Rocket silo logistic is just broken

[bullipatty]

I had the same problem in the game before but after my post I tried it again and it worked. So it works at least in some cases. Time to get a savegame where it doesn't work and file it a bug.

i had removed the buffers the silo was supposed to pull from and basically noticed it won't even pull from providers... just didn't seem to work at all anymore. so i set up a 2. silo up with requesters, and since it worked with requesters the request would even be propagated to my crafters. sadly, it took me way too long to figure out i had to send one rocket manually... it took me hours to give up trying to get it to autolaunch... and finally when i had given up and send it manually and the silo send the next rocket automatically, i was like... i don't know, it took some time to shake it off...

then later the 1. silo started working again after i created my 3rd platform. to my surprise the 1. silo immediately requested the platform starter pack from a provider and then continued to work as i'd expect it, so now i got 2 working silos.


sadly, the game is running 24/7 and it was fixed before i went to sleep, not even my pre-sleep save still has the bug, so i guess the saves are long gone...

but i'm trying to relax a bit xD 2.0 and dlc just dropped and i think it's the first bug i've ever encountered in factorio and that and some strange decisions concerning signals are rly the first issues i have with the game and i played early access and after actively for hundreds of hours.

[bullipatty]

...

Edit: I just found out, that you can also request the same blueprint on the empty Space platform hub and then the rockets will auto-launch once they are filled up by the inserter (without the "automatic requests from space platform" set). Seems like a bug, but please Wube, don't fix it! At least now the whole "building a platform" is somewhat semi-automatic possible, although with one of the most clunky UI's possible...
Editedit: Never mind. That only works if the payload is only one item. So still completely useless.. sigh

you can use a combinator to select the first requested item and use that to filter the gabber that pushes items from the requester into the silo and a negative filter on a grabber that pulls from the silo into a provider. this way the silo will always only be filled with one item type

[Erfar]

Also if rocket are 100% full with parts for constructiuon but those parts are different rocket don't launch automaticaly. There should be a some sort of checkbox to automaticaly send mixed cargo

I assume you mean parts for different platforms, not different rockets.

I mean if you need 50 belts and 25 inserters on platfdorm and you place those items in the rocket rocket will not launch automaticaly, meanwhile if you place 100 belts while platform need 100 belts it will instantly launch

[addeya]

you can use a combinator to select the first requested item and use that to filter the gabber that pushes items from the requester into the silo and a negative filter on a grabber that pulls from the silo into a provider. this way the silo will always only be filled with one item type

Do you have a way with this method to exclude items that you dont have enough to fill a rocket with? Like if the first requested item is something i only have 9 of and need 10 to fill a rocket, is there a way to get it to move onto the next item in the list?

[bullipatty]

you can use a combinator to select the first requested item and use that to filter the gabber that pushes items from the requester into the silo and a negative filter on a grabber that pulls from the silo into a provider. this way the silo will always only be filled with one item type

Do you have a way with this method to exclude items that you dont have enough to fill a rocket with? Like if the first requested item is something i only have 9 of and need 10 to fill a rocket, is there a way to get it to move onto the next item in the list?

yea, but it's way more complex. and at some point the silo stopped reading values from orbital request until i switched another silo from manual to auto... so also not reliable and not worth it fiddling with it too much... just try getting the automatic stuff to work... if you have problems like me just send a new platform up, send a platform away and call it right back, change a silo from auto to manual and back, just try anything space related that could make the affected object unstuck... usually something works

my last "manual" solution looked like this

11-03-2024, 19-06-09.png (3.28 MiB) Viewed 888 times

[mrvn]

you can use a combinator to select the first requested item and use that to filter the gabber that pushes items from the requester into the silo and a negative filter on a grabber that pulls from the silo into a provider. this way the silo will always only be filled with one item type

Do you have a way with this method to exclude items that you dont have enough to fill a rocket with? Like if the first requested item is something i only have 9 of and need 10 to fill a rocket, is there a way to get it to move onto the next item in the list?

You can use the selector combinator to get the items rocket capacity, compare that with the available items and set a filter to only load when you have a rocket full. You also need to count the assemblers hand content and set the stack size to load an exact count or it throws the whole thing off.

[mrvn]

Maybe I have the rocket launch figured out a bit more.

If the rocket silo is not on automatic but you load up one cargo capacity of items that are requested by a platform then the rocket launches automatically. If the item isn't requested then the rocket never launches automatically.

Is that correct?

[mmmPI]

Maybe I have the rocket launch figured out a bit more.

Maybe it may help making accurate suggestions indeed.

If the rocket silo is not on automatic but you load up one cargo capacity of items that are requested by a platform then the rocket launches automatically.
If the item isn't requested then the rocket never launches automatically.
Is that correct?

The tickbox on the silo is actually called "automatic request from platform" interestingly, it's not called "automatic launch". When the tickbox isn't ticked, nothing is requested by the silo for the platform. This is the function of the tickbox.

In anycase, when you have a platform that request an item and you fill a silo with it, it will go to that platform. This is quite easy to verify in game btw, you can have a platform request things while your silos on Nauvis are not requesting anythings, and you fill manually the rocket, to see if it launches or not. Maybe there is something wrong in your game if it didn't worked for you.

[mrvn]

Maybe I have the rocket launch figured out a bit more.

Maybe it may help making accurate suggestions indeed.

If the rocket silo is not on automatic but you load up one cargo capacity of items that are requested by a platform then the rocket launches automatically.
If the item isn't requested then the rocket never launches automatically.
Is that correct?

The tickbox on the silo is actually called "automatic request from platform" interestingly, it's not called "automatic launch". When the tickbox isn't ticked, nothing is requested by the silo for the platform. This is the function of the tickbox.

In anycase, when you have a platform that request an item and you fill a silo with it, it will go to that platform. This is quite easy to verify in game btw, you can have a platform request things while your silos on Nauvis are not requesting anythings, and you fill manually the rocket, to see if it launches or not. Maybe there is something wrong in your game if it didn't worked for you.

It works like that if you insert one type of items for sure.

But mixed cargo is problematic. I've heard people say they got auto launches with mixed cargo but I had it fail to launch many times.

PS: It's still broken to just auto launch. If I have 2 platforms needing gun turrets or ammo I want to choose which one gets them first. One of them might be all out and about to get destroyed if I don't resupply it ASAP.

[mmmPI]

It works like that if you insert one type of items for sure.

Good to know nothing's broken on your save.

But mixed cargo is problematic. I've heard people say they got auto launches with mixed cargo but I had it fail to launch many times.

You shouldn't trust what people say imo, mixed auto-launch sounds like someone made something up to me, that is frequent on the internet.

PS: It's still broken to just auto launch. If I have 2 platforms needing gun turrets or ammo I want to choose which one gets them first. One of them might be all out and about to get destroyed if I don't resupply it ASAP.

I don't think the impossibility to choose which platform receive the request first constitute enough of a problem to call the system broken. I understand you regret it is the case but unfortunatly, the suggestion in this current state doesn't appear consistent to me.

[mrvn]

It works like that if you insert one type of items for sure.

Good to know nothing's broken on your save.

But mixed cargo is problematic. I've heard people say they got auto launches with mixed cargo but I had it fail to launch many times.

You shouldn't trust what people say imo, mixed auto-launch sounds like someone made something up to me, that is frequent on the internet.

PS: It's still broken to just auto launch. If I have 2 platforms needing gun turrets or ammo I want to choose which one gets them first. One of them might be all out and about to get destroyed if I don't resupply it ASAP.

I don't think the impossibility to choose which platform receive the request first constitute enough of a problem to call the system broken. I understand you regret it is the case but unfortunatly, the suggestion in this current state doesn't appear consistent to me.

When you send cargo manually you can choose where to send it, you actually have to for every launch. The broken bit is that the silo just automatically launches on some unexplained condition that you can't control.

[mmmPI]

the silo launches when the rocket is filled and when a platform request the item which fills the silo.

That still doesn't constitute a suggestion btw.

[bullipatty]

the silo launches when the rocket is filled and when a platform request the item which fills the silo.

That still doesn't constitute a suggestion btw.

a mod moved it to suggestions!?

[mmmPI]

a mod moved it to suggestions!?

From bug reports yeah, but if you can understand a suggestion from this thread, please let me know

[Koub]

a mod moved it to suggestions!?

I think this was initially posted in Bug Reports, but moved out of Bug Reports and into Ideas and Suggestions by a dev : things exposed by @OP are not unintended, they have purposefully been set up this way by Wube.
Yet, technically, @mmmPI is right : a suggestion ... suggests things. Here, what we have is basically a rant about a long list of pain points, and that's all. Anyway, feel free to get back on topic, or even better, make actual suggestions to fix @OP's pain points (one by thread would be optimal, multi-suggestions are inexploitable).

[Khazul]

As for reading the silo status via circuits, a simple thing they could have done is to provide a check box on the silo to select which wire connection to send the signal over. That way you could opt to read to request on a red wire and the contents on a green wire. Kind of seemed the obvious way to implement it but i guess it wasnt at the time. I was actually wondering if a mod could do this 'fix'?

[Tinyboss]

As for reading the silo status via circuits, a simple thing they could have done is to provide a check box on the silo to select which wire connection to send the signal over. That way you could opt to read to request on a red wire and the contents on a green wire. Kind of seemed the obvious way to implement it but i guess it wasnt at the time. I was actually wondering if a mod could do this 'fix'?

I guess you could read requests from a different silo.

[erronius]

I mostly agree, the usability of the silo is not great. One thing I will acknowledge is that it does certain very limited things well. It's really good at automating delivery of available materials that can easily fill a launch.

However, a lot of things are painful and seem to either require wasting huge amounts of resources or doing a lot of things by hand, which the game is supposed to be all about automation. I think quality is really good for space platforms, but I don't need a full stack of rare assemblers, or foundries, or whatever.

I can imagine that the coding logic for determining what gets packed in with what could be difficult. But I for sure think it could be better and more intuitive/flexible.

[Khazul]

So these pictures show my biggest issue so far with platform construction auto logistics:

In order to build this platform that includes this little circuit (and no others):

11-09-2024, 15-40-01.png (2.59 MiB) Viewed 479 times

I end up with this much junk afterwards that has to be initially produced to fulfill the vastly inflated request as well as manually be flushed back down.

11-09-2024, 15-40-16.png (449.35 KiB) Viewed 479 times

Why cant it simply request what is actually needed rather than filling up every rocket to max capacity of the item?

Edit: And another problem - new platform build from a blueprint and the first thing it sends up are the hundreds of combinators and power poles and some other item in their hundred for one offs with the end result is that the cargo hub on the platform is full and it cant get any foundations up to let it actually build anything at all.

Maybe foundations should get priority over anything else.

[Khazul]

I guess you could read requests from a different silo.

Which means you cant read the contents of the other silo.