No available dumping zone in 2 and 3 wide bridges

This is a bit of a game breaking bug when making bridges, especially on large maps. The dumping tiles seem to be reserved for a period of time, during which other trucks see those tiles as unavailable. This results in a spam of notifications if you don't have other dumping zones or, in the best case, they go all the way to the other zone, which can be very far away (as in the attached save)

it can happen even with 5 wide areas if you have enough outgoing materials

To reproduce, just set any of the big loose storage to "export", all trucks will try to drop materials and they will not find any place and go to the other side, super annoying, wasting fuel and all

They are reserved while other trucks come to do it. You have too many trucks for the number of available tiles, making the bridge wider will let more trucks dump at once

Yet, the shown behaviour is annoying. Obviously trucks could dump, they are already there and now all wait on the slowpokes.
Idea: trucks that lost their target (already filled), can race for a neighbouring square, even though it is already fully reserved. Ofc that square might be filled too early as well, then they race for the next one.
When new neighbouring squares get accessible, no additional trucks should be called in during such races.

the problem might be new trucks are requested rather than the nearby ones

Workarounds for the original issue:

• Manual, short term: remove a dumping designation, then add it again. This gives some waiting trucks a chance to dump faster. Downside: have to do it every time ...
• Split the transport paths with storages: Long haul trucks bring material to storages on site. Local dump trucks only circulate between these storages and the dump site. This way no long haul truck blocks the dumping square anymore. Needs extra storages. Possibly slightly more trucks (have to pickup and unload extra). The saved waiting times might overcompensate that.
• For the large projects, use belts and stackers for the big volumes.

"Just" check on the status of the neighboring squares (with the same mining tower(s)).

Well it seems the game doesnt like when trucks are left with stuff in them and doesnt handle it properly

The game does not care, not like it's crashing ... but us players do 😅
I frequently see this issue at the end of building ramps or filling in dirt, suddenly some trucks dangling with more or less load, then I have to manually reactivate the regular dumping sites. That is perfectly ok behaviour, imo. The residual volume needed to be dumped is not easy to calculate. And we want it fast.

ihopethisisnt.taken [discord] wrote:

They are reserved while other trucks come to do it. You have too many trucks for the number of available tiles, making the bridge wider will let more...

In reality making it wider doesn't help much, because if you make it wider it will take longer and use more material to make the bridge, breaking the purpose of making it just 2 tiles wide. And even a wide one can get stuck with enough trucks :sad:

fair enough

Well, wider does need more material, but not that much more. Let's say you fill in 20m deep, top 2m wide and the base will get 22m wide, then the resulting trapezoid = triangle + parallelogram shape needs 240m³ volume per linear meter: 20 * 20 / 2 + 2 * 20. Making the top 4m wide then is just 2 * 20 = 40m³ more. 1/6 more volume to dump, but twice the potential dumping speed.
(Numbers are examples, rock or slag allow steeper slopes (reduced width at base). While mixed in dirt or waste reduce the slope, increasing the base width.)

You can see that difference when digging a path. Excavators do not share digging squares. It's way faster to dig with 4-5 excavators on a 4 wide path, than with 2-3 on a 2 wide one. the optional extra one, as there some extra debris/ land slide most of the time.

If you are short on dumping material (e.g. insane start on dragon or curland islands), then you surely do not have the problem of trucks lining up for dumping over longer times.

Dumping into the ocean, I'm usually fine with just 2 mining squares wide paths (when dumping). At 3 width one can already comfortably setup infrastructure on the path itself, storages, belts, stackers, fuel stations.
My mountain passes along the slopes tend to end up 3-4 wide (esp. when in hurry and using multiple excavators). One side I dig, the other I dump, to save on trucks. Landslides and straigthening then result in wider than intended paths.
Crossing a mountain head on, depends on number of available excavators, 2 wide tends to have problems with landslides trapping some vehicles, needs some attention. Never did more than 4 wide (do not have that many spare excavators).

RealisticOptimist wrote:

Well, wider does need more material, but not that much more. Let's say you fill in 20m deep, top 2m wide and the base will get 22m wide, then the...

so basically doing 3 wide is the way?

I'm just saying making it 3 or even 4 wide does not need as much extra volume as it looks/ feels like.
In your case, switching to trucks instead of pickups would already triple the throughput (resp. you can reduce the vehicle number accordingly).
I'd 1st try to stick to 2 wide and rather setup some storage before the start point of the "bridge". You can also make it 3 wide just once in a while for a storage, in between you just need space on the side for conveyor belts and maybe a Diesel pipe.
This also depends what you want to do with the finished bridge. If you plan for two train tracks pretty soon, you will need more width anyway. If you add width later, keep in mind the occasional land slides will cut more or less into your path, too.