Excavators/Trucks: can we have an official answer on how it works?

Even though it's a bit older, I think the devs would have changed it a long time ago if it were easy to do. For me, someone who doesn't know much about this, it simply needs a second loop in the code. Something like: Going to excavator/excavator is occupied/search again/oh, one is free/going to the next excavator, and so on. Of course, if there are no excavators available, there would be a queue, but I'd prefer that to 20 trucks waiting for one excavator to become available while 20 other excavators sit idle.

they do this all ready, If your useing an ore sorter, if tis backed up the trucks cant do anything. and the queue goes to the first available digger. If you do have ore sorting, add a 2nd or 3rd unit. If not check your storages

So you mean I should build an ore sorter that hopefully gets clogged up as often as possible to keep the excavators running? Really?

They will reassign when the excavator they are currently waiting for moves enough to trigger trucks to leave, but it could certainly stand to be improved further.

g4eschaschlik [discord] wrote:

So you mean I should build an ore sorter that hopefully gets clogged up as often as possible to keep the excavators running? Really?

if the ore doesnt have a place to go, things will idle. thats all i said lol.
if you have sorting enabled but you dont use one you will have issues.
If do not have it enabled things will be slower

That's not a solution. Now all the trucks on the island want a sorting facility. And yes, now I have no trucks waiting, but I do have 35 excavators waiting because the way I'm playing, I should have 5 sorting facilities, and that's just to handle the stone and dirt. I'm not even talking about everything else. I actually wanted an answer from the devs, not "how do I run a mine with 3 excavators and 5 trucks?" lol Luckily I saved the game.

When the truck arrives and waiting to load, just do another scan to see if there's another destination nearby.

I agree. Sometimes I found myself with 4-5 trucks waiting for 1 exc while right next door there are 2 others idle exc waiting for truck. It doesn't make sense

example of an issue that i encountered
https://discord.com/channels/803508556325584926/883590993063051275/1430314211753332938

g4eschaschlik [discord] wrote:

When the truck arrives and waiting to load, just do another scan to see if there's another destination nearby.

they ALways go to the closest ore soring plant. If u did enable it in the save when u first made the game, you have to use it at some point.

but..... see imiage, Never clogs, Never stops. unless full storage.

But the game does what your talking about all ready so.... Its based on space, and the spot being DUG think of a diamond form the tower closest first

I'm not entirely sure you understand what I mean. First, look at the space you're using; that's pure luxury for an early to medium game. Second, you're using up a lot of building materials. If the storage facilities are full and you don't mind the trucks driving long distances, then fine by me. I'm only just now slowly gaining space for diesel production, and I have to stop three-quarters of the excavators and trucks every now and then to refill the diesel storage. But to get that space, you have to excavate, and you don't like seeing things like that because you don't want to wait thousands of hours because 30 trucks are waiting for one excavator, and there are 29 excavators sitting idle. That's the problem, not a sorting plant. The photo shows that it's a problem right from the start, especially if you don't have enough space. It just doesn't look good and it wastes my time. ^^

I think i get the issue your having, (if im right i had the same thing but solved it) Did you unlock the fuel station and have how many trucks did you assign to the quarry building?

g4eschaschlik [discord] wrote:

Even though it's a bit older, I think the devs would have changed it a long time ago if it were easy to do. For me, someone who doesn't know much...

This actually looks like a duplicate of
Idle excavators wait for trucks while empty trucks wait at working excavators
from June 2023.

So I could have saved myself the trouble of writing anything ^^