TL;DR
Farming platform spamming cargo pods to send a couple of science prevents arriving platform to drop its stuff quickly. Fix it.What?
Fix it. At least implement the same mechanic as with rockets (though it's controversial) - make only full pods to drop automatically, but let manual (placing stuff in orbital drop slots) drop with any amount of cargo. So bottles would accumulate and drop in ONE pod.Why?
If I get mechanics right, cargo pad can have no more than three pods flying towards it (nevermind if pod just started or alreadi landing). Bay can have no more than one pod flying towards it. So if 3+N pods are flying, no platform can sand another, and pods fly for nearly 20 seconds. Yet farming platform (on the orbit, that produces and drops stuff) occupies ALL pod slots, no matter how hight pod throuput you set (how many bays).Now if you have farming platform on the orbit (for space science for example), it occupies every pod slot, sending all pods per cycle with a couple of bottles. So newly arrived platform can't have pod slots reserved for itself and have to wait in queue. Have to wait for free pod slot, up to 20 seconds.
I have some trouble how to set a condition on starting platform that sounds like 'it drops everything it needs to drop (what was requested) without specifying'. I tried 'inactivity for n seconds' but thanks to THAT issue it works inconsistently - platforms sometimes fly away without dropping something.
Also, spamming pods LOOKS bad, but this issue was already described by someone in another topic. I HERE suggest to fix gameplay
issue, not graphic one.By the way, my another suggestion is to DESCRIBE that mechanic in in-game factoriopedia. About limitation of flying pods dependant of amount of cargo bays. About dependence of spawnrate of asteroids on platform speed. About how equilibrium platform speed depands on thrust and mass. Etc, etc...
