There is a few things while track building is happening that really gets me going. A lot of the mechanics in the game are highly organized, efficient, and predictable - one could say they are satisfying. However, track building is the utter chaos - why?! And yes, given the fact the rest of the game is done so well, I would absolutely say this is a bug!
- track section selection
- when selecting belts using the area pause/un-pause tool, sections of belts are selected which the player drew before as one piece. no matter if the entire belt is within the area pause selection frame, it's still selected as a whole. When you click on said belt, they are also highlighted/selected as a whole section up to the next intersection.
- when I am selecting tracks with a area pause/un-pause tool, exactly that track section is selected which is within the selection rectangle. However, when I am selecting the track with the mouse (just straight click) the entire track section is highlighted.
- track construction
- when I select pipes/belts to be constructed, the entire section of pipe I was "drawing" gets treated as one section and is constructed as one section. trucks are bringing materials to one drop off spot and the section is finished as one piece. More so, trucks respect the amounts of materials needed for the entire section (since it's treated as one) and deliver all materials necessary in as few loads as possible (as per my settings)
- when tracks are constructed, trucks pick up 1 (one) gravel at a time and deliver it to 1 (one) track section as a time. no matter how much more would be in storage or how much more track bits are close by. with all the optimization (like paving the idle spot for trucks, people reporting tiny discrepancies in fuel consumption when an excavator is waiting) THIS in fact is the real waste of fuel: a dump truck picking up 1 gravel and delivering it to a track piece 3k tiles away just to come back and do the exact same thing a few more times.
- how to fix?
- personally I would like to see a track layer train and no more construction via trucks
- make tracks the same as belts. the section I am building at once is actually treated as section. for selection as well as for construction - no matter the tool I use to pause/un-pause.
- give the trucks the option to pick up materials for more than one individual construction site and give the player the power to strictly enforce a no-wasted-cargo-space policy.
here is an example to 2)
the track is fractured in a bunch of tiny little individual sections and trucks are bringing over one gravel precisely to get that one bit constructed.
