[DLC]Gleban science pack spoilage improvement

[Rykuta]

TL;DR

The core problem here is that you are penalized mechanically for not always researching something that requires Gleban science. (Fulgora only science for example).

The only real solutions are to either manually shut off production and logistics back and forth from Gleba; put all of your science on Gleba (and miss out on the upgraded labs) or just keep it going and suddenly have a boatload of spoilage piling up. None of these feel great.

There should be a better way.

What?

A solution for this problem needs to adhere to the core design tenants of the problem making the science spoilable in the first place intends to create. Mainly:
* You want to maximize the speed at which the science is delivered for it to retain its freshness.
* You want the science pack to have its freshness based on its ingredients.
* The spoilage mechanic and management of it need to be preserved.

Gleba is all about maximizing throughput instead of output, so the solution would also need to maintain this design philosophy as much as possible.

To that end, I came up with the following idea:
Make it so that Gleban science is consumed by all other sciences in the game regardless of it it is required or not.

Consuming Gleban science packs should impart a small productivity bonus (Increase speed of the science without increasing the rate the science is consumed) based on the freshness of the pack regardless of what type of science it is being used for to make up for the fact that it will always be consumed.

Why?

It resolves the issue entirely while still retaining every aspect of the core challenge and even increases the incentive to go after Gleba first in your planet jumping journey (because it will make all other sciences most efficient).

It also further increases the incentives to get the freshest and fastest Science packs you can to your labs because the fresher the pack, the bigger the boost. So trying to get an extra 10% speed would always be worth the effort.

[myridium]

Great idea.

[ncc1702]

Maybe this should only apply to biolabs?

[Koub]

There is another thread with a different suggestion trying to address the same core issue : viewtopic.php?f=6&t=116005 (make it that labs automatically switch to the next queued research for which they have science packs available).

[aka13]

To add to proposals as stated on discord, I'd be content with cross-surface signalling, since gleba science production can be scaled down with the exception of minimal egg upkeep.

[CyberCider]

or just keep it going and suddenly have a boatload of spoilage piling up.

How can spoilage “pile up”? Just incinerate it in the heat tower, or turn it into nutrients for biochambers that are doing cracking.
There’s even an extra funny option: Turn the spoilage into carbon, combine it with sulfur into coal, then liquefy the coal. According to one calculator, if you have productivity 3 modules, that should produce slightly more gas than you spent to make the sulfur

[Rykuta]

How can spoilage “pile up”? Just incinerate it in the heat tower, or turn it into nutrients for biochambers that are doing cracking.
There’s even an extra funny option: Turn the spoilage into carbon, combine it with sulfur into coal, then liquefy the coal. According to one calculator, if you have productivity 3 modules, that should produce slightly more gas than you spent to make the sulfur

To clarify: Piling up is more the observation that because most of the science packs are made around the same time and then are combined into a single stack; this means that when that stack spoils you suddenly have 200 spoilage all at once. Across a bunch of storage / labs, (and interplanetary logistics sending batches of like 4000 at once) this means you get a nice sudden burst of spoilage everywhere all at once.

It isn't like it is unmanageable, spoilage isn't spooky or anything . But for the rest of Gleba's recipe chains you can totally configure a system where you basically don't generate spoilage because you are managing throughput or toggling input in a way that lets you prevent any spoilage from really even happening. Basically I see spoilage as less of a "ah yes you have wasted resources" and more of an "ah your production chain is not fully optimized".

The issue isn't so much "dang spoilage is annoying" or "dang I'm wasting science packs" the issue is more "dang it feels bad that I can't do anything but let this spoilage generate just because I don't want to research gleba tech right now" It makes you feel like your factory is unoptimized and that urge to fix it but having no way of doing so... feels wrong.

To add to proposals as stated on discord, I'd be content with cross-surface signalling, since gleba science production can be scaled down with the exception of minimal egg upkeep.

This is very a useful feature for sure (and surprised there isn't a way to do this considering there is a mod for it). Though for this specific situation trying to throttle science output with signals would require you to have some way of figuring out what the next tech is going to be in the tech queue and how much science it expects to effectively create "orders" for the logistics network.

Because just trying to throttle it based on storage on another planet doesn't actually solve the issue of throughput being unoptimizable, it just reduces the volume of wasted science packs (which as previously mentioned, doesn't actually matter since the resources are infinite) (except the rockets I guess; but that can be managed by logistics already).

Maybe this should only apply to biolabs?

I forget if biolabs are researachable using only Gleban science or require other planets; but if it is the former this totally makes sense to me.

There is another thread with a different suggestion trying to address the same core issue : viewtopic.php?f=6&t=116005 (make it that labs automatically switch to the next queued research for which they have science packs available).

Ah thanks, I tried searching for this topic earlier before making my thread but I think I may have miss-interpreted what this thread was talking about. My bad.

[aka13]

Yeah, in my infinite wisdom I forgot to mention that it needs both, queued tech AND cross surface comms. So that you can read what is being researched, and produce science on demand.
I know I don't have to and "ressources are endless", but I would have more fun that way.

[Tinyboss]

Yeah, in my infinite wisdom I forgot to mention that it needs both, queued tech AND cross surface comms. So that you can read what is being researched, and produce science on demand.
I know I don't have to and "ressources are endless", but I would have more fun that way.

We could do without the cross-surface comms with a couple of new features:

Labs get a "read research queue" option that would output a signal for each queued research, with a value equal to its place in the queue (1 for the current research, 2 for the next in line, etc.). A selector combinator can work well with that output.

Selector combinators get an "output ingredients" mode that outputs the total ingredients needed for all the input items/recipes/technologies. This is somewhat duplicative with the assembler ingredient output function, but I think it's okay. Also it's more flexible--you can compute the total ingredients for a whole set of items/quantities, which could even come from a logistics group with a constant combinator. I think that would be nifty.