks into all possible destinations and then determines if there could be multiple valid ones and then based on that changes behaviour is not really good way to use limited time of programmers.

Yes, but that is why you have export/import routes.

[Tregon]

Originally posted by Savage:

Originally posted by Tregon:

That only works if source has only one valid destination. For example if we had your situation and instead of gold you had coal. Coal could go to gold smelting. Or same storage could feed iron smelting, copper smelting or boilers.

With multiple valid destinations you would need really incredible code for it to realize where in future would be first supply need.

And making code that looks into all possible destinations and then determines if there could be multiple valid ones and then based on that changes behaviour is not really good way to use limited time of programmers.

Yes, but that is why you have export/import routes.

And this changes what? Central coal distribution STILL has multiple valid destinations no matter how you use import/export. It is valid case of using both storage, trucks and import/export which would need to be handled by code or we replace one issue with another and add complexity to code on top of it.