spurious "no place to dump product"

[Austin]

There are too many occasions when trucks refuse to dump product or the mining control says "no place to dump product". This mostly occurs when the designated dumping place is small, as for example when building a causeway to link islands. The trucks seem to decide to dump in inaccessible places. Eventually they usually decide they can dump on the one accessible square at the end of the causeway but it creates unnecessary delays while they park at the control tower or even park right long side the dumping spot while intent on dumping at a point 8 squares across the water.

I would imagine making a wider causeway would reduce the problem but that would then take twice as long to build anyway.

[Austin]

Also as per another thread, the excavator assigned to the causeway/ramp project sits stubbornly doing nothing because it's trying to dig at the opposite, inaccessible end of the ramp, rather than right beside where it is at the near end. It's literally parked beside a square that needs digging and yet does nothing

[Austin]

Can now confirm that making a 2 square wide causeway doesn't solve this issue. I'm still seeing no available place to sump products (5x) when there's a giant causeway to build.

This also slows down mining and digging because the trucks sit around for too long before dumping their loads. Needs fixing.

[danloveschrista]

Trucks and excavators reserve one accessible terrain block at a time. Two trucks or excavators cannot work the same square. So if you have 6 trucks and one currently accessible square, 5 of them will have to wait. Basically, you need as much accessible width as the number of vehicles you want active at one time. Length of the causeway doesn't matter at all, they can't navigate to future terrain. This is explained in-game in the tutorial window, with pictures and everything.

[Austin]

actually, it looks like a minimum of 3 available dumping squares serves to prevent the issue.

I suppose it's about preventing a truck trying to dump on a square which another truck just filled. But I would've thought it could be handled without creating this problem: the truck needs to check when it tips whether the target square is now full, and it also checks during tipping: I've watched them tip on more than 1 square in succession. Since the vehicles don't collide (i.e. they can overlap in the same space) they should all be able to tip at the same location, and if that becomes full, move to another.