Factorio Forums

Taking a look at all of the landing pad mechanics, I feel the whole things needs to be redesigned.

The major issues I see with the current design:

The one per surface limit introduced an unprecedented hard cap to logistics throughput, as you can no longer increase throughput by building in parallel.

The following image illustrated the hard-cap:
The inability to read contents as well as set requests means you can't set filters to the landing pad inserters for increased thoughput unless you are willing to set all requests manually, further reducing the throughput hard-cap.

Taking a look at the decision to use one cargo bay per surface:

From FFF-382 "it is too convenient to put them all over the place to have the imported items right where you need them"

Yes, but the lading pad is large and throughput is limited unless you make it even larger by attaching bays. Plus isn't being able to drop things out of orbit to anywhere on the surface is kind of the beauty of dropping things out of orbit?

" and in the late game, it is nice to have this one very busy logistic junction in your base"

Shouldn't a centralized planetary hub be a gameplay decision rather than a design limitation?

My proposal:

1. Remove the limitation of one pad per surface.
2. Cargo bay does not increase storage of pad, but acts as it's own storage.
3. The cargo bays should still visibly connect, but their inventories are separate. The connected bays and pad act as a single drop point selectable from the platform.
4. Read contents available separately on each bay, read contents and set request simultaniously on pad.
5. Increasing bays still increased pod rate, but the actual bay the pod lands in is random. You would need to account for potentially having items in each cargo bay.

Illustration of the throughput hard-cap removed:
Thank you for your consideration!

Research for +1 Landing Pads per Surface suggests to increase the limit via a late game research.

The simultaneous contents reading and requests setting could be addressed via Please, PLEASE make circuit connection behavior configurable per wire.

You seem to be focused the planet side. Have you considered how will the suggested changes to cargo bays affect space platforms?
Wouldn't separated inventories mean a platform could receive rocket loads of items you intend to use on opposite side of the platform, thus having to get them out and route each one of them via belts?
For sending stuff crafted on the platform down to a planet, as there would be dozens of inventories now, possibly each having only a small stack, the performance gains of cargo pod scheduling done in v2.0.25 may be lost.
Wanting to utilize circuit network for doing custom calculations/visualizations/alerts/departure conditions of held cargo would mean to connect every cargo bay together.

Even on planet side. I am not sure how having to handle dozens of different imported items at each cargo bay would be beneficial.

I was talking striclty about the landing pad and not the platform hub. I feel like the ability to make multiple platforms is sufficient in that regard.

Whether the bays are seperated or not, the main pain point is trying to squeeze everything dropped down to a planet surface though one limited area landing pad. As you can only shove so many inserters and roboports around it.

If I had a need through mods for significant throughput at the pad, then I am limited because I cannot place another pad or remove items from an extended line of bays.

Even just being able to remove items from the bays with connected inventory would solve this problem. It's not like you could abuse it as a large container if you cannot insert items back into it.

But I also don't like being limited to where I can build a landing pad on a planet surface or forced to adopt a central hub playstyle. Also I feel like if you have this level of technology and a virtually limitless amount of terrain to work with, then you should at least be able to aim your drop pods to an abitrary location.

Honestly? Out of all the “solutions” I’ve seen proposed for the landing pad throughput “problem”, I think this one might be the only one I actually like. But that’s only if I absolutely had to pick one, I still think it’s a rather ridiculous thing to worry about. I’ll take it seriously once someone actually hits the cap. People were calling logistics bot throughput unlimited even in 1.1, before we had legendary bots and roboports.

Anyway, your idea checks all the boxes:
- It keeps a single landing pad, instead of allowing instant item drops to anywhere on the planet.
- It allows increased inserter throughput without making the landing pad a giant chest that can teleport dropped items through really long cargo bay chains.

Sure, I imagine the cargo bay patterns required to give every single bay inserter access would be quite hideous, but it would work and get the job done. Good suggestion.

Edit: Whoops, it appears I missed point number 1. Well, the rest of the concept would still work without it.

Landing pad throughput issues sounds to me more like if that were ever actually reached, then having extremely expensive special inserters would solve it very simply. So like promethium inserters or something, that cost 10,000 promethium or whatever.

But, if you're maxing out legendary stack insterters, I'm thinking you should be importing more processed items really.