SUGGESTION. Make Roads Worth Building and Actually Functional

[eamonn.fanton]

Roads IMHO were a great addition to the game.
However I have two issues that I think need addressing and worthy of a fix.

1. Building a road network is a considerable investment both in time and resources. Yes we get a reduction in maintenance but seriously is that a reasonable reward for the sheer amount of time spent building them?
IF, and I will come to this later, your trucks stuck to using roads, then it is likely that they will travel a longer distance. I strongly feel that given that extra cost in fuel and time that this will cause should be compensated for in some way.
My suggestion would be either a 10% increase in vehicle speed while using a road or a 10% reduction in fuel use, in addition to the maintenance reduction bonus

2. If you have invested time and resources building a road network, then surely it would make sense for vehicles to actually use them?
Without lining my road with barriers (yet more resources and time) vehicles will totally ignore them,
My suggestion would be to improve the routing of vehicles. If vehicles can include a road on their journey then they should do that and not travel across the map often parallel to a road by only a few tiles. You wouldn't believe how frustrating this is to watch.
Please improve the vehicle routing so that use of roads is prioritised and barriers are not required to force vehicles to use them.

[Kaery]

There is one big problem here: Roads are not implemented yet.

What we have right now are surfaces. You can use them to make something that looks like a road, but it's not a road. The devs have mentioned they are working on it, they will likely release roads with Update 3, but what we have right now are very much NOT roads.

This is why there is neither routing, nor boni aside from the maintenance reduction.

[eamonn.fanton]

Essentially any road implantation will be via a 'surface' which is already in game but yes I am aware there's still a good bit of work to do.
However, the clue was in the title with the word SUGGESTION.

I am not complaining or reporting a bug with the current game but I am making two suggestions that would make roads worth building once they are fully implemented into the game. Surely now is the time to make suggestions rather than the developer push out an update that didn't have the features players were hoping for, or address concerns that player might be anticipating.

Any road implementation will inevitably result in slightly longer journeys for your vehicles and consequently more time taken and more fuel used. Many players simply would not bother with roads with those penalties despite a maintenance bonus. Likewise if the game doesn't force vehicles to use roads where possible other players will be upset that they have wasted a lot of time an effort building a road network that isn't used.
There has to be some sort of trade off so that neither play style will be punished,
Hence my suggestion that there should be either a fuel consumption bonus or a speed bonus.

[Kaery]

The way you worded your suggestion suggested that you wanted the actually existing 'roads' changed, sorry for the misunderstanding.

[Stars-N-Stripes]

When are roads coming to the game? Right now everything seems so hap hazard in placement and layout. I heard update 3, any dates given?

[VladK02]

You are doing it wrong.

The correct way is to pave the entire island.

That way no matter which way the trucks travel, they get the 20%

It's not even hard to do, a few blocks of T3 concrete production facilities and you can crank out more concrete then the trucks have time to lay it down. Like 12x48 concrete and youre golden.