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There’s a lot more to building a road than just slapping some pavement down, and Saber Interactive is fully aware of that. That’s whyRoadCrafthas such a wide variety of specialty construction vehicles to get the job done.
Except their main demographic isn’t grizzled workers who smell of tar and hard labor; they don’t actually know much about heavy construction technology. What even is a Mobile Scraper? Well, fear not. We have the complete lowdown on every vehicle in the game, explained in layman’s terms.
Scouts
Scouts are the first vehicle you unlock, and thefirst one you take to every single job you do. This category encompasses a range of pickup trucks and off-road SUVs designed forcovering ground quickly and with agility.
Item And Terrain Scanners
The first major distinction of their abilities isthe scanner options. When prompted, a scanner ping will extend from the vehicle at a certain range (which varies from vehicle to vehicle).
Theitem scannerwill highlight any interactable items of interest. These are usually quest-related items, such as generators or safes.
Theterrain scannerwill coat the ground in colored circles or shapes.
If you can’t see the colored shapes, but it’s within your scanner range, this likely means thatthe water around you is so deep that you can’t see them. Avoid these areas to avoid flooding your engine.
The Winch
The second, and arguably most important, tool is the winch. This is a cable you canextend from the front or back of the vehicleand latch onto trees, secure holds, oreven other vehicles. you may then motorize the winch to pull it toward you, or you toward it.
This can be used to grab out-of-reach items,pull yourself out of a ditch, or evenhelp another vehicle escape the mud.
If you’re pulling another vehicle from the front,be sure to activate “Towing” from your interaction menu. This will prompt the vehicle you are winched onto to turn on and attempt to drive with you, further assisting in breaking free from the mud.
Special Equipment
While most vehicles are grouped by job, some aretoo specialized to fit into those categories. As such, they’re listed here.
This category shares a number of vehicles with the Cargo category; to avoid redundancy, we’ll be detailing those vehicles in the Cargo section.
Mobile Operations Base
Half the battle of RoadCraft is getting the vehicles where they need to go. Broken roads, floods, and mudslides make navigation a challenge, the Mobile Operations Base solves that.
Costing Fuel points, you canspawn any of your vehicles beside it. So instead of driving four slow machines across the map, you’re able to drive one and spawn the rest.
Cable Layer
Restoring electricityis a common job you’ll encounter throughout RoadCraft. More times than not, this is done bydriving a cable layer from a zone WITH electricity over to the destination that lacks it.
Its operation is simple, with only an on/off state to toggle. The real challenge is trying to drive it off-road. It’s a clunky ride, but you need toavoid main roads since it leaves a trail of unearthed ground in its wake.
Mobile Scraper
This later-game item is a strange one, but it can be an absolute game-changer for convenience.In short, it’s a mobile sand quarry.With sand being critical to countless operations, having a wider zone to refill from is paramount.
When placed in compatible, sandy locations, activating the Scrapper will cause it to unfold and begin sifting sand. Once done, itacts as its own quarry radius from which dump trucks can refill.
The bread and butter of RoadCraft: the road-building vehicles.Each type plays an important step in paving a new road, and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to become familiar with them.
Dump Truck / Heavy Dump Truck
Unique from the cargo trucks,dump trucks are designed specifically to transport and offload sand. They can berefilled whenever within the radius of a sand quarry, and the back can be lifted to dump the sand.
Heavy cargo trucks can hold a greater capacity, andcan even act as a small quarry radius for regular dump trucksto pull from.
Dozer
The most multi-functional machine in this category, the Dozer is a frontloader with a pushing blade on the front. This allows it topush debris and other material out of the way, dig into the earth, destroy pavement, andmost importantly, flatten sand.
The vehicle has four modes you can cycle through.
Marching
Intended for travel, this keeps the blade up and out of the way and allows you to toggle low gear mode off.
Sand Flattening
The blade will automatically reposition itself so that any sand you encounter is flattened out just slightly above ground level.
Pavement Destruction
The blade will enable paved roads to be torn up, You can manually control the blade height for precision.
Manual Control
Complete manual control, can potentially do all job types, but requires some skill to use safely.
Sand Flattening mode also makes for a good“pushing junk out of the way” mode.
Asphalt Paver
This machine heats up tar and lays it out over the ground. Withan on/off mode and no other special controls,this is a fairly straightforward, if hard to control, machine.
The tar willonly adhere to sand you lay down. Tar placed anywhere else will not harden to pavement with a roller otherwise.
Asphalt Roller
A machine even simpler than the paver, you don’t even need to activate the roller. Simplydrive over any properly placed tar,and you will complete the final step for paving roads.
Cargo
Whether that’s material, resources, or other vehicles, this category covers any vehiclesdesigned to move things from one place to another. As such, they may experience overlap with other categories.
Cargo Truck
Simple enough, this vehicle has a storage space in the back for dropping items, like pipes, into. When carrying items, you canactivate the Strap Cargo option, which covers them in straps and keeps them from moving during travel.
These arebest paired with a crane vehicle, sincecargo trucks don’t automatically pick up items. You still need something to place items in.
Light Equipment Transporter
These machines aremeant to transport other vehicles over a distance, like pavers or cranes. A toggle drops down the back ramp, and it features a rear winch option to assist in pulling said vehicles up onto the cargo zone.
Heavy Equipment Transporter
They’re the same as the previous section, but bigger. These areideal for moving multiple vehicles are once, but are overall harder to handle.
Semi Truck
The semi truck has, more or less, the same functionality as a cargo truck. It carries cargo placed in its bed over a distance. Its large space and powerful motor make it ideal for large volume jobs, such as bridge building.
Some Log Forwarders are also listed in this section. Visit the Logging section of this guide for more details on those vehicles.
Logging
As you can likely guess, these vehiclesall pertain to the act of cutting down treesto use as a resource. While the harvester is arguably the only mandatory tool, the others make the job go a lot smoother.
Tree Harvester
A complicated machine, this vehicle does a lot of the work for you. Drive it toward the designated treeuntil you see the saw icon appear around it. Drive closer until the icon turns green, then press the Harvest button.The cutting arm will then automatically approach the tree, grab it, and cut it free.
Itholds on to the tree until you issue the follow-up Process option, which tilts the tree sideways, cuts the branches off, then cuts it to size, leaving the log on the ground.
If you’re unsure which trees are available for cutting,it also features a tree scanneroption that highlights nearby qualifying trees.
Log Grabber Loader
This machine has a large claw clamp on the front,intended for grabbing trees and bringing them to the main road.
The large wheels and powerful engine mean it can handle most terrains safely. Manually positioning the claw so that it grabs a log can be challenging, though.
Log Forwarder
This vehicle is a combination log grabber and transport. It features a claw crane arm that can be used to grab logs off the ground, and a caged cargo hold in the back for placing logs into. The logs can then be strapped down for transit.
The catch here is that it’s less suitable for rough terrain, especially once weighed down by logs, so the safe order of operations is to have the Log Grabber Loader carry the logs to a paved road, where the forwarder is waiting to grab them and pack them onto the back.
Stump Mulcher
After a tree is cut down, a stump remains.While there’s no inherent reward for removing them, they can be in the way of other jobs.The stump mulcher takes care of that.
When activated, the large grind wheel on the front will destroy any remaining stumps.Drive the grind wheel against the stump and wait a few seconds.
The grind wheel will also occasionally deform the terrain. We’ve not found an applicable use for this yet, but it might have some nice terrain flattening properties.
Cranes
Cranes are machines that pick up items and move them over somewhere else. Whether that’sclearing rubble, removing broken pipes, or righting overturned vehicles, they’re arguably the most important type of vehicle in RoadCraft.
The game is very particular about how it categorizes them, with there beingseven different names for all very similar applications. For convenience, we’ve compressed that info down into the following reference table.
Large drivable cranes that can lift even the heaviest cargo
A crane vehicle using tracks instead of wheels
Cargo Grab Crane Truck
A crane truck with a claw grab arm and a cargo hold in the back for storage
Tracked Heavy Crane
a large crane for heavy items, which moves with tracks instead of wheels
Tracked Heavy Grab Crane
The previously described crane but it has a claw grab arm instead of a cable system.
Cargo Crane Truck
A combination cargo truck and crane. More limited performance, but capable of doing both jobs.
A majority of cranes will be the cable type, attaching to items like a winch. you’re able to toggle between attaching to multiple points for an even balance or attaching to a single point for precision.
The other variety,grab cranes, use a claw-like grabber.This is better for items that might be too small or unwieldy for cables.
Most cranes also featurea toggleable support, extending additional feet out to keep balanced while moving heavy items.
Supplementary
This final informal category coversany vehicle you can operate that is not an unlockable or available for purchase.This includes stationary machines liketraditional or railed cranes, delivery missions for side quests, and so on.
The functionality and limitations of each supplementary vehicle will vary by context, so be sure to read the job description they relate to and to spend a moment examining their functionalities.
