Dump trucks

[Wingnut]

I saw in a youtube video a dump truck automatically, miraculously refill with sand right after dumping its load. Is this feature going to be in the full game?
Or not? preferably not.

[Zaanzabar]

This only works if you are within range of the sand pit. You press a key, and it re-fills. As soon as you are outside the range, you have to travel back and forth. The range is sizeable, but it is far from covering any significant portion of the map.

[Wingnut]

I have to say i would prefer a more realistic mechanism for this. Like a hopper with a chute located at the sand pit (or whatever bulk material) that you have to drive under and activate to refill.
This is disappointing

[Vimpster]

I was rather disappointed by this as well. I wanted to fill the truck manually, with an excavator or something like that. However, considering how much sand you need to make roads, I have to admit, it would become monotonous pretty quickly.

That said, if you could pour the sand, and/or manipulate the poured sand, more precisely and accurately, you would be able to build roads with far less sand. There is a lot of simplification going on in this game and it just is what it is.

[JeanDeaux]

I think they should put a physics engine on every single grain of sand on the entire map, would make this much more realistic and would cause any lag on the average PC.

[Buck Fell]

I agree Vimpster, I'd rather you got 4 or 5x more linear road out of a load of sand but had to go back to the sand pit and reload. About the same effort over all but more engaging.

[ledgeri [HUN]]

A bit funny when they though about an automatic "deployed sand levelling, then asphalting, then rolling that asphalt" system earlier-, because doing that process manually in "roadraft" game is somehow bad for the player... instead of 2-3 more dumpers auto-driving to a dedicated (small) sand-pickup, then driving back to a dedicated waiting zone to be available to the player (on player made and dictated route, to a dedicated waiting area), to the player do what is needed. (Specially since the delivery and road-checking mechanism already in the game).

If the above mentioned auto "drive back, fill, then bring here" would be implemented, the asphalting could be improved with it, with a dedicated asphalt plant and regular paver-refil.... Instead of the infinite amount, infinitely warm asphalt on the current machine.

Asphalting a remote, outside of "heavenly sand-zone", "currently needs sand" area would be way way different if you think through both ways.