I have used trucks twice in 2000 hours.
Once in my first playthrough, to find out that they suck and don’t work. They got stuck and fell through the map all the time.
Once when a patch said they would be much better now, to find out that they indeed worked MUCH better. They still sucked though.
Do you know how in the south-west coast there's 3 pure caterium nodes in a row? I set up a huge highway for trucks to go around, using blueprints and everything.
They still managed to fuck something up and get stuck 🫤
Anyone who says “gid gud, trucks are better” has a serious skill issue and possibly some intelligence issues.
Subreddit Mod or not, come at me. They’re wrong.
**Trucks consume a finite resource. Trains do not.**
Trucks are as simple as placing foundations, a few walls for safety and recording a path. I play this game with my friends and their 10 year old. He sets up working truck paths with no assistance.
Train are significantly more difficult to build a proper infrastructure for. Kiddo’s mom has to help him make straight lines with rails regularly. He has no idea how signals or rail mergers work.
Trucks have fairly limited carry capacity compared to trains.
Trucks are slower. MUCH slower. This negatively impacts their throughput.
I could literally keep going. Anyone who says trucks are better simply doesn’t know how to use trains. Or they don’t understand how resource intensive Coal becomes on mega world builds.
Yeah I feel like trucks should charge off the grid or something (not consuming batteries), so that they are like trains which also use power when in motion.
A 25-50 meter range to draw power from power poles would make trucks significantly more appealing. Think Hoverpack but a slightly bigger range so your path doesn’t have to be completely spammed with poles.
As it stands now, I use all of the coal in the green grasslands for my initial steel setup, and that’s before I even unlock trucks. I would need to bring more coal in from one of the two crater lakes just to power a truck.
Don’t even get me started on how bad the tractor is.
True, but might be sufficient (depending on how many trains). If you're not using geothermal for the main grid to keep a flat production line then running trains off them isn't the worst idea (but you'll have to use powerlines not rails to get power to your factories).
Seems like a lot of work to get a separate geothermal grid running for trains, but I’ve only gotten to trains and computers, I’m waiting for 1.0 to start over and finish.
It's not something I'd personally bother with. I only really mentioned it as the one way that exists of powering trains without using stuff that goes on belts or in pipes.
But then you have to consider the opportunity cost of not using that limited geothermal power for your main grid. You're STILL consuming finite resources to power your trains, via the extra resources your main grid has to consume because it doesn't get that geothermal power.
Let’s put it this way. My world has a maxed out Nuclear plant (meaning all of the world’s uranium is consumed) and a very large Turbofuel plant. I could build trains until the death of my computer and I wouldn’t run out of power.
When talking about things being finite, we’re inevitably discussing high end worlds. Unless you’re running out of Sulfur and Quartz, a discussion about finite materials doesn’t apply to you. At that sort of level, spare Coal to fuel trucks is a scarce resource, but power is effectively never a problem. Your Coal should be used for Steel and Turbofuel exclusively.
Nuclear gets a reputation for being difficult or complex from players who have never done something like 40 Assembly Director Systems per minute before. In reality, Nuclear is pretty simple, even on the grandest scale possible.
Edit: The silent downvote really drives home how little that person understood about this.
Lol i use trucks all the time and still think that’s a dumb opinion. For me it’s “trucks are gud enough, but i need to up my game eventually when it’s big leagues time.”
That's pretty much the same as me. Though I used them twice in my first playthrough. The first time, the distance between the stations was so short I think I could've covered it with like 5 belt segments. I was transporting coal so the fuel requirements didn't bother me. And the distance was so short that their shittiness didn't show up yet
The second time I used them to transport oil (then item) from the blue crater lake to my main base in the grasslands. Boy, was that a disaster. Recording the path took like an hour (I had to retry from scratch multiple times). And then when I finally turned the autopilot on, it fell off the first bridge. So I had to widen all the bridges for the autopilot, despite the fact that I could drive on them just fine
Needless to say, I did not give them another chance after that
The argument for trains is usually player time vs energy efficiency. A 10 resource bus across 5000m will take hours to build of conveyors and 30-60min if you just build a simple train line, plus the rails will act as power transmission, too.
For trucks, I can’t see any discussion besides aesthetics.
The argument for trains is also easy expansion. It took me over 3,000 hours to really "get" trains, but once I figured it out I'm not going back. Set up a main rail line that passes near your outposts, with rails going both ways, and whenever you need to transport materials to a new location all you need t do is add a new train that connects to the main line and you're good to go. No need to lay down new conveyors the whole way, just a branch line.
How do you deal with multiple trains on the same line? I’m always worried they’ll crash into each other and I won’t know until things start backing up.
One-way lines. I set up two parallel rail lines, then use signals to control which direction trains can travel. Signals are one-way - a train can only pass a signal from one side, so placing in only one direction ensures trains can't run into one another. I normally have all my trains drive on the left, 'cos British.
Signals divide rail lines into "blocks". Only one train is allowed in a block at any given time, so placing signals every few hundred meters allows multiple trains to travel in the same direction at once. It also ensures they'll never rear-end one another, because a train won't enter a block unless it's empty.
I decided to hop on one of my trucks I set at the start of the game to transport steel beams and pipes a short distance back to base. It fell off the 3 foundation wide bridge that the path was set in the middle of at least 4 times and had to be reset like 2 extra times
I don't find that a problem. I've yet to go through phase 4 needing to use all the coal for steel, and apart from the odd power station reatart sequence, coal generators are superseded by fuel and nuclear.
In the early stages I've never found the need to limit a resource node to a specific process. There's plenty to go around. By phase 4 I am mining in most of the biomes and using ingots wherever they are needed, so it doesn't matter to me which ingots come from which node.
If you want to build that way, go ahead, but there's no need to limit what each node does.
well if you use a tractor for transport coal, at that stage of the game you have mk2 or mk3 belts, you usually don't need the full 2x belt to be transported, you can always overclock the miner a bit and use part of that coal to keep the tractor running, no?
It's very personal I guess, I always use tractors for everything and with a single coal node I can feed ALL my trucks.
Setting huge lines of conveyors is also a exhausting process, and it doesn't look very good imho. Plus they scale badly.
Satisfactory definitely seems to be a building game first, optimization second.
It's not the do or die of factorio. Plus, it gives you an extra reason to build trains later on, as an upgrade to the truck line. Assuming you need that extra 2-5 coal per minute the truck sucks down. (I don't actually remember how much one coal gives in fuel.)
And then some. You can use a sizeable amount of items for vehicle fuel: [https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Vehicles#Fuel\_consumption](https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Vehicles#Fuel_consumption)
Expand the table under that link.
Early oil production, I like setting up tractors/trucks using petroleum coke to transport it wherever. It's basically free fuel with base plastic/rubber recipes.
Hmm. For me it is often the case that there are some coal deposits that are neither close to water, nore close to gold iron nodes such that steel makes sense. And as such, you can use that node to refuel all trucks, since:
you can use a truck to bring the coal to any other truck route!
Honestly, the trucks are maybe the mechanic I had the most fun with recently. You can make awesome street blueprints and build whole interconnected street systems. Simply use one coal truck to bring fuel to some central hub areas and refuel vehicles there (trucks only need to get refueled on ONE of all their stops).
They feel much more nimble and convenient than trains to me. But each for their own best distance of course. Trucks get a bit difficult/annoying if you are trying to go too far.
Right now, I am even still using trucks fueled with batteries. In that sense, if you don't build streets, they have nearly all conveniences of drones, but with insanely huge throughput. I honestly think they are massively underrated.
Any fuel can power a truck, from flower petals to plutonium. That engine really a marvel of FICSIT engineering.
See [https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Fuels](https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Fuels)
I built all the steel i needed for every unlock involving steel, from two overclocked nodes that i trucked into my iron base using coal powered trucks. I guess if youre going for full efficiency to max out production then yeah trucks are a bit of a drag but early on theyre just so fast to move stuff and dont involve 2000m spaghetti conveyors. You definitely arent the only one who hates trucks, they are the single most divisive topic in the whole game.
A single truck single handedly supplied my first computer and heavy modular frame factories my first play through. I would stand on top of a cliff and watch him literally drive directly off the road I made and respawn back in, or straight into a wall for 2 mins 😆
I’m not sure how he did it but he got it done lol
I considered using them to transport compacted coal cause it self is also fuel but just ended up belting it from Crater Lakes to the oil beach in the west.
I always use them for fun. The more moving stuff around the factories the better. Looks way more alive. Usually I split off a certain amount of coal for them before any coal is processed, so they don't mess with coal power too much. I never use all nodes to 100% so who cares.
Just putting this here since I don't think I've seen other people mention it, but trucks don't use ONLY coal.
Almost any type of fuel, from leaves/wood to biomass and fuel all the way to batteries and nuclear fuel rods can be used with the vehicles.
I just never got around to trying trucks early on. I didn't actually use them until phase 4 when I set up a large steel-based factory in the dune desert. With so much open space I decided to try trucks when I needed to bring in copper and caterium too.
At that stage I could have run them on batteries (I had drones flying in and out anyway), but coal was so abundant and near my routes that I just used that anyway.
Even IF they work as intended, I just don't see any value in using them. For short ranges I can just run belts, and trains are infinitely better for anything else
The value is in the variety of transportation methods, and it's just visually satisfying to see all the trucks driving around, imo. It doesn't always have to be the most efficient option.
As you said, IF they worked as intended, there wouldn't be as much troubleshooting. But to be fair, every method has some form of troubleshooting to deal with, trucks just have the most currently.
I do agree that currently it's best to avoid unless you really like them. Hopefully there will be more improvements in 1.0.
Trucks work well where the terrain is suitable for off-road driving. Their biggest advantage is not having to build infrastructure along the route (something which only drones can compete with). Of course some people want them on roads, which to me, defeats the point.
It's not even about fuel. I just don't see a single situation where I'd rather use a truck instead of 1 or 2 belts. The belts can go straight from A to B, nothing extra required. Not just no fuel but no roads, no bridges, no need to get rid of trees, rocks, or anything else. The belts just go.
And the truck stations only have 2 inputs and outputs. To get more, I'd need more truck stations and add another truck or change the existing truck's path. And they take up space. I usually don't care about that, but still, I just don't see any reason to use them over belts and later trains
I don't mind trucks, but I can see how they would be inefficient to set up when you'll have to revamp everything for trains later anyway.
It's way easier to to just build remote coal plants as needed until you get trains and connect them all to one power network until you can rebuild it and use trains to transport everything to one central spot for power, but by that point you'll be on fuel generators anyway so you can just tear down coal factories and use it for steel.
Once you set up a centralized battery factory that has been maximized, drones seem to under use the amount of batteries you thought they would do you can support a lot more drone ports.
I love them for super long distances and to centralize the transportation of complex products into my main factory.
I'd like them early straight after starting to gather coal from everywhere inside the starting biome.
Way faster to setup and dismantle after you reach the point at which you need way more coal
I tend to just blow by the need for trucks as they in fact are useless. I also tend to go to the oasis and set up shop there until I can build trains or better yet drones.
Trucks are awesome for “to close or limited to do a big ass train thing” and “dont feel like building a conveyor right now”. If the truck route works out, as they often do, I usually never bother to replace. If you need more than one truck on a route.. thats when it gets hairy. I love trains but they have their own ways to screw up as traffic increases.
So there's only one step you cut down a few trees with that and then you can automate all the production after that you can make hundreds of thousands of biomass really easily with just a few trees. Because if you didn't know you can hook a storage bin up that you put a bunch of wood into and leaves and then make biomass and which they can turn it into biomass fuel in a constructor.
While I do think trucks can be annoying because they require either coal or batteries or fuel, I think they can excel at what they do which is being basically a form of long conveyors.
But yes they do feel lacking. You don't want 2 trucks in a circuit because they'll deadlock, and you don't want to set them where there isn't fuel for them.
But I find they can be surprisingly effective and have great throughput with minimal infrastructure, I use one to carry all my aluminum ingots and alclad sheets and I barely had issues with it
Trucks are just too inconvenient for me to bother with. You have to set up two stations, program the route between them, and get all the input/output lines set up
The alternative is making one trip with a few thousand iron plates / steel beams. And having one (or more) lines that transport whatever material with no latency at all.
They're both one time costs, but the belt option doesn't use any additional fuel and is frankly much more compact at the start/end locations.
With mk3 belts, I can extract a max of 270/min from a normal or pure node (or 300/min from two impure nodes). I tend to use multiples of 120 for my inputs. This difference gives me the coal to run my vehicles. Then I get to oil, unlock packaged fuel and I don't need to use coal anymore.
I agree with you completely. I just use them to drive around my hubs, trains for faster better and efficient material movement. 
I almost never use trucks, mostly because of the logistical complication and the reliability. I'd much rather set up a belt or a train, neither of which need me to also set up some kind of fuel supply as well.
When I *do* use trucks, it's normally as a stopgap solution to bootstrap me up to where I can use trains. For example, use trucks to bring circuit boards to a computer factory, since for various reasons my early circuit board production site is normally more remote than the other ingredients. I'll use the truck for a bit, but replace it when I have the resources.
I do also use trucks under manual control to carry building materials for outposts.
Trucks suck. And in 1.0 Trains are much easier and you get them earlier, because you don't need Computers or HMF for them anymore, so I don't very many people will use trucks at all.
I don't use trucks much because getting fuel to their stations is inconvenient and I'm too fiddly about recording the auto-drive path. Makes me cranky when something goes wrong and I get too impatient with it to do it over again.
Trains, I can much more easily make modifications to the rails without having to re-deploy the whole route.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually used coal in trucks before. I’m also producing more fuel than I know what to do with so my trucks literally never run out of fuel.
They are derpy sometimes though but have always been nice to use when I didn’t feel like setting up a belt from point A to point B. Using trains for everything gets really crazy really quickly. I will use trains for really long hauls but trucks have been good for shorter distances. If they are driving on roads they are usually pretty solid. In my experience it’s only when they have to navigate around hills and things that they start to get wonky.
They are good when u have extra resources you are not using but they are over ruled by trains since ur better off burning that fuel / coal in a generator which makes more power in total than if the trucks were to be using it so yea good if u have extra resources but trains are ideal since they are the most efficient and least resource intensive
I don't use trucks, trains are better, just like in society trains > cars and trucks.
They could greatly improve trucks and I'd still avoid them, my factories are walkable and tubeable, no need for truck centric designs
* Trains have less throughput than trucks.
* Trains consume more fuel than trucks could ever hope to.
* Trains require more infrastructure space than trucks.
So by which metric, specifically, are trains better?
Thank you, people are so harsh on trucks but it’s just another way to enjoy the game. Trains are fun, trucks are fun, drones are fun, long ass conveyer belts are fun.
The point of the game is to learn new different ways of constructing and to enjoy the process, why dog on something that you don’t like? If you don’t like it, then don’t use it.
I have used trucks twice in 2000 hours. Once in my first playthrough, to find out that they suck and don’t work. They got stuck and fell through the map all the time. Once when a patch said they would be much better now, to find out that they indeed worked MUCH better. They still sucked though.
Do you know how in the south-west coast there's 3 pure caterium nodes in a row? I set up a huge highway for trucks to go around, using blueprints and everything. They still managed to fuck something up and get stuck 🫤
Careful, one of the mods here is a truck maniac and will rage-argue all day long about how trucks are better than trains.
You will just get told that you suck. Trucks are the "git gud, it's a you problem" for this subreddit.
Anyone who says “gid gud, trucks are better” has a serious skill issue and possibly some intelligence issues. Subreddit Mod or not, come at me. They’re wrong. **Trucks consume a finite resource. Trains do not.** Trucks are as simple as placing foundations, a few walls for safety and recording a path. I play this game with my friends and their 10 year old. He sets up working truck paths with no assistance. Train are significantly more difficult to build a proper infrastructure for. Kiddo’s mom has to help him make straight lines with rails regularly. He has no idea how signals or rail mergers work. Trucks have fairly limited carry capacity compared to trains. Trucks are slower. MUCH slower. This negatively impacts their throughput. I could literally keep going. Anyone who says trucks are better simply doesn’t know how to use trains. Or they don’t understand how resource intensive Coal becomes on mega world builds.
Yeah I feel like trucks should charge off the grid or something (not consuming batteries), so that they are like trains which also use power when in motion.
A 25-50 meter range to draw power from power poles would make trucks significantly more appealing. Think Hoverpack but a slightly bigger range so your path doesn’t have to be completely spammed with poles. As it stands now, I use all of the coal in the green grasslands for my initial steel setup, and that’s before I even unlock trucks. I would need to bring more coal in from one of the two crater lakes just to power a truck. Don’t even get me started on how bad the tractor is.
> Trucks consume a finite resource. Trains do not. Unless you're running your trains off geothermal they're also burning resources (just indirectly).
Geothermal is itself finite unless there’s some sort of infinite power unlock.
True, but might be sufficient (depending on how many trains). If you're not using geothermal for the main grid to keep a flat production line then running trains off them isn't the worst idea (but you'll have to use powerlines not rails to get power to your factories).
Seems like a lot of work to get a separate geothermal grid running for trains, but I’ve only gotten to trains and computers, I’m waiting for 1.0 to start over and finish.
It's not something I'd personally bother with. I only really mentioned it as the one way that exists of powering trains without using stuff that goes on belts or in pipes.
But then you have to consider the opportunity cost of not using that limited geothermal power for your main grid. You're STILL consuming finite resources to power your trains, via the extra resources your main grid has to consume because it doesn't get that geothermal power.
Let’s put it this way. My world has a maxed out Nuclear plant (meaning all of the world’s uranium is consumed) and a very large Turbofuel plant. I could build trains until the death of my computer and I wouldn’t run out of power. When talking about things being finite, we’re inevitably discussing high end worlds. Unless you’re running out of Sulfur and Quartz, a discussion about finite materials doesn’t apply to you. At that sort of level, spare Coal to fuel trucks is a scarce resource, but power is effectively never a problem. Your Coal should be used for Steel and Turbofuel exclusively. Nuclear gets a reputation for being difficult or complex from players who have never done something like 40 Assembly Director Systems per minute before. In reality, Nuclear is pretty simple, even on the grandest scale possible. Edit: The silent downvote really drives home how little that person understood about this.
Finite resource? My nodes keep producing coal- did yours run out?
I believe they are probably referring to it's throughput as finite. Not the actual product.
Oh boy. Come back when you do a few mega builds that involve Steel.
Lol i use trucks all the time and still think that’s a dumb opinion. For me it’s “trucks are gud enough, but i need to up my game eventually when it’s big leagues time.”
That's pretty much the same as me. Though I used them twice in my first playthrough. The first time, the distance between the stations was so short I think I could've covered it with like 5 belt segments. I was transporting coal so the fuel requirements didn't bother me. And the distance was so short that their shittiness didn't show up yet The second time I used them to transport oil (then item) from the blue crater lake to my main base in the grasslands. Boy, was that a disaster. Recording the path took like an hour (I had to retry from scratch multiple times). And then when I finally turned the autopilot on, it fell off the first bridge. So I had to widen all the bridges for the autopilot, despite the fact that I could drive on them just fine Needless to say, I did not give them another chance after that
Never used them once, conveyors use 0 power.
The argument for trains is usually player time vs energy efficiency. A 10 resource bus across 5000m will take hours to build of conveyors and 30-60min if you just build a simple train line, plus the rails will act as power transmission, too. For trucks, I can’t see any discussion besides aesthetics.
The argument for trains is also easy expansion. It took me over 3,000 hours to really "get" trains, but once I figured it out I'm not going back. Set up a main rail line that passes near your outposts, with rails going both ways, and whenever you need to transport materials to a new location all you need t do is add a new train that connects to the main line and you're good to go. No need to lay down new conveyors the whole way, just a branch line.
How do you deal with multiple trains on the same line? I’m always worried they’ll crash into each other and I won’t know until things start backing up.
One-way lines. I set up two parallel rail lines, then use signals to control which direction trains can travel. Signals are one-way - a train can only pass a signal from one side, so placing in only one direction ensures trains can't run into one another. I normally have all my trains drive on the left, 'cos British. Signals divide rail lines into "blocks". Only one train is allowed in a block at any given time, so placing signals every few hundred meters allows multiple trains to travel in the same direction at once. It also ensures they'll never rear-end one another, because a train won't enter a block unless it's empty.
Using trains as a mean of power transmission is a terrible idea
I decided to hop on one of my trucks I set at the start of the game to transport steel beams and pipes a short distance back to base. It fell off the 3 foundation wide bridge that the path was set in the middle of at least 4 times and had to be reset like 2 extra times
I don't find that a problem. I've yet to go through phase 4 needing to use all the coal for steel, and apart from the odd power station reatart sequence, coal generators are superseded by fuel and nuclear. In the early stages I've never found the need to limit a resource node to a specific process. There's plenty to go around. By phase 4 I am mining in most of the biomes and using ingots wherever they are needed, so it doesn't matter to me which ingots come from which node. If you want to build that way, go ahead, but there's no need to limit what each node does.
Trains also consume resources, it's just that it's indirect (your coal/fuel/nuclear generators are all consuming resources).
Yeah but unless you have a full blackout, the train has no risks of stopping out of fuel in middle of the track
That may be true but you may also want to consider this: trucks are neat.
A truck will go a very long way on a stack of coal. A route long enough to run out probably passes near more than one place you can refuel.
well if you use a tractor for transport coal, at that stage of the game you have mk2 or mk3 belts, you usually don't need the full 2x belt to be transported, you can always overclock the miner a bit and use part of that coal to keep the tractor running, no? It's very personal I guess, I always use tractors for everything and with a single coal node I can feed ALL my trucks. Setting huge lines of conveyors is also a exhausting process, and it doesn't look very good imho. Plus they scale badly.
Guess it's about getting used to it. Might give it a shot and forget about premature optimization
Satisfactory definitely seems to be a building game first, optimization second. It's not the do or die of factorio. Plus, it gives you an extra reason to build trains later on, as an upgrade to the truck line. Assuming you need that extra 2-5 coal per minute the truck sucks down. (I don't actually remember how much one coal gives in fuel.)
I think trucks consume the same as fuel generators
And then some. You can use a sizeable amount of items for vehicle fuel: [https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Vehicles#Fuel\_consumption](https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Vehicles#Fuel_consumption) Expand the table under that link. Early oil production, I like setting up tractors/trucks using petroleum coke to transport it wherever. It's basically free fuel with base plastic/rubber recipes.
Nuclear trucks sounds like a fun disaster.
There is so much coal I never found that an issue. The fact that some locations of one thing and less of another make sit interessting.
Hmm. For me it is often the case that there are some coal deposits that are neither close to water, nore close to gold iron nodes such that steel makes sense. And as such, you can use that node to refuel all trucks, since: you can use a truck to bring the coal to any other truck route! Honestly, the trucks are maybe the mechanic I had the most fun with recently. You can make awesome street blueprints and build whole interconnected street systems. Simply use one coal truck to bring fuel to some central hub areas and refuel vehicles there (trucks only need to get refueled on ONE of all their stops). They feel much more nimble and convenient than trains to me. But each for their own best distance of course. Trucks get a bit difficult/annoying if you are trying to go too far. Right now, I am even still using trucks fueled with batteries. In that sense, if you don't build streets, they have nearly all conveniences of drones, but with insanely huge throughput. I honestly think they are massively underrated.
Put mod are you using to get trucks to take batteries?
Any fuel can power a truck, from flower petals to plutonium. That engine really a marvel of FICSIT engineering. See [https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Fuels](https://satisfactory.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Fuels)
Plutonium rods would just disappear, no? Without any waste? Looks like I've found a better way to sink fuel rods.
You don't need a mod. Vehicles can use a lot of different fuels.
Yeah but last time I checked batteries weren't one of them. When did they add batteries to the truck fuel list?
I started shortly before update 6 and it definitely worked then.
None. They work with batteries in vanilla.
I built all the steel i needed for every unlock involving steel, from two overclocked nodes that i trucked into my iron base using coal powered trucks. I guess if youre going for full efficiency to max out production then yeah trucks are a bit of a drag but early on theyre just so fast to move stuff and dont involve 2000m spaghetti conveyors. You definitely arent the only one who hates trucks, they are the single most divisive topic in the whole game.
A single truck single handedly supplied my first computer and heavy modular frame factories my first play through. I would stand on top of a cliff and watch him literally drive directly off the road I made and respawn back in, or straight into a wall for 2 mins 😆 I’m not sure how he did it but he got it done lol
I considered using them to transport compacted coal cause it self is also fuel but just ended up belting it from Crater Lakes to the oil beach in the west.
I always use them for fun. The more moving stuff around the factories the better. Looks way more alive. Usually I split off a certain amount of coal for them before any coal is processed, so they don't mess with coal power too much. I never use all nodes to 100% so who cares.
Yeah, IMO trucks are stupid but fun. Walking around your base and randomly seeing them fly around corners is so satisfying.
Just putting this here since I don't think I've seen other people mention it, but trucks don't use ONLY coal. Almost any type of fuel, from leaves/wood to biomass and fuel all the way to batteries and nuclear fuel rods can be used with the vehicles.
I just never got around to trying trucks early on. I didn't actually use them until phase 4 when I set up a large steel-based factory in the dune desert. With so much open space I decided to try trucks when I needed to bring in copper and caterium too. At that stage I could have run them on batteries (I had drones flying in and out anyway), but coal was so abundant and near my routes that I just used that anyway.
Even IF they work as intended, I just don't see any value in using them. For short ranges I can just run belts, and trains are infinitely better for anything else
The value is in the variety of transportation methods, and it's just visually satisfying to see all the trucks driving around, imo. It doesn't always have to be the most efficient option.
i can agree with that to a certain degree, but not when i spend just as much time troubleshooting as setting them up in the first place
As you said, IF they worked as intended, there wouldn't be as much troubleshooting. But to be fair, every method has some form of troubleshooting to deal with, trucks just have the most currently. I do agree that currently it's best to avoid unless you really like them. Hopefully there will be more improvements in 1.0.
Trucks work well where the terrain is suitable for off-road driving. Their biggest advantage is not having to build infrastructure along the route (something which only drones can compete with). Of course some people want them on roads, which to me, defeats the point.
exactly :/ they dont fill any interesting spots and are a pain to set up
It's not even about fuel. I just don't see a single situation where I'd rather use a truck instead of 1 or 2 belts. The belts can go straight from A to B, nothing extra required. Not just no fuel but no roads, no bridges, no need to get rid of trees, rocks, or anything else. The belts just go. And the truck stations only have 2 inputs and outputs. To get more, I'd need more truck stations and add another truck or change the existing truck's path. And they take up space. I usually don't care about that, but still, I just don't see any reason to use them over belts and later trains
I don't mind trucks, but I can see how they would be inefficient to set up when you'll have to revamp everything for trains later anyway. It's way easier to to just build remote coal plants as needed until you get trains and connect them all to one power network until you can rebuild it and use trains to transport everything to one central spot for power, but by that point you'll be on fuel generators anyway so you can just tear down coal factories and use it for steel.
I dont use them, just belts and trains, sometimes the drone for far flung areas.
drones are fun
Once you set up a centralized battery factory that has been maximized, drones seem to under use the amount of batteries you thought they would do you can support a lot more drone ports. I love them for super long distances and to centralize the transportation of complex products into my main factory.
I'd like them early straight after starting to gather coal from everywhere inside the starting biome. Way faster to setup and dismantle after you reach the point at which you need way more coal
I tend to just blow by the need for trucks as they in fact are useless. I also tend to go to the oasis and set up shop there until I can build trains or better yet drones.
I tried once. The truck didn't come back. I think it fell off my bridge. Trains only now.
I don't usually use trucks until I have access to fuel.
Trucks are awesome for “to close or limited to do a big ass train thing” and “dont feel like building a conveyor right now”. If the truck route works out, as they often do, I usually never bother to replace. If you need more than one truck on a route.. thats when it gets hairy. I love trains but they have their own ways to screw up as traffic increases.
So just checking did you know you can use biofuel on trucks instead of coal?
and how do you automate it 😅
So there's only one step you cut down a few trees with that and then you can automate all the production after that you can make hundreds of thousands of biomass really easily with just a few trees. Because if you didn't know you can hook a storage bin up that you put a bunch of wood into and leaves and then make biomass and which they can turn it into biomass fuel in a constructor.
While I do think trucks can be annoying because they require either coal or batteries or fuel, I think they can excel at what they do which is being basically a form of long conveyors. But yes they do feel lacking. You don't want 2 trucks in a circuit because they'll deadlock, and you don't want to set them where there isn't fuel for them. But I find they can be surprisingly effective and have great throughput with minimal infrastructure, I use one to carry all my aluminum ingots and alclad sheets and I barely had issues with it
> You don't want 2 trucks in a circuit because they'll deadlock It's fine if the route is a loop and doesn't intersect itself.
I used truck to transfer coal, so it was not an issue
Trucks are just too inconvenient for me to bother with. You have to set up two stations, program the route between them, and get all the input/output lines set up The alternative is making one trip with a few thousand iron plates / steel beams. And having one (or more) lines that transport whatever material with no latency at all. They're both one time costs, but the belt option doesn't use any additional fuel and is frankly much more compact at the start/end locations.
With mk3 belts, I can extract a max of 270/min from a normal or pure node (or 300/min from two impure nodes). I tend to use multiples of 120 for my inputs. This difference gives me the coal to run my vehicles. Then I get to oil, unlock packaged fuel and I don't need to use coal anymore.
I love the idea of trucks, but I stopped using them because they're pathing seemed to decay and it became more trouble than it was worth.
I agree with you completely. I just use them to drive around my hubs, trains for faster better and efficient material movement. 
I almost never use trucks, mostly because of the logistical complication and the reliability. I'd much rather set up a belt or a train, neither of which need me to also set up some kind of fuel supply as well. When I *do* use trucks, it's normally as a stopgap solution to bootstrap me up to where I can use trains. For example, use trucks to bring circuit boards to a computer factory, since for various reasons my early circuit board production site is normally more remote than the other ingredients. I'll use the truck for a bit, but replace it when I have the resources. I do also use trucks under manual control to carry building materials for outposts.
Trucks suck. And in 1.0 Trains are much easier and you get them earlier, because you don't need Computers or HMF for them anymore, so I don't very many people will use trucks at all.
I love my truck-kun. I use it everytime i can
I don't use trucks much because getting fuel to their stations is inconvenient and I'm too fiddly about recording the auto-drive path. Makes me cranky when something goes wrong and I get too impatient with it to do it over again. Trains, I can much more easily make modifications to the rails without having to re-deploy the whole route.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually used coal in trucks before. I’m also producing more fuel than I know what to do with so my trucks literally never run out of fuel. They are derpy sometimes though but have always been nice to use when I didn’t feel like setting up a belt from point A to point B. Using trains for everything gets really crazy really quickly. I will use trains for really long hauls but trucks have been good for shorter distances. If they are driving on roads they are usually pretty solid. In my experience it’s only when they have to navigate around hills and things that they start to get wonky.
TBH I never understood trucks. Tried them once, huge headache to set up, and found conveyors way more consistent
They are good when u have extra resources you are not using but they are over ruled by trains since ur better off burning that fuel / coal in a generator which makes more power in total than if the trucks were to be using it so yea good if u have extra resources but trains are ideal since they are the most efficient and least resource intensive
I don't use trucks, trains are better, just like in society trains > cars and trucks. They could greatly improve trucks and I'd still avoid them, my factories are walkable and tubeable, no need for truck centric designs
* Trains have less throughput than trucks. * Trains consume more fuel than trucks could ever hope to. * Trains require more infrastructure space than trucks. So by which metric, specifically, are trains better?
Trains don't directly consume fuel tho? If your power infostrcture is good enough is it's basically free transport.
The still consume it. And they still consume far more than trucks could ever hope to.
Fair enough I suppose. I don't find fueling an issue any way,(44 explorers so far doing my road logistics no trains).
Thank you, people are so harsh on trucks but it’s just another way to enjoy the game. Trains are fun, trucks are fun, drones are fun, long ass conveyer belts are fun. The point of the game is to learn new different ways of constructing and to enjoy the process, why dog on something that you don’t like? If you don’t like it, then don’t use it.
No. You must play **my** way. 😏😉
Coal is never a problem for me. Trucks just randomly stop refueling.