Factorio Forums

I'm currently working on delivering Gleba science back to Nauvis

Setup:

on Gleba I have a rocket silo with the science being directly inserted into the rocket inventory section

on the space platform I have a request for between 300 and ".inf" agricultural science, with a "Custom minimum payload" set to 300. (I chose 300 since that was roughly the amount produced during one platform roundtrip, and we want to keep the platform moving for obvious reasons)

Observed behavior:

This behaves as expected if the platform arrives and there's less than 300 science available in the silo: the platform waits until 300 is available, then receives the rocket and departs back to Nauvis.

However, if there's more than 300 science in the rocket silo inventory at the point the platform arrives, then still only 300 is sent on the rocket.

Expected behavior:

Due to the wording "Custom minimum payload", when the rocket departs from the silo I would expect it to carry as much science to the platform as possible (up to the 1000 per-rocket limit)

That's actually behaving as intended.

Your request is only for 300 units, and the rocket will only ever contain more if the minimum payload is more than the requested amount. E.g. if you still had 299 units in inventory, then you'd still get a rocket with another 300 and end up with 599 units.

300-inf in any logistic system will always try to achieve the lowest possibly number above or equal to the minimum.

What you should be doing, is instead setting the request for the highest number your platform can carry, minimum payload to the lowest amount you are willing to send a rocket for, and then formulate your conditions (possibly by circuit network) to depart when having received a delivery of any size.

Thanks! I changed the settings as you suggested and it seems to be doing the right thing now - I didn't realise it was the logistic request that was actually the problem.

(for completeness's sake:

- switched rocket request from 300-inf to 1k-1k
- switched minimum payload from 300 to 200
- changed the rocket departure condition from "all requests satisfied" to "science > 0")

I feel like this could maybe made a bit clearer somehow, but I don't have any good ideas so happy to close as not a bug for now