What's your interplanetary logistics and Space Platform strategy?

[Lighthouse]

Train stations seem to me a little more straight forward - one-lane vs. two-lane, push vs pull stations, wagon count, locomotive count, etc... but with Space Platforms I struggle to come up with my own solution, so I would like to hear about your general strategy. I am reaching a stage in the game which renders my previous manual platform imports/exports too much of a hassle.
What is your general approach to setting your interplanetary logistics?

About Space Platforms:
What logistic tasks are your platforms dedicated for?

• highest granularity: one platform per item per quality per planetary (e.g. "Station XY is for 'Rare Quality(3) Modules from Fulgora to Nauvis'")
• connection specific: one platform per connection (e.g. "Station XY is for import/export between Nauvis and Fulgora")
• round-trips: platforms doing round-trips, stopping at several planet. (e.g. "Station XY is for import/export of Nauvis, Fulgora, Gleba and Vulcanus")
• What other approaches do you have or can you think of?

What is your general design approach?

• All (should) look generally the same?
• Special designs for each planet/connecting - considering the difference in chunk frequency?
• As fast as possible with as many Thrusters as possible? Or more like "3 Thrusters should suffice for about anything"?

What other Space Stations do you have setup for what orbit?

• Space Science in orbit of your research planet - for sure
• Carbon for some planets? Other stuff you generally drop from space to planets?
• Quality grinding in asteroid processing?

What do your Schedule Conditions look like?

• Do you usually wait for satisfaction of requests?
• Do you wait for a certain time or for a duration of inactivity?
• Do you do some circuit evaluation of your inventory, having some fancy condition setup not available in the standard list?

How about your Cargo Landing Pad?

• Does it only have static requests? Or is there anything dynamic about it?
• Would you rather opt to 'set requests' or to 'read contents'?
• Do you connect it (more or less) directly to your research labs or do you have considerable logistics between Cargo Landing Pad and labs?

How about your Rocket Silos?

• How do you fill them? Via "Automatic requests from space platforms"? Or via Requestor Chests, micro-managing what is sent? (I had a setup where I switched via Constant Combinator what shall be loaded in the array) - or else?
• How many Silos do you think are required for easy playthrough (i.e. not talking about mega-factories... more like 60 SPM)?
• Do you have one extra Silo dedicated for launching yourself into space or do you use the other silos inbetween?
• Do you try to have optimal Rocket launches or do you also regularly do rocket launches with only part of capacity used?
• Do you wire your rocket silos, "reading contents" or "reading orbital requests"?

I'm so curious about what y'all are doing out there.

[jaylawl]

Hey, i think this a great topic idea. And merry christmas.

Most of my space logistics are in a state of "it just works for now", a.k.a. spaghetti.

What i have figured out for myself though is that i really like to use dedicated, manually loaded rocket silos. (for example: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=124541) I do this to ensure a certain throughput for a certain item type and so that i never have to worry about bots loading the rockets. And there are so many ways this can be done. You can even make somewhat cursed designs where rocket silos are directly loaded by trains.

What i do use automated rocket silos for is manual request, which i make way too often. But never did i need to build a rocket silo just for transporting the engineer. There was always an idle rocket somewhere.

For a 60 SPM base you need just 1 rocket silo per science type. Even the slowest space platforms only take a couple minutes for a trip between planets, whilst a rocket has a capacity of 2.000 science. I use 4 dedicated rocket silos for 1.000 SPM from Gleba.

[ichVII]

[*]Space Science in orbit of your research planet - for sure

No. I am using a ship travelling between nauvis and vulcanis for that purpose, as it gets way mor chunks per time then a very large space station.

[Shulmeister]

I like the idea of using 1 platform per planet, static most of the time to complement with ressources from space, and using interrupts to have them fetch what be missing from a planet, like when tungsten plate or calcite is 0, go to Vulcanus and come back.

[Lighthouse]

[*]Space Science in orbit of your research planet - for sure

No. I am using a ship travelling between nauvis and vulcanis for that purpose, as it gets way mor chunks per time then a very large space station.

Travelling for additional chunks is surely one way to increase input - I didn't have that much SPM now and managed by just making a wide station. Didn't even require that much space. As soon as the footprint of the extended arms is bigger than the footprint of thrusters + fuel, travelling seems worth it.

I like the idea of using 1 platform per planet, static most of the time to complement with ressources from space, and using interrupts to have them fetch what be missing from a planet, like when tungsten plate or calcite is 0, go to Vulcanus and come back.

I was wondering what I would use interrupts for. This I will try.


And an idea for quality Gleba Science Packs:
I put Quality modules in my biochambers of Agricultural SP. But the rocket autolaunch does not work with mixed qualities, so I connected my Rocket Silo to an Alarm ('read contents') with an intermediate setup to add all different quality SPs together. When the rocket has 1k in total the alarm sounds.
To launch I just have to "klick Alarm symbol, klick silo, klick 'launch rocket', hit Tab". Usually works within under a second and I can do it mid-combat.
The Space Platform waits for circuit condition, which also adds up all different qualities of the Agri SP on the Space Station and is satisfied when 1k of any Q are present on the platform.
I have to admit this is growing more and more tedious and I seriously consider removing the quality modules...

[Tertius]

For interplanetary logistics, I'm treating the travelling platforms as travelling warehouses. Similar to travelling traders as in ancient times. They have fixed routes, and they have a fixed request list for every planet they visit to fill their stock. If some planet they visit happens to have a request that can be satisfied, the corresponding items are sent down. The next time they visit the planet where this item is provided, they restock that item.

The inventory is kind of fixed and dedicated, since if there is no planet requesting anything, the platform gets full and there needs to be space for every item in the platform request list. The requests of the platform are tailored to multiples of rocket capacity for the corresponding item. One rocket transports a batch of 1000 science packs, so a platform will always carry a multiple of 1000 of some science pack, for example.

On the ground, I'm still exploring 2 different request concepts. One concept is to keep a fixed request list in the landing pads. Since it is working like a passive provider chest, logistic robots will simply pull items out of it if there is local demand. I need to add cargo bays, if the landing pad gets full and I still need more items.

The other concept is to immediately empty the landing pad with inserters and move all items onto belts and into active provider chests, from where it is eventually carried away and is integrated into the local logistics storage heap. Some circuit logic computes the difference between logistics network content and some request list defined in a constant combinator. If there is some item below some lower threshold, and I defined this as item to request from space, one or more batches of these items (see rocket inventory size) of this stuff is dynamically requested within the landing pad. It's some combinators that compute these requests, and the landing pad is wired and set to "set requests".
This has more control over how many items are requested in one batch from some platform that happens to visit: it's usually either nothing at all or the whole stock of one item of the platform at once.

[GTG3000]

I just have a bunch of cyclers and requests like "nauvis -> gleba" that are also requested in the landing pad.
Need something, just throw it into the request. Eventualy it will arrive.

One exception is Gleba express, which delivers biter eggs, bioflux and gleba science as fast as possible directly to nauvis and back.