Rocket launches even when output slot is full

[calebegg]

If you have 1k to 2k space science packs in the "Rocket result inventory" slot and the rocket set to launch automatically, the rocket will launch as soon as it has a satellite. However, after launching, the output slot will max out at 2k space science, meaning you lose some of the output (potentially all of it, if it was full).

This is inconsistent with other assembler-type things in the game, which will stop if their output slot is full. It's also frustrating, because it means you waste a lot of resources, especially if you don't notice at first.

[Klonan]

Thanks for the report,

This is intended, the rocket silo does not consider its output inventory when decided whether to launch or not

[morpheuskibbe]

I'd like to second the request to at least have an option to make it wait till its output is empty before launching.

My issue isn't so much the wasted resources (at full crank my bask can launch a rocket every 10 minutes or so) but the fact that the rocket construction is hogging my speed modules making high tech science produce really slow. Having the rocket not autolaunch unless its output is empty would have the effect of auto shifting focus to high tech science production. Basically being a built in feedback to balance space science and high tech science.

[Ranakastrasz]

If you plug a cable into the rocket silo, does it tell you how many science packs are there?

If so, the obvious answer is to just not let the satellite be added until you have <1000 science packs.

Or something like that.

[Factorie]

Cool that a dev saw this. Maybe they'll change it even though it's intended?

[aRatNamedSammy]

personnaly, i use an inserters with logistic to put a satellite only if the chest containing space science is less than 200.. it work pretty well

[blizgerg]

I also noticed this behavior, and I very quickly just stuck a buffer chest for a stack inserter to move all the space science packs into and then connected the inserter that adds the satellite to only activate if there was < some number of science packs in the buffer chest.

[gHoST INFERNO]

Hm, this seems very, very unfortunate, that the game just quietly destroys my rather expensive resources, without even making it obvious that this is happening. Out of interest, what is the argument or reason that this isn't considered a bug but a feature?

[Rseding91]

Hm, this seems very, very unfortunate, that the game just quietly destroys my rather expensive resources, without even making it obvious that this is happening. Out of interest, what is the argument or reason that this isn't considered a bug but a feature?

Because bugs are things that aren't working as we intended them to. In this case I explicitly programmed it to work that way.

[gHoST INFERNO]

Hehe fair enough - I should have been more accurate in my phrasing Even if this may not be considered a bug from the *implementation perspective*, what was the reasoning behind not considering this a bug from a *product perspective*?
At least to my untrained eye quietly destroying resources didn't really seem to align with the game otherwise, so I'm just surprised that it was an explicit decision to have this behavior, and so I'm interested.

Thanks for a fun game!

[posila]

Space science being current endgame content, we have decided players should solve problem of rocket silo output inventory being full by themselves. By either controlling launches by circuit network or making sure the output is always emptied.

[mrvn]

Here is a crazy idea that might fit both ideas.

When a space science is added to the silo but the silo is full the excess is placed on the ground around the silo. That way the resources are not wasted, it is obvious something is going wrong and the user has to do something to fix it.

[London_]

Here is a crazy idea that might fit both ideas.

When a space science is added to the silo but the silo is full the excess is placed on the ground around the silo. That way the resources are not wasted, it is obvious something is going wrong and the user has to do something to fix it.

That's asking to break the game. Imagine doing work elsewhere in your base and your 2 to 4 silo's are backed up and the packs fall on the floor each time a rocket launches, adding a few thousand entities to the game every minute or two.

Within 20 or 30 minutes the game would be unplayable. I say that the space packs spilling like that would be way more of a bug than having them voided.

[Optera]

Silos like any other crafting machine should stop when output inventory is full.

Silently deleting resources is an unexpected behavior displayed nowhere else in the game therefore a bug.
The definition of not a bug since you wrote it to behave like that is nonsense. If I knowingly program something to produce a buffer overflow after 5 minutes since the program will never run for more than 2 minutes anyway it'll still be a bug.

[mrvn]

Here is a crazy idea that might fit both ideas.

When a space science is added to the silo but the silo is full the excess is placed on the ground around the silo. That way the resources are not wasted, it is obvious something is going wrong and the user has to do something to fix it.

That's asking to break the game. Imagine doing work elsewhere in your base and your 2 to 4 silo's are backed up and the packs fall on the floor each time a rocket launches, adding a few thousand entities to the game every minute or two.

Within 20 or 30 minutes the game would be unplayable. I say that the space packs spilling like that would be way more of a bug than having them voided.

So? Don't you think you would notice that on the first silo already? There could also be a nice cryptic message like:

Code: Select all

Reentry vehicle crashed because landing pad was not cleared.

If you don't fix the problem in the first 100 rockets then I think you deserve the game to become unplayable slow.

Note: In a recent game I had 600k alien artifacts on the ground and still UPS of 30. I know because I then used a items on ground filter to deconstruct them all. Only then the UPS dropped to 7 because the 30k construction bots take a lot of time to fly around. So I don't think the game will become unplayable slow as fast as you think.

[London_]

So I don't think the game will become unplayable slow as fast as you think.

Even so, there's no other thing in the game that will overflow itself without player intervention (power armor removal, full inv and deconstruct an assembler). The dev's aren't going to suddenly add that into the game.

I Would enjoy the silo to just know not do launch as much as anyone, but considering inserters can stall when loading a wagon because of the wagon filters, the silo has no reason to know what space the inventory it puts items into has left.

I personally think the best solution is just allow us to put a wire onto the silo that reads it's inventory. This we can can wire it to the satellite inserter and disable it. Sure we can kind of do that with the chests the pots are being loaded into but it would be simpler if we could just put a wire onto the silo.

[mrvn]

So I don't think the game will become unplayable slow as fast as you think.

Even so, there's no other thing in the game that will overflow itself without player intervention (power armor removal, full inv and deconstruct an assembler). The dev's aren't going to suddenly add that into the game.

I Would enjoy the silo to just know not do launch as much as anyone, but considering inserters can stall when loading a wagon because of the wagon filters, the silo has no reason to know what space the inventory it puts items into has left.

I personally think the best solution is just allow us to put a wire onto the silo that reads it's inventory. This we can can wire it to the satellite inserter and disable it. Sure we can kind of do that with the chests the pots are being loaded into but it would be simpler if we could just put a wire onto the silo.

On the other hand inserters don't stall when inserting items into an assembler. They pick only items the assembler will accept. So a rocket silo could accept rocket fuel but not a satelite when it doesn't have space for 1000 science bulbs easily. The devs, as stated above, simply don't want that.

[BlakeMW]

I personally think the best solution is just allow us to put a wire onto the silo that reads it's inventory. This we can can wire it to the satellite inserter and disable it. Sure we can kind of do that with the chests the pots are being loaded into but it would be simpler if we could just put a wire onto the silo.

You know I think there may be such a thing as an excess of convenience. Things which have been given circuit connections is because to reproduce the same effect was extremely unwieldy (i.e. unloading then reloading all the contents of a wagon just to read what it is carrying). To utilize the space science packs you need to unload them, you'll either unload them into a chest (can read the contents), a belt (can read the contents), a wagon (can read the contents) or directly into a lab (can't read the contents). So unless you're using the much vaunted direct feed rocket silo -> lab you'll already be unloading into something which you can read to check for backlogging.

[gHoST INFERNO]

posila, thanks for the explanation! I totally get the idea of trying to make things harder & more interesting as the game progresses. For example, I really enjoyed having to deal with the kovarex enrichment process In this case here it seems unfortunate to happen so quietly (as compared to other cases where complexity gets increased and it's clear that something is different). As an example, in my case I now suspect I wasted the space science of 20-40 rockets (total launched 60-ish), though I can't be sure of the precise number, as I didn't notice anything for many hours. The only other way I can think of that the game ever destroys resources is on explosions, typically triggered by a player (e.g. blowing up a chest), or alien attacks, or a train-collision or something, so this definitely caught me off guard.

Would there be ways to make it more obvious that this is happening? Like, what if the whole silo would blow up in a massive explosion when a rocket is about to take off but the output slots are full? It would be hard to miss, kinda funny, and you're sure I won't do the same mistake a second time Plus for a new player it would at earliest happen on the 3rd rocket.

Anyways, I know of this issue now and will deal with it going forward. Thanks again for your response and a fun game!

[Koub]

While not a bug, this is a debatable design decision.

I own a car, and I know how to drive it. In the car, I have an indicator telling me my turning indicators are on. If the car was designed without the light and clicking sound onboard, and if my car's manufacturer's answer was "that's by design, if you want to chek if your indicators are blinking, just get out of the car and watch them" or "well you're a seasoned driver, you should know wether your indicators are on or not by yourself", then I'd tell him his car has a very bad design indeed, because when I need the information, I'm driving, and at one given time, I might have forgotten my indicators on, and I'd like to be aware of it.

I think the character the player controls is smart enough to add an alert into the silo that launches his rocket in case of anomaly :
- When a rocket is launched without satellite, we're warned (albeit too late, but the last quick save can be reloaded)
- We have a way of mitigating this risk by enabling the "auto launch when rocket inventory full" option in the silo, so that when not full, the rocket doesn't fire

The silo should :
- Either emit a warning with a beep the same way we're warned we forgot to insert the satellite in the rocket with a console message
- Or have a building option "prevent launch if output slot full"