Stackers - are they useful?

[Turtle]

How are you using stackers? They seem pointless to me because trucks can just dump stuff in nice blocks where you designate them to dump. Stackers make a messy mountain that I have to go back to level flat later. Putting them on the waterfront seems pointless since, once again, trucks can dump to create a flat area. Also, using stackers is temporary because once they reach the limit, gotta tear them down only to have to build a new one just a few tiles over. Seems to me like they would be more useful if they had wheels so you can just move them tile by tile - or if they were longer to dump stuff out farther than now - A LOT farther.

[FallenSunGaming]

set up a mining area, build a high elevation dump platform, and dump ontop of the mining area, strip out the resources from deep underground, so you can reclaim that land sooner for building.

[Munphfee]

I use them to dump materials to ocean (slag and rock) - I have long conveyor belt from the center of the island, on several spots attached loose storages. Now my trucks does not need to run all the way down to dump it into the see, just a short trips for them and the rest is done by belt / stacker.

[don_dingo.be]

i use em to dump offshore and level it later with diggers

[vadek2]

I've found them incredibly useful in several cases.
1: Spiral ramped up golden peak, built an array of 8 stackers with an extra large storage and dumped the entire secondary limestone deposit (100% increased lol) off the top to move it for later.
2: A small storage with 2 stackers dumping into your mine is a good way to keep your leveling teams from stalling because they are full of material that has all its storage and inputs full.
3: Building out into the ocean. It does take a tiny bit of micromanagement, expecially when close to the shore, but with proper use of the stacker height limits, blueprints and a single lansdscaping team of an excavator and 2 trucks, you can get things done real quick. Why do this instead of just dumping with the trucks? Beacause I've seen plenty of cases where a truck gets to its dumping point and finds it's been filled for whatever reason, and will then drive back to it's tower before picking a new dump spot. TLDR: Drive Time and Fuel savings
4: Used 2 stackers to move resources and saved a full 4 minutes of round trip drive time.
5: Temporarily and quickly relocating resources during large earth moving operations. Though you could argue this is really just another use of case 2 or to a lesser degree case 4.

https://imgur.com/a/ZtRP1RI

[Tregon]

Just as minor point. Case 2 can only happen if you do not set up large dumping zone. With large dumping zone trucks just move to next spot and keep dumping.

[vadek2]

Originally posted by Tregon:

Just as minor point. Case 2 can only happen if you do not set up large dumping zone. With large dumping zone trucks just move to next spot and keep dumping.

I agree. Case 2 would not be used for something that is just dumped such as rock or slag. Where case 2 come in is if your chewing through a mountain and picking up trace amounts of something such as coal.
Without a stacker you have to set up a dump zone just for coal, then when it gets full you either expand it of change it to a dig zone.
With the stacker, you just have it dump into your main mine and make sure it's designated to dig.
You can even get the AI to prioritise this dumped material if you dump into an area that was marked to dig before anything else in the towers control zone.


I also should have mentioned above that the stacker will allow you to dump more into a specific set area than you can pile up by truck.

[Nickvet419]

I have 1 stacker at each mine so other mines can dump their excess material without wasting it.

For example If my iron mine has copper in it, I don't want to waste the material, and I don't want my "iron trucks" sitting idle with nowhere to dump the copper, so I use the stacker to unload the copper collected from my iron mine and dump it into the copper mine where the "copper trucks" can collect it and sit idle, and vise versa.