I’ve been away from the game for a couple of years and I’m disappointed to see vehicle pathing has not improved since my last experience. This screenshot is my 30-stand medium setup. I have 2 catering facilities (F1 and F2) with associated parking (C1 and C2). Trucks will regularly leave C2 with a job for a plane but go to F1 to stock up on food. There are 12 trucks in total which I think is more than should be necessary to service this number of planes, but despite this large number of trucks they still don’t seem to choose either the closest plane to service or the closest depot to pick up from.
Similarly, I have 2 remote stands (MR1 and MR2) and I’ve bought 2 buses and 2 service cars for each, parked at C1 and MRP1, but again I notice buses and service cars crossing the entire complex to service the other stand rather than the closer one. Notice the bus currently at MR2 which is designated to park at C1 while the 2 buses parked at MRP1 are idle.
If all vehicles are parked, the logic usually deploy the closest vehicle.
But, the logic seems to prefer close by driving vehicles close which completed a previous task and are on the way back to their parking position.
In that case, the vehicle can get a job which has a different catering depot.
For my XXL airports it usually works very well. Trucks usually pick up jobs from the same side. Important: don’t keep catering trucks parked far away from catering depots. They should be as close as possible to the catering.
For fuel, cleaning etc I do also keep several garages or parking lots with spare vehicles somewhere central to prevent that a vehicle from the East end gets deployed to the West end of the airport.
