Rocket silo logistic is just broken

[Sworn]

Your opinion isn't a fact.

I don't think it's "bad for players"

and gave my opinion that i think it would result in a bloated system for very little benefit.

As you said yourself, Your opinion isn't a fact.
That is your opinion.

I'm not saying the ID system would be the best, I didn't even say anything about any good ideas here, all that doesn't change the fact that it wouldn't be that minor of other people weren't asking the same thing, with different words in different threads

[Sworn]

One simple way around that would be to move the rocket part recipe to assemblers, create rocket parts and those you insert into the silo. That you can't send rocket parts with a rocket makes as much sense as not being able to send a rocket silo itself. With the rocket parts only being used by the rocket there wouldn't be such a big drawback from not being able to send them. The items now blocked are just too common to make sense.

I can't find the thread, this was made on this mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RocketCargoInsertion

[mrvn]

Your opinion isn't a fact.

I don't think it's "bad for players"

and gave my opinion that i think it would result in a bloated system for very little benefit.

As you said yourself, Your opinion isn't a fact.
That is your opinion.

I'm not saying the ID system would be the best, I didn't even say anything about any good ideas here, all that doesn't change the fact that it wouldn't be that minor of other people weren't asking the same thing, with different words in different threads

Throwing in my 2c:

Space platforms already have an ID as mentioned in the recent FFF. Although that might not have an API. Short of that the ID of the space platform hub entity should be unique enough too. From the entity you get the surface and that's what sending rockets is all about in vanilla. Can there even be more than one hub or cargo landing pad on a surface? I now vanilla doesn't allow more than one.

The casual player will never want to bother with numeric IDs via the circuit network to send rockets. But selecting where to send rockets to is something players want. And to lock that into place so it doesn't have to be selected manually on every launch so launches can be circuit controlled (the launch, not the destination).

So my suggestion is to mirror the train network. In vanilla you can select the station by name and this isn't circuit controlled. And then there are mods that allow more dynamic use by either selecting the stations for you (e.g. LTN) or selecting stations by some ID scheme via circuit control. It would probably be good for the API to expose the station ID mentioned in the FFF and use that to target rockets.

[mmmPI]

One simple way around that would be to move the rocket part recipe to assemblers, create rocket parts and those you insert into the silo. That you can't send rocket parts with a rocket makes as much sense as not being able to send a rocket silo itself. With the rocket parts only being used by the rocket there wouldn't be such a big drawback from not being able to send them. The items now blocked are just too common to make sense.

I think this doesn't solve the problem in the slightliest, because the same players that complained they couldn't use a complicated circuitry to load rocket fuel in the rocket will then complain they can't put rocket parts into it. You just move the "imaginary" problem around, sure it's not a problem anymore but it wasn't in the first place either. Nothing changes.

I can't find the thread, this was made on this mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RocketCargoInsertion

So Aquilo can't make rockets, hence i'm tempted to supply it with rocket parts right ? but this doesn't help, i can't load rocket parts for aquilo in the silo with inserters, only blue circuit low density structure and rocket fuel. Muuh muhhhh the system is completly broken i can't load rocket part with inserters, it still require half a dozen system to be added for the use cases described in this thread.

I'm not saying the ID system would be the best, I didn't even say anything about any good ideas here, all that doesn't change the fact that it wouldn't be that minor of other people weren't asking the same thing, with different words in different threads

People are asking for many different things, many that makes no sense that are incomplete and inconsistent, many that are exclusive with each others. I'm just saying that imo there is no clear better alternative than what we have now. Although there are some smaller scope suggestions for auto-launch that make sense.

So my suggestion is to mirror the train network. In vanilla you can select the station by name and this isn't circuit controlled. And then there are mods that allow more dynamic use by either selecting the stations for you (e.g. LTN) or selecting stations by some ID scheme via circuit control. It would probably be good for the API to expose the station ID mentioned in the FFF and use that to target rockets.

That's not a suggestion imo that's a modding request.

[Sworn]

I can't find the thread, this was made on this mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RocketCargoInsertion

So Aquilo can't make rockets, hence i'm tempted to supply it with rocket parts right ? but this doesn't help, i can't load rocket parts for aquilo in the silo with inserters, only blue circuit low density structure and rocket fuel. Muuh muhhhh the system is completly broken i can't load rocket part with inserters, it still require half a dozen system to be added for the use cases described in this thread.

Argue with who made the mod then... It was not even replying to your comments, was addressing his suggestion. Serious, with that attitude, why bothering joining the discussion, you are not adding anything useful, and get salt when people use the same words and reasoning you used back to you.

What you really fail to understand, is that Factorio always had the logic circuit as part of it, it got even better at 2.0, people love it and denying it to what now is a fundamental part of the factory transport system, is basically removing combinators from trains.

Now, get out of your little box, no one is asking the system to be complicated as SE was, people want the option to do complicated stuff if they like, if you don't like, you can stick with a normal train system without combinators, a normal rocket as is, what factorio always had, no one needs to use bots, you can, no one needs to use combinators, you can use if you like. No one needs to use trains; you could use if you like.

Everyone have to use rockets, and as a fundamental part of the transport system that one have to use, people want to have it controlled via logic, regardless of you thinking that will make the game 10x more complicated for you, which won't.

[mmmPI]

Argue with who made the mod then... It was not even replying to your comments, was addressing his suggestion. Serious, with that attitude, why bothering joining the discussion, you are not adding anything useful, and get salt when people use the same words and reasoning you used back to you.

That makes no sense sorry, to ask me to argue with the mod author. It is fine for a mod, there's nothing wrong with it as a mod, just it's illutrating how the previous suggestion is contradictory with the argument of why it was done. If you want to ship "rocket parts around " you can't, so when this was linked as "simple solution" i disagree, because it is no solving the problem that was mentionned in this thread.

What you really fail to understand, is that Factorio always had the logic circuit as part of it, it got even better at 2.0, people love it and denying it to what now is a fundamental part of the factory transport system, is basically removing combinators from trains.

You state your opinion as fact a lot but this is pointless it's not providing any useful suggestions, you can repeat it 10000000 times it's not going to change the fact that it's useless as a suggestion.

Now, get out of your little box, no one is asking the system to be complicated as SE was, people want the option to do complicated stuff if they like, if you don't like, you can stick with a normal train system without combinators, a normal rocket as is, what factorio always had, no one needs to use bots, you can, no one needs to use combinators, you can use if you like. No one needs to use trains; you could use if you like.

You are clearly ignorant of the various suggestion of this forum, some include circuitry much more complicated than SE and were made by people also arguing on this thread. I'm just saying that the people claiming to be willing to do complicated stuff are also this thread people that showed inability to use the simple system that currently exist, and are making overcomplicated proposition that are sometimes making no sense.

You probably don't even realize either that the ID system is on par with the complicated circuitry in SE that you are yourself advocating for duuuuh.

Everyone have to use rockets, and as a fundamental part of the transport system that one have to use, people want to have it controlled via logic, regardless of you thinking that will make the game 10x more complicated for you, which won't.

And you repeat it again, yet fail to realize that i have nothing against that i'm just not seeing a way to make it happen that make sense.

[mrvn]

Argue with who made the mod then... It was not even replying to your comments, was addressing his suggestion. Serious, with that attitude, why bothering joining the discussion, you are not adding anything useful, and get salt when people use the same words and reasoning you used back to you.

That makes no sense sorry, to ask me to argue with the mod author. It is fine for a mod, there's nothing wrong with it as a mod, just it's illutrating how the previous suggestion is contradictory with the argument of why it was done. If you want to ship "rocket parts around " you can't, so when this was linked as "simple solution" i disagree, because it is no solving the problem that was mentionned in this thread.

No, the original complaint was about shipping rocket SILO parts around. Shipping enough to build a rocket as well was a secondary / followup problem.

On top of that, from what I read, the mod adds a recipe for the rocket silo to use the converted ingredients so you can load the original items. But it doesn't remove the original recipe. So you can ship the advanced circuits, low density structure and rocket fuel using the new recipe on Nauvis and then use the original recipe on Aquilo.

Seems the mod solves the problem just fine.

[Tinyboss]

Also stll no use case, just some vague statement that "uhh the silo is inconsistent with the other things". Which makes little sense to me, the Silo is a unique building with unique mechanic associated.

This is a very long, very active thread, so I cannot blame you for having missed the compelling use case. "You can't send those three items without bots" is unsatisfying, but indeed not very compelling. What IS compelling is that we could, with the proper additions*, gain MUCH more control over platform logistics, if we are willing to take the time to automate it. Which is very much a pillar of Factorio gameplay and a core reason why a lot of us enjoy it so much.

Sending up rockets with mixed cargo is a big desire here. For example, I wanted my platform to receive a single rocket from Gleba with 900 agricultural science and 100 bioflux. I didn't want to send two rockets, since I didn't need that much bioflux. There's no way to do it currently without some kind of manual intervention. The best thing I came up with was to load it all via inserters, and use a programmable speaker to alert me when it was loaded and there was a platform in orbit requesting science. Then I'd click the alert and launch the rocket manually.

Apart from the question of whether the proposed suggestions are too complicated, I hope we can agree that what I describe here is a very reasonable thing to wish for.

*What set of additions would be sufficient and not too complex is clearly a very tricky question!

EDIT: If you check the very first post of the thread, you can see it's not just about shipping those three items. It's about other frustrations, very much including the exclusion of mixed cargo on the same rocket.

[Khazul]

+1. I agree that the silo logistic is not usable. Especially for building new platforms, I found the current system so frustrating, that I rather plop a requester chest with my blueprint copied into a section, wait until everything arrives, disable the request and then insert it into the silo (manually clicking the "Transport" button every minute).

It sucks, but you gotta do, what you gotta do...

Edit: I just found out, that you can also request the same blueprint on the empty Space platform hub and then the rockets will auto-launch once they are filled up by the inserter (without the "automatic requests from space platform" set). Seems like a bug, but please Wube, don't fix it! At least now the whole "building a platform" is somewhat semi-automatic possible, although with one of the most clunky UI's possible...
Editedit: Never mind. That only works if the payload is only one item. So still completely useless.. sigh

What I do now when building a new platform is I immediately switch the auto-logistic for building off and then switch on a preset request that I have 'build the f****** platform!' that is setup to just have foundations and a few cargo bays. This stops the utter stupidity of it filling up the hub with pretty much everything and putting itself into a deadlock situation where it cant build anything as it doesnt have any foundations and has no room to receive any. So having a separate logistics group with foundations and a few cargo bays makes sure that it gets those first so it can build a few foundation and adds required cargo bays so that it has room to build in its own, at which time I switch the normal build auto-logistics back on.

[Sworn]

This stops the utter stupidity of it filling up the hub with pretty much everything and putting itself into a deadlock situation...

Yap, people also made this one about that specific case: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=121977

[mmmPI]

Also stll no use case, just some vague statement that "uhh the silo is inconsistent with the other things". Which makes little sense to me, the Silo is a unique building with unique mechanic associated.

This is a very long, very active thread, so I cannot blame you for having missed the compelling use case. "You can't send those three items without bots" is unsatisfying, but indeed not very compelling. What IS compelling is that we could, with the proper additions*, gain MUCH more control over platform logistics, if we are willing to take the time to automate it. Which is very much a pillar of Factorio gameplay and a core reason why a lot of us enjoy it so much.

Sending up rockets with mixed cargo is a big desire here. For example, I wanted my platform to receive a single rocket from Gleba with 900 agricultural science and 100 bioflux. I didn't want to send two rockets, since I didn't need that much bioflux. There's no way to do it currently without some kind of manual intervention. The best thing I came up with was to load it all via inserters, and use a programmable speaker to alert me when it was loaded and there was a platform in orbit requesting science. Then I'd click the alert and launch the rocket manually.

Apart from the question of whether the proposed suggestions are too complicated, I hope we can agree that what I describe here is a very reasonable thing to wish for.

*What set of additions would be sufficient and not too complex is clearly a very tricky question!

EDIT: If you check the very first post of the thread, you can see it's not just about shipping those three items. It's about other frustrations, very much including the exclusion of mixed cargo on the same rocket.

When i read the very first post of the thread it look like a random rant from someone who didn't play the game yet. It was posted in bug report and moved away because many if not all of the mentionned point were incorrect or coming from lack of knowledge by the player. I have read all the posts in this thread and others thread related This isn't even a suggestion and some of the proposition in this thread are exclusive with each others.

Sending mixed rocket cargo and choosing the destination for it would indeed make the system like the one in space exploration but some players also said that's not what they advocated for, like "no not complex like in space exploration" but " just a system with ID so you can choose the destination of the rocket and also send mixed item rocket that could include the very item with which rokets are made". Which is the same.

The set of additions that would be sufficent for this imo has been studied by the devs and deemed too complex that's kinda what they explained in the various FFF. But i can understand some players may have an idea. It gets ridiculous when you point at a shortcoming in the suggestion or a contradiction and what you get as answer is " if you don't like it shut up many people wants this suggestion". And you're just pointing at the fact that the suggestion is not addressing the problem it pretends to. And don't get answer on this, just some more "buuuut people like the idea". Which doesn't matter if the idea doesn't lead to a functionning system that adress what people actually want.

Note that the title of the thread is very vague and a blatant exageration at the limit of trolling so i'm not surprised that it didn't attracted the most constructive suggestions as shown by some of the previous contributions that are sometimes unrelated to each other apart from the fact that someone at some point felt frustrated and thought to vent on this thread that look like titled by someone who was also frustrated , given the decrepancy between the first post and the later proposition it is unreasonnable to think the players postings them read past the title in some cases which doesn't help the message they try to push.

No, the original complaint was about shipping rocket SILO parts around. Shipping enough to build a rocket as well was a secondary / followup problem.
On top of that, from what I read, the mod adds a recipe for the rocket silo to use the converted ingredients so you can load the original items. But it doesn't remove the original recipe. So you can ship the advanced circuits, low density structure and rocket fuel using the new recipe on Nauvis and then use the original recipe on Aquilo.
Seems the mod solves the problem just fine.

It look like you forgot what you wrote in the first post, and you later changed your mind to something different, because when looking at the first post of this thread, it's really hard to find what you are saying there. It look like an hallucination or something, let's look at the whole rant line by line, to see where it is mentionned "shipping rocket SILO parts around".

1) The biggest flaw in this is that it always sends a full rocket of the thing. Sending 50 laser turrets when only 4 are needed is a big waste. There is no way to send exact counts for construction work. Or 10 cargo hub extensions when all you need is 1.

Which is wrong beause you can use custom payload and not about "shipping rocket SILO parts around".

2) If you do not have 1 rocket full of the item available in the logistic network the spaceship hub never requests it. That means you can not produce the items on demand as needed. I do not need 10 cargo hug extensions sitting around in a provider chest.

Which is also wrong for the same reason and still not about "shipping rocket SILO parts around".

3) There is no checkmark for the rocket silo to request form buffer chests. But the contents of buffer chests still counts for determining if enough items are available. So the rocket silo will request 50 laser turrets but 40 of them are in a buffer chest. The silo is then stuck with 10 and never gets the remaining 40.

Which a devs answered was wrong too. ( not about "shipping rocket SILO parts around". )

So if the automatic fails lets turn to manually filling the rocket. Oh where do I start:
1) You can read out the requests and the contents. But not at the same time. So you have no idea how much of what is requested is already loaded.

Not adressed by the mod you claim solve the problem "just fine" suddenly it's no longer problematic ? I guess it was not really something serious when mentionned in the first post and it's quite hard to believe this could be the part about shipping silo parts around to me.

2) All the requests of all the space platforms are merged. You have no idea which platform requests what.

Same as previous.

3) There is no way to say to which platform to send the rocket or when to send it. There seems to be some automatic to send the rocket when it is full, but only when it is filled by a single item to capacity. Any mixture seems to prevent launch. Maybe because with a mixture have the content could be for platform A and the rest for platform B.

That's interesting, because here we can clearly see you are requiring a complex system similar to the one from space exploration imo advocating for both the choice of the destination and mixed payload. But you are making the same mistake to claim that a rocket need be full for auto-launch which is incorrect.

4) When a rocket is launched the silo still requests the same items. There is no way to detect a rocket in transit, no way to detect a rocket launch and use ones own timer till it lands or something. Why isn't the hub subtracting the rocket content from the request while in transit? That would be just like provider chests subtracking the "picking up" items from their content.

This is not true and hardly qualify as the original complaint about shipping rocket silo part around.

5) There is no option to send items to the trash slots. I want the option to only keep requested items in the rocket silo. That way excess items in the hands of inserters on the last load could be expelled.

This is already in the game btw. The game already help you automate the loading with inserters even if you plan to designed a flawed system that overfeed it.

I think none of the original post is about "shipping rocket SILO parts around" explictly. But what you did mentionned explicitly albeit not in the original post is :

Another thing broken: You can not send Processing unit (blue card), Low Density Structure or Rocket Fuel into space with inserters and circuit logic. Those three things always go into the build slots of the silo. You can send those with automation but then it takes a full rocket and logistic bots.

Which is again also wrong because you don't need a full rocket you can use custom payload, i wonder how much frustration came from failing to use that setting and can't help thinking again that the mod just moves the problem around because you can't ship "rocket parts" to Aquilo, you need to send the component and re-assemble them which you could already do in vanilla with inserters and without bots just fine, or you know just produce them in space with the ship that carry the science or something. You don't need bots to send them with automation i can assure you. Only the first part is true, and it was i think already explained in this thread why it was the case. To make the system simpler because otherwise you have a system similar to space exploration which is difficult to use and cause players to request things like your 5) point.

[mmmPI]

I end up with this much junk afterwards that has to be initially produced to fulfill the vastly inflated request as well as manually be flushed back down.

11-09-2024, 15-40-16.png (449.35 KiB) Viewed 714 times

Why cant it simply request what is actually needed rather than filling up every rocket to max capacity of the item?

That seem very suspicious because the maximum rocket capacity of constant combinator is 50 so even if you don't use the custom payload settings and request a full stack of them, there is no way the game send that many rockets, like 15 or 20 to give you that many extra constant combinator just as "extra" from construction.

Do you have the blueprint of the ship ?

[mrvn]

And there you go intentionally misreading what is being discussed and regurgitating unrelated issues to prove your point about what you misread.

The issue discussed where I replied was about sending advanced circuit boards to the hub and not a discussion of the very first post in the thread as a whole. My first post also was by someone who played the game, me. And the devs have only flagged one single thing as wrong, that the rocket silo wouldn't fetch from buffer chests. It's something I saw in the game but can't reproduce. Not sure what happened there.

So your now back on my full ignore list.

[Khazul]

I end up with this much junk afterwards that has to be initially produced to fulfill the vastly inflated request as well as manually be flushed back down.
11-09-2024, 15-40-16.png
Why cant it simply request what is actually needed rather than filling up every rocket to max capacity of the item?

That seem very suspicious because the maximum rocket capacity of constant combinator is 50 so even if you don't use the custom payload settings and request a full stack of them, there is no way the game send that many rockets, like 15 or 20 to give you that many extra constant combinator just as "extra" from construction.

Do you have the blueprint of the ship ?

I do not have that specific blueprint any more as all my ship have been significantly changed since then to have a lot of circuits on them for precise speed/thrust control.

The relevant part of the blueprint in use at the time of post was also included in a screen shot in the quoted post. So those two circuits that can be seen are the entirely of circuits on that ship.
This was also a version or more ago and since then it seems to be behaving more reasonably and not seeing sign of shipping up the same duplicate payload via several rockets concurrently (which is what I assume caused this). Instead O often find with larger ship it chooses to send up pretty much every EXCEPT foundation and cargo bays first despite there being 10 of 1000s of foundations and 100s of of cargo bays right next to my rocket silo array. End result is it deadlocks itself by filling up the hub with stuff, but cannot build anything because it has no foundations.

The auto build needs to change to send at least some foundations foundations before anything else and then send cargo bays if applicable so that way the hub has an opportunity to be extended if the build calls for it before it gets flooded with all the other items needed.

BTW - I may only be a n00b on these forums, but have over 2.5K hours in game over the years just in case I am assumed to be a n00b from my forum stats

[mrvn]

I end up with this much junk afterwards that has to be initially produced to fulfill the vastly inflated request as well as manually be flushed back down.
11-09-2024, 15-40-16.png
Why cant it simply request what is actually needed rather than filling up every rocket to max capacity of the item?

That seem very suspicious because the maximum rocket capacity of constant combinator is 50 so even if you don't use the custom payload settings and request a full stack of them, there is no way the game send that many rockets, like 15 or 20 to give you that many extra constant combinator just as "extra" from construction.

Do you have the blueprint of the ship ?

I do not have that specific blueprint any more as all my ship have been significantly changed since then to have a lot of circuits on them for precise speed/thrust control.

The relevant part of the blueprint in use at the time of post was also included in a screen shot in the quoted post. So those two circuits that can be seen are the entirely of circuits on that ship.
This was also a version or more ago and since then it seems to be behaving more reasonably and not seeing sign of shipping up the same duplicate payload via several rockets concurrently (which is what I assume caused this). Instead O often find with larger ship it chooses to send up pretty much every EXCEPT foundation and cargo bays first despite there being 10 of 1000s of foundations and 100s of of cargo bays right next to my rocket silo array. End result is it deadlocks itself by filling up the hub with stuff, but cannot build anything because it has no foundations.

The auto build needs to change to send at least some foundations foundations before anything else and then send cargo bays if applicable so that way the hub has an opportunity to be extended if the build calls for it before it gets flooded with all the other items needed.

BTW - I may only be a n00b on these forums, but have over 2.5K hours in game over the years just in case I am assumed to be a n00b from my forum stats

It could help if construction requests would only request items when at least one of the respective ghosts can be build. That way at the start only foundation would be enabled in requests.

[Tinyboss]

It could help if construction requests would only request items when at least one of the respective ghosts can be build. That way at the start only foundation would be enabled in requests.

That's a great idea! It would also tend to send up cargo bays early, since they're next to the hub and should become buildable well before most other things.

[mrvn]

It could help if construction requests would only request items when at least one of the respective ghosts can be build. That way at the start only foundation would be enabled in requests.

That's a great idea! It would also tend to send up cargo bays early, since they're next to the hub and should become buildable well before most other things.

And you would only get one rocket stack size per ghost type since it would request one stack of belts, then all the buildable belts are build and no second stack of belts would be request unless more can be build, i.e. the current stack of belts is all used up.

Given the number of slots the hub has and the rocket stack size of construction material (usually <= stack size) I consider it unlikely to deadlock even if it doesn't send up the cargo bays first.

[Tinyboss]

Given the number of slots the hub has and the rocket stack size of construction material (usually <= stack size) I consider it unlikely to deadlock even if it doesn't send up the cargo bays first.

Yeah, to me this is one of those solutions that's clearly right--very simple, and accurately solves the problem. It would even work for mods that added new kinds of platforms or cargo bays. I hope the devs see this!

[Khazul]

So my suggestion is to mirror the train network. In vanilla you can select the station by name and this isn't circuit controlled. And then there are mods that allow more dynamic use by either selecting the stations for you (e.g. LTN) or selecting stations by some ID scheme via circuit control. It would probably be good for the API to expose the station ID mentioned in the FFF and use that to target rockets.

When I was reading through the posted suggestion (hub addons) a while back, I found I couldnt support the feature as described, but that it had merit as a concept. At the time I didnt have clarity and what is needs to be so didnt comment. The only concept I had in mind was that it should be as similar to trains as possible. I had a few other ides to build on that (trains stops become 'orbital slots'), but not thought much about it since and they are clear enough yet to me to post on it.
But yes - basically being able to convert the whole planet hub / silo vs platform relationship into a train stop vs train type relationship does seem to be the answer for those wanting to do much more advanced control from the planet while at the time time, keeping it familiar as I would assume the kind of people who would want to do this have already done it for trains and there is already plenty of IP kicking around in terms of how-tos for trains that people could exploit.

[Khazul]

It could help if construction requests would only request items when at least one of the respective ghosts can be build. That way at the start only foundation would be enabled in requests.

Indeed - much more clearly stated as s solution