> You construct a booster in front of the building, then open some kind of direction picking menu

Well, I suppose we could roll boosters and bumpers into the same building using this menu. Standard boosters should just send the vehicle in whatever direction it was going.

Why would you have to adjust the strength? We might just give vehicles passing through a constant velocity, so the question how many boosters you need for a given slope can come with experience.

(btw: Note I'm talking about "vehicles". Maybe we can mix, say, automated catapult into it somewhere? Shooting your material automatically across half the landscape?)

I think these kinds of "marble run" mechanics are a really good thing to have. As I see this as a non-essential feature, I am aiming for the Rube Goldberg crowds here on purpose. A bit of (player-made!) complexity won't hurt.

> Two buildings, flat landscape in between.

Uh, that's kind of a bad example. Automation is something that should have its major returns after you have a dozen or so buildings. I would say: You have a dozen buildings on flat landscape (say, inside your castle). You construct a "right" bumper on the left, a "left" bumper on the right, push your lorry on one of them and let go.

That's way less complex then having to install each building with a cable or whatever.

Other example: Rattlesnake situation, you have two buddies making a long road to the gold. One would construct a bumper at the base, the other would build a booster every screen or so, and switch them from "bump" to "boost" as he constructs new ones. Material can travel then in the lorries or wagons. Bumpers should probably have a delay so the working player can grab it in case he wants some material out of it.