defended solar run outpost

[brunzenstein]

I'm looking for a "Wild West" way to load a train with all stuff needed to run a far away solar driven outpost defended by walls & lasers and "go west" - if possible bringing robots, a roboport and everything needed for a small excavation site along on board the train to finish the task of building a well founded self sustained remote outpost - near some resources.

Has anyone done something similar?

[vanatteveldt]

I very often have an 'outpost building train' that contains all the stuff needed to build outposts (tracks, turrets, mines, etc), is that what you mean? (although I don't use solar usually cause it feels too easy...)

As soon as you build a station, you can even send the train back to be loaded with more stuff automatically if you run out building a particularly large outpost. I don't use solar but that would make sense as well. It would be topical to use one of the mods to add a personal roboport to the train so it can automatically 'unpack', or you can blueprint a supplies station that unloads to provider chests. Then, if it has a roboport and conbots and you blueprint the rest of the outpost, it can self construct with mutlitple train runs, maybe the logistic trains mod can even make sure the supplies train only goes when needed?

[brunzenstein]

As soon as you build a station, you can even send the train back to be loaded with more stuff automatically if you run out building a particularly large outpost. I don't use solar but that would make sense as well. It would be topical to use one of the mods to add a personal roboport to the train so it can automatically 'unpack', or you can blueprint a supplies station that unloads to provider chests. Then, if it has a roboport and conbots and you blueprint the rest of the outpost, it can self construct with mutlitple train runs, maybe the logistic trains mod can even make sure the supplies train only goes when needed?

Thats exactly what I'm aiming at!

[vanatteveldt]

Cool

I just realized, if you're willing to have a dedicated supply train for each outpost you don't even need any mods.

What about this:
- You travel in your 'rail builder train' (FARL or with blueprints), which has stuff only for building rails
- You build the rail connection to an outpost and set down a seed base, e.g. supplies station, supplies train, roboport, minimal solar, maybe minimal defenses
- supply station has unload facilities for all needed goods (solar, mines, guns, roboports, conbots, inserters, chests, logibots/belts, etc)
- supply train has wagon with reserved space for all goods, and schedule [go to depot, wait until full or 60s, go to new outpost, wait until circuit condition and 5s inactivity]
- circuit condition is set to trigger as soon as one stock is low/out
- You blueprint the whole base from components, e.g. loading station, wall sections, mining, smelting unit, solar farm. Each module has its own roboports
- As the supply train brings conbots and construction materials the outpost is automatically built without any supervision needed. It would be good if it starts with solar since otherwise the conbots will soon run out of juice...
- Unfortunately, you need to build and schedule the trains for picking up the goods, but you can do that as soon as the train stops are built.

If you combine this with the recursive blueprint magic you can probably even have the outpost find its own mining site, build smelters/solar as needed, etc, but I only stare at that stuff in awe

[Bushdoctor]

Many people build outposts that get supplied by trains. Both for construction and restoration after an attack.
My defense outposts get visited by a train that carries walls, gun turrets, bullets, poles, chests, ammo, etc. The outpost station takes out anything that's under a certain amount in its provider chests.

The real question though, is if you WANT to make an outpost run on solar. Sure, a defense outpost doesn't take that much energy if you only use gun turrets, but have you tried supplying (and storing!) enough energy
with solar to keep a batch of lasers active? Or what about a few dozen mining drills AND their defending laser turrets? The amount of space that you need for all solar panels and accumulators is gonna be huge.
Which, in turn, makes that you need a LOT more defenses to keep all of that safe, which in turn means you need more power, etc.

I would just run power lines to my outposts if I were you.
(If you blueprint a section of rail with 2 large power poles included, it's easy to get those outposts electrified)

[brunzenstein]

The real question though, is if you WANT to make an outpost run on solar. Sure, a defense outpost doesn't take that much energy if you only use gun turrets, but have you tried supplying (and storing!) enough energy
with solar to keep a batch of lasers active?

The impeccable CatherineOfSky has posted a extremely efficient solar module you can run a midsize factory day/night on - https://youtu.be/FuBaFQ3u1Mg

Size: 48x48 (2304 tiles)
Usefull area : 2224 (96.5%)
Solar panels: 180
Accumulators: 151
Substations: 16
Roboport: 1
* Logistic network tilable
* Electric network tilable

[vanatteveldt]

Also, it adds flavor to make the outposts as independent as possible.

For mining outposts defended by guns, you could also decide to drop the accus (and hope the ammunition will last through the night ) and just mine only during the day