Designing a promethium ship is a great high

[MassiveDynamic]

So I have been working on my fully autonomous promethium gatherer ship for 4 days. It finally works flawlessly and I can't find words to express my delight. The balance of firepower and storage and speed and manufacturing decisions and scheduling factors all require intricate tweaking and adjustments until finally it works. It's like my first child taking his first tentative steps all by himself with me there ready to grab his hand to steady him, but resisting the urge to help. It nearly brings a tear to this old man's eye.

[MoDon]

My ships have a flaw I have not figured out how to resolve. Perhaps you figured it out.

How do I guarantee I will never have a scenario where the number of biter eggs imported to the ship is not a multiple of 10?

Whenever I think about just 'letting it run' I realize I run the risk of having some extra eggs expire.

[MassiveDynamic]

I have lasers and tesla towers to deal with hatchlings. I don't bother over-engineering the protection of biter eggs. Their lives are a donation to my cause.

[schorsch_76]

How do you automatically return to base when you are on the way to the outer edge of the universe? The 4 mil kilometers are for sure not traveled...

[Khazul]

How do you automatically return to base when you are on the way to the outer edge of the universe? The 4 mil kilometers are for sure not traveled...

Setup an interrupt on a signal to platform or a cargo amount depending on how you are storing the promethium. I have a signal on mine that triggers when a bit over half full on the assumption that it will collect more or less the same again as is already has.

[Khazul]

My ships have a flaw I have not figured out how to resolve. Perhaps you figured it out.

How do I guarantee I will never have a scenario where the number of biter eggs imported to the ship is not a multiple of 10?

Whenever I think about just 'letting it run' I realize I run the risk of having some extra eggs expire.

On the basis my rocket seem to be sending 500, I have wondered if the extra egg that gets stuck somewhere is a is a bug (not of the biter kind|), but I havnt made an effort to prove it yet. I should probably setup a circuit to count them coming out of the hub. I do already have circuits to ensure that no biters are picked up off belts and loaded into a cryoplant unless that cryoplant already has all the other resources to make a batch of science already present. I have inserts set to batch size of 10. All my promethium is accounted for, and yet extra egg now and then stuck in an inserter - as is if it put 10 in the machine and somehow duped one and kept it in the inserter. Not 100% sure yet, just lacking another explanation.

[MoDon]

My ships have a flaw I have not figured out how to resolve. Perhaps you figured it out.

How do I guarantee I will never have a scenario where the number of biter eggs imported to the ship is not a multiple of 10?

Whenever I think about just 'letting it run' I realize I run the risk of having some extra eggs expire.

On the basis my rocket seem to be sending 500, I have wondered if the extra egg that gets stuck somewhere is a is a bug (not of the biter kind|), but I havnt made an effort to prove it yet. I should probably setup a circuit to count them coming out of the hub. I do already have circuits to ensure that no biters are picked up off belts and loaded into a cryoplant unless that cryoplant already has all the other resources to make a batch of science already present. I have inserts set to batch size of 10. All my promethium is accounted for, and yet extra egg now and then stuck in an inserter - as is if it put 10 in the machine and somehow duped one and kept it in the inserter. Not 100% sure yet, just lacking another explanation.

Did you change your stack size on the inserter to 1 so it would only grab one at a time?

[Khazul]

My ships have a flaw I have not figured out how to resolve. Perhaps you figured it out.

How do I guarantee I will never have a scenario where the number of biter eggs imported to the ship is not a multiple of 10?

Whenever I think about just 'letting it run' I realize I run the risk of having some extra eggs expire.

On the basis my rocket seem to be sending 500, I have wondered if the extra egg that gets stuck somewhere is a is a bug (not of the biter kind|), but I havnt made an effort to prove it yet. I should probably setup a circuit to count them coming out of the hub. I do already have circuits to ensure that no biters are picked up off belts and loaded into a cryoplant unless that cryoplant already has all the other resources to make a batch of science already present. I have inserts set to batch size of 10. All my promethium is accounted for, and yet extra egg now and then stuck in an inserter - as is if it put 10 in the machine and somehow duped one and kept it in the inserter. Not 100% sure yet, just lacking another explanation.

Did you change your stack size on the inserter to 1 so it would only grab one at a time?

No - the egg inserter are stack inserters and are set to 10 which is intentional and is the amount needed for a science batch. The promethium science on this ship is intended to turn around 5000 biters eggs / 12.5K promethium in a couple of minutes, so speed is essential. Add to that rockets sending up in batches of 500 and all my promethium is exactly accounted for and the eggs were fresh out of spawners, so no stray hatchings. Rocket silo on the ground are emptied and eggs disposed off to avoid egg spoiling when a promethium ship is not present, and that has been carefully observed to ensure that remains true. Any eggs that would hatch get zapped by telsas and no zaps observed either, and yet sometimes I end up with a stray single egg in an inserter. The circuits and belts around the cryo planet are also setup to flush eggs overboard unless there are sufficient other required resources which is what happens when an 11th rocket gets sent up before the ship can escape Nauvis, but egg is already present by that time.

I will get around to setting up counter circuits at some time to get to the bottom of this. It is puzzling and annoying but not game breaking as the round trip time on the ship is short enough that the egg never hatches anyway. I sometimes reset it by deleting the inserter and undoing it, but if I don't then occasionally a second stray egg ends up in it.

[mindelos]

You people work fast I am still working on ship to reach Aquilo

[waterBear]

congrats @MassiveDynamic. Splace platform construction and usage is definitely one of the more fun and stimulating parts of the expansion.

[the_potty_1]

Hm. I reached the solar system edge, and went the extra 30k for the achievements, then called it done and moved on. Thinking Bannerlord, or Oxygen not included, or Baldur's gate or .. might do some Rome total war

Point is, I don't really feel the pull to do any promethium research at all. I do have a slight urge to get to the shattered planet, but it''s not strong, and my ship did take some damage just getting this far, so I'd probably have to redesign heavily, or just strip down to one or two engines and sneak the entire way. Actually, getting 30k means I've already gone almost 1% of the way. Here she is before I set of and lost some non-essential parts.

Hope.png (1.21 MiB) Viewed 642 times

[waterBear]

Hm. I reached the solar system edge, and went the extra 30k for the achievements, then called it done and moved on. Thinking Bannerlord, or Oxygen not included, or Baldur's gate or .. might do some Rome total war

Point is, I don't really feel the pull to do any promethium research at all. I do have a slight urge to get to the shattered planet, but it''s not strong, and my ship did take some damage just getting this far, so I'd probably have to redesign heavily, or just strip down to one or two engines and sneak the entire way. Actually, getting 30k means I've already gone almost 1% of the way. Here she is before I set of and lost some non-essential parts.

Gotta say, I love the way that ship looks. All my ships are boring (but effective!) squares.

Promethium research itself was not as motivating as reaching SP for me, either. It is a very fun challenge, but takes a lot of time to figure out what you need and what you don't.

[the_potty_1]

Thank you, I got vibes of some sort of stained glass window myself, I was very happy with it. Also, I haven't used beacons for like 5 years, I really don't think they used to be this good, have they been massively increased in power?

[waterBear]

Thank you, I got vibes of some sort of stained glass window myself, I was very happy with it. Also, I haven't used beacons for like 5 years, I really don't think they used to be this good, have they been massively increased in power?

Yeah, they did. Especially when using small numbers of them. Legendary beacons give a 2.5x multiplying effect, so putting 2 speed modules in 1 legendary beacon is better than 4 speed modules directly in the machine. Plus, L beacons only consume like 200 kW of power or something.

Speed modules also get insane with quality. They provide more speed bonus than power consumption, so it's actually more efficient to put quality speed modules in machines than it is to build more machines, which is nuts compared to 1.x.

[the_potty_1]

Well 2 legendary speed modules in a legendary beacon boost factory speed by 625%, so I had a single cryo plant pumping out 18 explosives per second.

18exp.png (1.52 MiB) Viewed 122 times

These in turn were processed into 4.5 railgun ammo and 11 rockets per second.

4rail.png (1.99 MiB) Viewed 122 times

[waterBear]

Well 2 legendary speed modules in a legendary beacon boost factory speed by 625%, so I had a single cryo plant pumping out 18 explosives per second.
These in turn were processed into 4.5 railgun ammo and 11 rockets per second.

Makes a huge difference, right? Such a small change to the ship for such a big change in output.