Ship -> Buffer Station -> Ship not possible (currently)
Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2026 9:10 am
TL;DR
What?
There are 3.5 use cases for buffer stations:
Ship → Buffer → Ship (Not Working)
Ship → Buffer → Planet (Working)
Planet → Buffer → Ship (Working)
(And Ship → Ship to be complete in the list, but that's the easy one.) (Working)
Let's focus on use case 1.
A use case example is that you have your ship from Vulcanus bring in green belts to a Nauvis orbital buffer station.
On Nauvis, you refill your "Building Ship" / "Personal Ship" / "Construction ship" (however you call the personal non auto route ship you have), which needs the green belts to transport to your next building location to found a new outpost (when playing with all the additional planets).
So I want the Vulcanus ship to drop green belts at Nauvis.
The Vulcanus ship should transfer them also to the orbital buffer station.
The orbital buffer station should refill the builder ship when it is at Nauvis for refill.
The orbital buffer station should drop them down to the planet if Nauvis runs out of green belts.
So you need to set green belts as Import on the buffer station with "From Platform".
Also you need to tick the "Send Materials to other platforms"
Using the circuit network or the "All" setting is not possible, because you don't want Nauvis to send green belts up again by rocket to the buffer station.
But when you have an import from platform, that item will not be sent out to other platforms, just like with the normal imports from planet, which will not be dropped back on the planet...
So... how do you import from another platform (Vulcanus ship->Buffer Station) and export to another ship (Bufer Station -> builder ship) at the same time when you can't use the circuit network because it is always the "all" setting?
Why?
Why do you want it
Prevent lots of Ship -> Planet -> Rocket -> Ship Round trips even with 1 central logistics hub and only "ping-pong" ships.
Solution possibility 1:
The only possible solution I came up with would be: you must be able to additionally select a specific platform to import from, like you can do with planets. And the export of the ship is only restricted to that specific Plattform, so the items can be transfered to all other plattforms except the importing one.
It must be an "AND" filter — select "Only at Nauvis AND from Ship XYZ".
So there must be two selector fields: one for the planet and one for the ship.
Solution possibility 2:
If set requests by logistic network - you must be able to select "from platform only" or "From planet only" and not always "from All" like currently.
Then you could dynamicly activate the import, if the delivery ship is in orbit without pulling all stuff up from the planet.
Just define a special signal for it like you do in other machines. Like: "Letter i (for import) - if it is 0 its all - if it is 1 its Planet - if it is 2 its Platforms only". And this setting is then for all imports which are set by logistics network to keep it simple and not per Items selectable.
Solution possibility 3 - even simpler:
Imports set by Green wire are Ship Imports.
Imports set by Red wire are Planet Imports.
PS: Currently you cant do this with a mod, because there is no lua-API to set requests on the platform.
Code: Select all
Currently you cant use a Buffer station for the Item Transfer: Ship -> Buffer Platform -> Ship.
This would be very helpful and only small change needed to make this possible.There are 3.5 use cases for buffer stations:
Ship → Buffer → Ship (Not Working)
Ship → Buffer → Planet (Working)
Planet → Buffer → Ship (Working)
(And Ship → Ship to be complete in the list, but that's the easy one.) (Working)
Let's focus on use case 1.
A use case example is that you have your ship from Vulcanus bring in green belts to a Nauvis orbital buffer station.
On Nauvis, you refill your "Building Ship" / "Personal Ship" / "Construction ship" (however you call the personal non auto route ship you have), which needs the green belts to transport to your next building location to found a new outpost (when playing with all the additional planets).
So I want the Vulcanus ship to drop green belts at Nauvis.
The Vulcanus ship should transfer them also to the orbital buffer station.
The orbital buffer station should refill the builder ship when it is at Nauvis for refill.
The orbital buffer station should drop them down to the planet if Nauvis runs out of green belts.
So you need to set green belts as Import on the buffer station with "From Platform".
Also you need to tick the "Send Materials to other platforms"
Using the circuit network or the "All" setting is not possible, because you don't want Nauvis to send green belts up again by rocket to the buffer station.
But when you have an import from platform, that item will not be sent out to other platforms, just like with the normal imports from planet, which will not be dropped back on the planet...
So... how do you import from another platform (Vulcanus ship->Buffer Station) and export to another ship (Bufer Station -> builder ship) at the same time when you can't use the circuit network because it is always the "all" setting?
Why?
Why do you want it
Prevent lots of Ship -> Planet -> Rocket -> Ship Round trips even with 1 central logistics hub and only "ping-pong" ships.
Solution possibility 1:
The only possible solution I came up with would be: you must be able to additionally select a specific platform to import from, like you can do with planets. And the export of the ship is only restricted to that specific Plattform, so the items can be transfered to all other plattforms except the importing one.
It must be an "AND" filter — select "Only at Nauvis AND from Ship XYZ".
So there must be two selector fields: one for the planet and one for the ship.
Solution possibility 2:
If set requests by logistic network - you must be able to select "from platform only" or "From planet only" and not always "from All" like currently.
Then you could dynamicly activate the import, if the delivery ship is in orbit without pulling all stuff up from the planet.
Just define a special signal for it like you do in other machines. Like: "Letter i (for import) - if it is 0 its all - if it is 1 its Planet - if it is 2 its Platforms only". And this setting is then for all imports which are set by logistics network to keep it simple and not per Items selectable.
Solution possibility 3 - even simpler:
Imports set by Green wire are Ship Imports.
Imports set by Red wire are Planet Imports.
PS: Currently you cant do this with a mod, because there is no lua-API to set requests on the platform.