Rocket launch logistics

[Qon]

RocketLogisticsQoncept.png (1.6 MiB) Viewed 5562 times

The need for Rocket Logistics
The rocket has a single slot for inserting items. My defence lines need repair packs. I don't have a supply train. Why can't I insert a stack of repair packs or spare parts and just launch them into space and drop the items from orbit into requester chests outside my logistics network? This needs to be added! I have already automated launches with a mod so the only step left is some sort of delivery mechanism .

Features

• Makes rocket launches useful! Oribtal Ion cannons, satellite radar and satellite energy from "useful space"-mod are nice mods but it doesn't really make rockets an integrated part of your factory production.
• Extremely fast for long distances. Time for delivery does not depend on distance from silo to target location. From one silo you can send a rocket once every 63 seconds so it is only really useful for long distances.
• Requires no infrastructure between silo and target.
• At the target location you have some special kind of rocket payload requester chest. Maybe the items should be dropped as items on the ground and be picked up by bots instead though?
• Should be able to send a full stack in the payload slot. Otherwise it would seem a bit underpowered to me if you would have to send 50 rockets to send a full stack of repair packs to your outpost.

Balance
Don't worry, it won't replace trains, belts and bots for all kinds of logistics. Bots are cheaper and have higher throughput for short distances. Trains uses less fuel and can carry like 500000% more at once. Belts are good for early game before you have rocket logistics and are also better for short distances. Also since a rocket launch uses slightly more resources (about 1000000% roughly speaking) then the payload it can carry it won't be that useful for ore transport from mining sites to your main base. And it would require a rocket silo at the ore deposit. So it wouldn't make rail laying completely useless. Some might say that not requiring any infrastructure between the silo and outpost is OP, but then please qonsider that you need to setup something that is probably even a bit more effort inside your base to be able to send rockets. So you have a rocket factory instead of rail laying, which is a fair deal.

The Automation Argument
Factorio is about automation, but we can't even automate long distance logistics setup! Even with mods like Farl it's manual work to make new outposts. To enable von Neumann factories an automatable way to solve logistics over any distance is necessary.

Rockets vs Planes
I've heard others suggest planes for transport. But those suggestions just seem like trains without tracks and would not really be balanced since planes can be used over and over again. With rocket logistics you avoid the balance issues since you have to build a new rocket for each transport of a stack of items.

Also I've seen someone else try rocket delivery, but it didn't require rocket launches from the silo. It was essentially just free teleportation transport with fireworks instead of real launches. Meh, I say. Real logistics engineers use the real stuff!

Who wants to implement this?
I don't think this would be that hard to implement even. The rocket is already there, and it has a slot where you can insert a payload. All I need is a mod that takes whatever is in that slot and move it to a target location on launch.

Yes I seriously want this.

[binbinhfr]

There is something you don't speak about :
You would have to specify just before launch which payload / arrival station you want to deliver.
Or you'll need to attach a specific payload to a specific rocket silo.*

What size do you think the rocket inventory should be ? because size=1 seems a little small in order to be profitable.

[Qon]

I imagine that it would work like the logistics network with requester chests. The rocket drops the cargo in any rocket drop requester chest that is requesting that item. If there are several it will deliver to each chest in turn just like logistics robots. If you have a better idea I would like to hear your suggestion! Has to be automatable though.

Well at the moment it can take 1 stack. Isn't that enough for all your delivery needs? If it's not enough, just launch more rockets
If we can try it with one stack first before we worry about the little details then I'm satisfied. I don't need that much throughput for this to be useful for me at the moment. Mostly I just think it would be cool to use the rocket as a long distance logistics option q:

If it had about as many slots as a cargo wagon then a base building train with X wagons can be replaced with X rocket launches. That's a one way trip though. For it to be able to send materials for a new rocket launch in one delivery it would need more than 300 slots. To be cost effective it would need 100k slots q: Alternativly a hundred slots or less (like a steel chest) where items stacks withouts limits would also do nicely.
Would be nice if the player also could travel by rocket. Just insert a passenger seat in the slot and you get launched with the rocket or something q:
Or maybe sending drones (your mod) or avatars (someone elses mod) as payload would be a solution. Then you might also need some way to select target location on the map or something though. And maybe the ability to auto deploy a blueprint on payload landing would be nice to have if you want to use it to automatically build new outpost by just pointing on the map where you want it!

All of this and you could send away a rocket with all the materials needed for a single return trip and the material needed to build an outpost. Then you turn on automatic mode and have it target remote ore deposits where it deploys a mining outpost blueprint and mines it. When the ore mined is of such a big quantity that all the ore is worth several times the amount of resources needed to launch a rocket twice (like a few million ores or something), it is sent back with the rocket parts you delivered in the first go. With all the resources that are delivered back to base you can now build several more rockets and place new outposts, ad infinitum with exponential growth.

But the request should maybe start small and we can then dream up crazy ideas once we have a first taste of rocket logistics

[binbinhfr]

Waoooo, this is becoming huge ! And far over mod possibilities for most of your ideas
Increasing the inventory of the rocket is no problem. But you cannot change the stack size just for a chest type. The stack size is specific to an item, wherever it is stored.
But it seems strange that a rocket can deliver several outposts. Then it's a plane or a zeppelin (I was thinking about a mod like this, but it would be cpu consuming to constantly manage the movment of the cargos).
For me a rocket is much more like a missile : it raises and then falls, eventually ejecting a box with a parachute on a specific outpost.

[Qon]

Waoooo, this is becoming huge ! And far over mod possibilities for most of your ideas
Increasing the inventory of the rocket is no problem. But you cannot change the stack size just for a chest type. The stack size is specific to an item, wherever it is stored.
But it seems strange that a rocket can deliver several outposts. Then it's a plane or a zeppelin (I was thinking about a mod like this, but it would be cpu consuming to constantly manage the movment of the cargos).
For me a rocket is much more like a missile : it raises and then falls, eventually ejecting a box with a parachute on a specific outpost.

I'm not so sure about it being impossible.
Assembly machines that produce satellites can take 1.2k accumulators in one slot. Think I had 2 inserters inserting items, heard that it matters for assembler slots somewhere. Not sure if it's moddable though. But maybe you can make the cargo slots into assembly machine slots or something? You can detect rocket launches and their cargo in lua code (control.lua does that to detect win condition). You can place entities and ghosts from blueprints in lua code. You can trigger rocket launches in lua and a mod does that, and you should also be able to make it depend on a cicuit condition I think. Your combinator circuit can be triggered by a certain number of items in the logistsics network. You can find ore patches in lua, there's a mod for that too. Your blueprint that you place on payload delivery can place miners, solar panels, roboports, rocket silo,inserters to silo, requester chests for rocket part ingredients, storage chests, laser turret defence. That's pretty much all the parts you need, and some mod does each part successfully.

Each rocket would only deliver to one target. Just like a logistics bot can only fly to one target at once, but the rocket explodes on delivery . What I meant was that if you send several rockets and have several rocket requester chests then they will chose one outpost each and not all go to the same spot, just like logistics bots. So your rocket is like an ultrafast one-time-use logistics bot that needs no logistics network.

Edit: edited the text

[Qon]

I would like clarify that I haven't really changed my request from OP. All the extra stuff are just that, extra. I will eventually take a look at the API and implement it myself if it doesn't take off without me. But right now I'm not going to make it myself because I don't know how and I don't think I have the time to learn it now. And just the ability to move items from the rocket payload slot to special requester chests is really all that is needed to be able to play around with it. I'm not requesting that someone makes a mega mod just for me just because I want it q:
Keeping it simple.

[binbinhfr]

Yes, no pb

I'm on another mod writting for the moment, but this one could be the next, if I really find a nice way to do it