Names for rocket silos so requests can be scoped to certain silo groups

[jmillikin]

TL;DR

Rocket silos should have names (similar to train stations), and logistic requests from platforms should be able to request from specific silo names.

What?

This suggestion has two components:

• Allow rocket silos to have optional names. Multiple silos on a surface can have the same name, like train stations.
• Allow space platform requests to optionally specify a silo name. If set, only silos with that name will satisfy the request. Silos attached to a circuit network report the requests that match their names.

Why?

This makes it easier to allocate separate rocket silo capacity between bulk exports (science packs, planet-specific resources) and small-run exports (e.g. the outputs of a mall).

For example if I have a Fulgora factory that exports holmium plates in bulk to Aquilo and also has a bot mall, if a ship arrives with a request for plates then that request gets served by both sets of rocket silos, which drains my mall of holmium plates and takes up its entire silo launch capacity. I want to be able to configure the platform requests so they only get satisfied by the bulk export silos, which have their own dedicated train stations. Similarly on Vulcanus I want to export calcite and tungsten products without having them get drained out of the mall.

On Gleba I want exported bioflux to be served from specific silos that have fresh bioflux -- when bioflux is just pulled out of the general logistic network it might be quite stale. Draining the general logistic network also runs the risk of running low on bioflux-produced nutrients, which can cause sections of the factory to stall.

[neoChaos12]

While we wait for an overhaul to makes rocket logistics more train-like than logistic chest-like (requested in many forms, afaik), have you tried to play around with the logistic chest priorities? In my experience, SA makes it absolutely crucial to use buffer chests and requester chests appropriately. In your case, I would set up one or more buffer chests for the rocket silo stuff right next to the silo, fed using belts and trains (depending on throughput required) and let the mall use requester chests (with or without "request from buffer chest"). This should, ideally, make it so your bots will only pull items from the nearest buffer chest for the silo, although it might also cause the occasional item to be hauled from the silo buffer chests all the way to your mall. Using a buffer chest to collect the silo's requirements will also ensure that if your item production falls behind, your mall will get auto prioritized by your bots. Stationing a small army of bots nearby inside a bunch of roboports should also encourage the pathfinding to adopt this behaviour.

[jmillikin]

Waiting for an "overhaul" to completely change a core aspect of Space Age's logistics system doesn't seem like much of a plan -- have the devs even said they're considering such a thing?

Regarding your suggested workaround, I'm not sure I follow what you mean. Buffer chests are useful for ensuring resources have a pool near where they're going to be consumed, for cases where resources are produced slowly and transit time is a factor, but they don't change how rocket silos satisfy requests.

As a concrete example, say you've got a platform that requests 100k holmium plates and ferries them to Aquilo. You might then have 50 silos on their own logistics network, with a train station to deposit plates produced on the various small islands. When the platform arrives, the two queued up rockets in each silo send plates to the platform. Then the plates for the next shipment arrive over time while the platform is doing its delivery.

If you also have a bot mall attached to some silos, then 50k plates will be satisfied by the first batch of rockets from the main silo array, but some portion of the remaining 50k will be drained from the mall before the second batch of rockets are in launch position. Now the mall stalls out because it's got no plates, and (at least in my case) the mall's train stations aren't scaled for that kind of throughput so recovery takes a while.

[neoChaos12]

Waiting for an "overhaul" to completely change a core aspect of Space Age's logistics system doesn't seem like much of a plan -- have the devs even said they're considering such a thing?

No, I have no idea if the devs are considering it. I mentioned an overhaul here to imply that it's probably not going to happen anytime soon and that finding an alternative solution to your problem would probably make more sense.

Regarding your suggested workaround, I'm not sure I follow what you mean. Buffer chests are useful for ensuring resources have a pool near where they're going to be consumed, for cases where resources are produced slowly and transit time is a factor, but they don't change how rocket silos satisfy requests.

As a concrete example, say you've got a platform that requests 100k holmium plates and ferries them to Aquilo. You might then have 50 silos on their own logistics network, with a train station to deposit plates produced on the various small islands. When the platform arrives, the two queued up rockets in each silo send plates to the platform. Then the plates for the next shipment arrive over time while the platform is doing its delivery.

If you also have a bot mall attached to some silos, then 50k plates will be satisfied by the first batch of rockets from the main silo array, but some portion of the remaining 50k will be drained from the mall before the second batch of rockets are in launch position. Now the mall stalls out because it's got no plates, and (at least in my case) the mall's train stations aren't scaled for that kind of throughput so recovery takes a while.

So here's my point of confusion - if your base is large and organized enough that you can have separate roboport grids with train based supplies in the kind of numbers you just mentioned, surely it is trivially easy to just move your mall into its own logistics network? Or rather, isolate the rocket silo logistics network (as you mentioned) and completely circumvent this issue? I had assumed your base is small enough that separating the two logistics networks is not exactly feasible, hence leading to a prioritization issue. Requesting such a drastic change in how the rocket silos work for this seems like overkill, honestly. If I've misunderstood something, perhaps you can further clarify why having the mall in the same network is so important.

[jmillikin]

The mall and its silos are already in a separate logistics network from the bulk export silos.

To prevent the mall's silos from being used to satisfy holmium plate requests, the mall would have to be isolated from its own silos, which means every produced item needs to be transported from the mall into a requester->inserter->provider chest boundary wrapped around the edge of the silo logistics network. This gets pretty annoying, because the whole point of a bot mall is to be able to easily place ad-hoc production capacity for different items. It also means a lot of overproduction for intermediate items that might themselves be exported, because some need to be kept in the mall and some moved to the silo network just in case they get requested.


I don't consider adding names to silos and platform requests to be a drastic change.

[mmmPI]

I don't consider adding names to silos and platform requests to be a drastic change.

So if you add new silos, you need to add their name in all the platforms you have ? or by default they have no name and drain from anywhere breaking the naming scheme in use ? :/

[neoChaos12]

The mall and its silos are already in a separate logistics network from the bulk export silos.

To prevent the mall's silos from being used to satisfy holmium plate requests, the mall would have to be isolated from its own silos, which means every produced item needs to be transported from the mall into a requester->inserter->provider chest boundary wrapped around the edge of the silo logistics network. This gets pretty annoying, because the whole point of a bot mall is to be able to easily place ad-hoc production capacity for different items. It also means a lot of overproduction for intermediate items that might themselves be exported, because some need to be kept in the mall and some moved to the silo network just in case they get requested.

Ah now I get it. That's a fair point. I admit I cannot think of a better solution than to setup a combinator based system (this is actually quite easy) on the edge of your mall's logistics network that pulls in the items required by the mall silos (which now exist in a separate network) such that the mall silos always retain a full inventory. Once setup, your mall can still remain ad-hoc, assuming your mall export signal groups on your space platforms are setup to auto-sync with the combinator setup. This, I suppose, is one of those cases which Krastorio 2's tri-state roboports would've enabled easy handling of. Incidentally, this system could be extended with (e.g.) constant combinators corresponding to different planets or whatever other grouping of groups you'd like.

I don't consider adding names to silos and platform requests to be a drastic change.

I called this a drastic change because even though cosmetically it might look small, what you're requesting is that the system being used in the back-end be changed. Currently, rocket silos/landing pads seem to be using the logistics network system, effectively serving as some combination of very large requester chest with sourcing items from buffers enabled and passive provider chests. The change you're suggesting means they would instead act like train stops instead. Even if enacting the change is a single line of code, it is drastic in terms of the implications. Compare that to some softer changes discussed here that could also resolve your issue.