Roads

I would love to see roads added to the game, fist basic hardcore roads leading to concrete and finally tarmac. The roads could give a speed bonus and maintenance reduction on trucks. I dont like seeing the muddy paths and trucks and mud dont typically get on well. It would also give structure to the design of my settlement.
Bitumen could be extracted from oil cracking and used with sand/gravel to make tarmac, hardcore could be made with crushers using waste rock from mining. Id love to have to use excavators to grade the land and lay the roads. This game is brilliant.

Also be great to be able to get liquid concrete from the mixers and have the trucks deliver it to be poured for roads

would be great if it just used the terraforming tools, so just give access to ability to dump gravel and asphalt.
give trucks a speed bonus if driving on gravel, and a greater one on asphalt, so could dig out and lay down roads or entire paved areas.

Roads should remain optional (and probably midgame at earliest). But otherwise I agree.

Yes! And also to make vehicles get stuck in the mud if it's raining!

I like the maintenance reduction idea! They should definitely stay optional overall though. There might need to be some form of path weighting so that you can tell your trucks to use a more optimal route to reduce travel time vs more indirect route using roads to reduce maintenance costs.

Looking at it the roads should make traveling for the trucks faster compared to the ground/dirt. and tunnels or something for large mountains or hills. and as mentiond have waiting areas for trucks at idle and loading zones on roads maby

I was a bit shocked that there weren't roads yet. To expand on Evgeny's idea there could also be tow trucks that could help get trucks/equipment out of the mud but also resupply maintenance like fuel.

I do love how the trucks create gravel "roads" on their own. That way you can nicely see where there is a lot of traffic.
As roads would be grid based, they might look a bit unreal.
I like the idea of a boost on roads though.
I quickly forgot about roads, it doesn't bother me that there are none.

This could be yet another tech to research and upgrade.
Starting game is as we have it now. After we can make gravel, a tech option should open up for gravel roads. After Research 2, asphalt roads made with petroleum and crushed slag. Trucks could get a speed boost on gravel roads and another speed boost AND reduction in maintenance for asphalt.

One more thing, roads should not be able to be obstructed e.g. cant buildconveyer ramps on them etc. I want them to be a permanent pathway for trucks no matter how much "spaghetti" is all around it

Just something to keep in mind between concrete and tarmac roads. In real life tarmac/asphalt is used because it is cheaper, but requires more upkeep in the long run. Concrete produces stronger and higher quality roads, but is ridiculously expensive in comparison to tarmac. This strength also means a lot less potholes and upkeep.

Speed of trucks should be a game mechanic… quality and design of roads…
Would be nice to include traffic heat map similar to Sim City 4.
IRL info on road speed impact on macro economics: https://blogs.imf.org/2022/06/15/where-are-the-worlds-fastest-roads/

I like the idea of roads being something that emerge naturally, like the previous comment that different surfaces have different speeds (and add in that they have different pathing costs, so that vehicles are encouraged to tend towards more efficient routes).
This way the player could use the existing dumping mechanic to construct roads in a similar way to the way they're constructed in real life, without ever having to specifically build a 'road', similar to the way the existing dumping mechanic can be used to create underground pipes, without ever having to specifically build underground pipes.
As an aside, I love that the existing mechanic of vehicles killing off grass and displacing sand already gives the player an excellent indication of where they should construct roads, however (if) they end up being implemented.

When I first thought about roads in this game. I thought about a network like housing that trucks prioritize for pathing, and the creation of semi trucks that can only drive on roads, but can move large quantities of products from one cargo depot to another cargo depot directly connected to the road network. I also thought the road network would need its own maintenance depot connected directly to the road network, that would require a different recipe for the maintenance, like iron for rebar, and concrete, and eventually need tar and things for asphalt and tarmac.

You can also go a very basic route allowing you to lay out roads with unity. They won't improve speed or help maintenance, but they'll prevent you from building anything other than ramps on them and give a better look to your colony. Without this, what I currently do is use dumping designation on flat land and then purposely not build across it.

Perhaps a good solution would be to take the mechanics of "linking" to roads from an old game World War III: Black Gold. It is very well implemented there. If there is a road somewhere nearby, then cars try to get on it and move mainly along it.

builds roads to make vehicles move faster

I like the idea, but not necessary. T1 road, made in mixer, requires gravel, makes X tiles of roads. T2, requires gravel and heavy oil. T3, concrete and steel.
As to pathing, the trucks very nicely let you know where the busiest paths are- build roads there. That doesn't require any tweaks to the pathfinder. In my game, I noticed that the heavy haul trucks were taking a long detour around the farming area because of one pipeline. Put a ramp there, and was able to pull onoe haul truck off each route.

Please dont put roads in this game. I love the way it works now there is no need for roads.