How to deal with space platforms that get hit very rarely?

[trancexpress]

I have some space platforms that get hit once every few days and I have no idea what hits them. How to deal with this?

So far I've been doing weapon upgrade research and quality upgrades for turrets... At some point the platform stops getting hit. Then I design a new one, it seems to work, I mass produce it, then it also gets hit once every few days.

So what do I do?

[Tertius]

I remember 2 reasons for your case:
- random appearance of a bigger group of asteroids. Solution: more turrets, better research, better turret placement (more narrow so asteroids far to the left and to the right aren't targeted.
- ammo shortage for one of the turrets. Happens especially if ammo supply is chained from turret to turret. Solution: less chains, faster inserters/bulk inserter for the first turret in the chain.

In my first builds I also had general ammo shortage at the end of a turn, so I added a waiting condition to wait for enough ammo.

[eugenekay]

Initial damage can happen for a few different reasons, from insufficient Ammo (reduce speed until it refills) to a clogged sushi belt (toss some stuff overboard when it gets Full) to a un-Lucky Big Asteroid. Multiple rows of Gun and Rocket turrets help to ensure that something will shoot at the incoming targets…. But once the damage is done the best thing to do is Stop making it worse!

You can use a Combinator Contraption to read the Platform Hub’s “Damage Taken” value; if it is above 0, stop Thruster Fuel from Pumping or being produced. The Programmable Speaker’s “Show Alert” feature is great for calling attention to the now-stalled ship. You can then inspect & Repair the damage, increase defenses, or add Damage Researches to the queue.

Good Luck!

[Xeonight]

Today's update (2.0.43) might be the fix for this. Something about the Asteroid spawn depending on everything else that happens first, it sounded like they made the asteroid spawning more important to fix it or something.

[Amarula]

In addition to these other good ideas for figuring out what went wrong and how to prevent it, I (being a belt and suspenders kind of person) prepare for things to go wrong anyway. A stack of repair packs is cheap enough to keep on hand. On my big ships where I am making copper anyway I include assemblers making green chips and repair packs. Some foundation, spare turrets, spare inserters, and spare belts so if something does go poof, it gets restored right away. I have my asteroid chunks on a belt so if I lose one asteroid collector it isn't immediately fatal, but depending on your design you might want spare collectors just in case.

[MEOWMI]

I guess the best you can do is hop into editor mode and test the ship at 64x speed for a while. You will want to make sure that your ship can get both repair packs and replacement equipment, because in the long run it is likely that something is going to get hit and destroyed. You wanna not have to worry about it.

I've not had great success with intuiting designs that won't ever get hit. I have seen some asteroids that come in from the diagonals at much higher speed than other asteroids, and those are usually the problem. It's a clear sign that more turrets are needed, even if they barely ever shoot they can still up being necessary.

For my next big ship design, I will probably have at least 3 rows of rocket turrets, with additional ones on the sides. Quality can make a big difference for rocket turrets, but at the edges it will also cause them to fire at sides on asteroids that will never be a threat.

[trancexpress]

Today's update (2.0.43) might be the fix for this. Something about the Asteroid spawn depending on everything else that happens first, it sounded like they made the asteroid spawning more important to fix it or something.

Hmmm I think this will help analyzing what is wrong with the platforms. So far I had to guess what went wrong, now I should be able to load the last autosave and watch...

[NineNine]

And you have to think about where the platform is when it is getting hit. The asteroids are different at each planet and all across the solar system.