Auto-launching of mixed rockets

[Tinyboss]

I think they just didn't finish Space Age and must have released it early for financial reasons.

You have got to be kidding. They've run the most transparent and competent development process I've ever seen.

[Saevon]

If a rocket has mixed items AND is fully loaded AND its items are ALL requested by one platform it should auto-launch (I was surprised this wasn't already a thing when I was first building my platforms)

Secondly an option for:

• "request inefficient mixed loads": robots ask for anything that (is fully supplied) and would launch a full rocket, THEN requests remaining needed items (that can currently be fullfilled) in random order (launching if the next item wouldn't fit).
• vs "launch surplus": (Existing behaviour) Launches items rounded up to the next full rocket-stack

Finally we should just have circuit control for other edge-cases

[dragon_gawain]

They could add some ID to spaceships that you would then include as a circuit signal to choose where to launch to.

I like this solution.
You'd set the ID of which platform the silo should launch to, and then you could have a separate signal on the silo, similar to enable/disable, that says "Launch upon signal [condition].
The target platform would be an implicit condition (i.e. the platform with that ID must be in orbit around the planet where the silo is located), and then the rocket would launch when the signal is received.
This would let us do stuff like use combinators to determine if the rocket is full and allow it to launch when it is.

Only issue I see is that this solution restricts a silo to only being able to launch to a single platform. Maybe this could be fixed by having platforms with the same name? That way if you have multiple haulers going along the same route, it could automatically send to any of the same-name haulers?

[myridium]

I think they just didn't finish Space Age and must have released it early for financial reasons.

You have got to be kidding. They've run the most transparent and competent development process I've ever seen.

Our opinions are not mutually exclusive.

[Tinyboss]

Our opinions are not mutually exclusive.

I think they are. If they released before it was ready and didn't tell us, it wouldn't be very transparent would it?

[myridium]

Our opinions are not mutually exclusive.

I think they are. If they released before it was ready and didn't tell us, it wouldn't be very transparent would it?

I thought Kovarex was pretty clear when he said things to the effect of 'well we [Wube] like it at least' and 'a studio very rarely if ever produces a masterpiece twice in a row'. They know it's not to the same standard. You only need to look at the textures of the space platform to see that. (Looks like a cartoon.) I'm sure they did the best they could.

[Tinyboss]

Well, the thing about opinions is that everybody gets to have one. Yours is definitely one.

[JohnRogers]

I think it's a great shame that in a game whose entire appeal is optimization you can't automate shipment. I just spent several hours setting up a circuit network to allow me to dump exactly 1 ton worth of mixed bioflux and agricultural science into a silo only to realize it was a non-starter.

I guess I have no choice but to regularly ship 1 ton of bioflux I don't need just to let almost all of it spoil...

[RedEmber]

That was so frustrating! I was sure I was doing something wrong when it kept either sending up whole stacks of everything and taking ages or refusing to send when I was only asking for a bit of each thing for construction. Manually launching every time should not be the only way to send mixed cargo.

[zero0000000]

I agree. We need some sort of circuit control over launching the rocket, or at least a "launch when full" option.

Being unable to automate a rocket with mixed quality items (like science) is a pretty big disappointment.

[zero0000000]

Meanwhile, I found a manual but pretty painless solution. This works even remotely via construction bots.

• Disable auto-launching rockets

• Place a requester chest next to the silo (but no inserter)

• Set the chest to request all the things you want to send to the platform. An easy way to do this:
  • Wire the silo to the chest
  • Configure the silo to output orbital requests
  • Configure the chest to set requests from input signals

• Once all the items are in the chest, remove all requests (disconnect the wire if you used a wire from the silo)

• Place an inserter to load items from the chest into the silo (or you can place one earlier, just rotate it so it's not doing anything, or control it with a constant signal, or w/e)

• Manually launch the rocket when you're happy with the current load (probably when the inserter can't insert anything more)

Im not sure if this is the same as what you were doing. But you can legit click on the rocket, uncheck auto-logistics, and then simply choose the item and quality on the left side of the screen, and then click a blank slot in the rocket to get the robots to fill it. This will always TRY and fill it with a full stack, but you can still pick more items to fill the rest of the rocket.

So for example, say I want to send up all 8 of my rare crushers, and fill the rest of the rocket with uncommon crushers:
enter map mode > click rocket > uncheck auto-logistic >
click crusher on the left > click rare quality on the bottom left > click slot in rocket.
this will request 10 rare crushers to be sent to the rocket, but again, i only have 8 on the planet, so it will fill it with 8.
then I do the same with uncommon crushers, and click the next slot. This will again, try and fill it with 10 uncommon crushers, but there is only room for 2, so it will fill the last 2 slots with uncommon crushers.
then wait for the robots to deliver the stuff and launch the rocket. Then click away the rest of the crusher requests (if there are any), and re-enable auto-logistics.

You can also right click to request 1 of an item, instead of a whole stack.

No boxes/inserters needed!

[manuco]

Secondly an option for:

• "request inefficient mixed loads": robots ask for anything that (is fully supplied) and would launch a full rocket, THEN requests remaining needed items (that can currently be fullfilled) in random order (launching if the next item wouldn't fit).
• vs "launch surplus": (Existing behaviour) Launches items rounded up to the next full rocket-stack

I think in your ”request mixed loads”, the order should not be random, but from the heavier to the lighter stacks of items. Heavier items tend to be more easy to stack. So launches would have more and more different stacks of less and less items each. So less and less efficient since it seems there is a stack count limit. But the process would look consistent, and barely predictable between launches.

[BraveCaperCat]

We need this whether or not the developers want us to have it. Even just in mods would be great!

[falk]

This auto-launching of mixed rockets should at very least be true when using the "Auto Request Building Materials" on the space platform.
I find that the "Auto Request Building Materials" is mostly unusable or extremely expensive and inefficient in its current state where it sends a full rocket of something you only need one unit of. This checkbox might as well be called "Make space platform building 5x more expensive so you don't need an awkward workaround for building it"
The workarounds we use to deal with this are not really fun or engaging and it just feels like a poor game mechanic that we have to deal with.

[DarkShadow44]

I too would like a way to load mixed rockets, would be nice to easily create new platforms without having so send a full stack of each separate item. Sorting items by weight and loading as many as can fit and then auto-launching at fullness percent would be nice. Not sure how to deal with stuff like having just a single inserter be requested though. I think I'd be fine with that simply not launching the rocket, I guess.

[BraveCaperCat]

This should be a checkbox or something for each request - and there should also be an option to enable it for all construction requests.

[mouzy]

I think having the ability to fully control rockets with circuits would be awesome, and would allow people to personalize their own solutions.

I wouldn't like the current automatic constructon request system to be changed, though - any sort of mixed rockets solution there is going to cause serious problems.

If the game only sends up full mixed rockets (or full up to a certain threshold), it may lock up on the last rocket if your platform doesn't need enough stuff. If the game sends up mixed rockets whenever it can't fit more requests in in general, having that on while you modify your platform would result in your silo repeatedly sending up rockets of a single inserter whenever you put a ghost down. Both of those would be much more problematic than the current system - the only issue you get with the current system is sending too much stuff up, which in my experience really isn't a big deal when rockets are designed to be cheap and low capacity. Especially because platforms can use that surplus to repair themselves if damaged.

Even adding those as options would be misleading to new players imo and cause them to run into a lot of problems, although maybe they could require you to enable them from the settings menu first or something. But I think with full circuit controls players would be able to set up a solution that's best for them.