value returned by "read orbital request" is useless, orbital request aligned to custom or default (which applies) rocket capacity would make sense, but that cannot be determined on the planet. "rocket capacity" calculation of the "selector combinator" yields inapplicable values.
longer version:
When having active request on space platforms and rocket silos with "read orbital requests" active, the reported amount looks good at the first sight but is a meaningless value and is not suitable for circuit automation.
Look at the following example:
- bad-orbital-requests.png (177.78 KiB) Viewed 133 times
I have made few setups, neither of them is working because this number cannot be used for further precise automation.
The argument of having the rocket capacity at the selector combinator might appear to be a solution, but it is not - later on that.
I made (among others) a rocket station that is an isolated logistic network (makes sense on fulgora both by distance and also to prevent bot damages), that automatically requests the missing materials by train. Read orbital requests, subtract logistic network contents and on the way amount, then send this as a request to prepare missing materials for transport by putting the signal on the radar. Well, the trains deliver the three accumulators, the requested amount is available at the rocket so no more accumulators will be transported here, but the rockets still does not start since "Not enough to fill one rocket".
One could argue that the "rocket capacity" calculation of the "selector combinator" is made exactly for this reasons. But that does not work well for me, too. I craft some rarely-needed materials only on space request, exactly matching the requested amount (eg. quality equipment for spidertrons used on multiple surfaces do not need mass production, especially that unlocking legendary quality makes already produced ones obsolete) - and for these (and even more) materials, I often set a custom rocket capacity, that is usually the stack size multiple times, which is not always a multiple of the rocket capacity.
Given the hypothetical example of stack size 50, orbital request 50, rocket capacity 200, custom minimum rocket payload of 50 - don't want to have too much of all the rarely used materials in the space to save a few more cargo slots, requiring less cargo bays in the end. If I would take the "rocket capacity" calculation here, i would end up at producing 200 pieces, sending up 200 ones to drop 150 back to the planet right after that. This takes longer, especially for on-request produced parts, and I end up with unwanted trash on the planet.
One could also use some constant combinator logic on the planet with hardcoded custom rocket cargo sizes. But that would be very inefficient if using different custom cargo sizes on different rockets (eg. different minimum payload for fulgora-gleba ship than for fulgora-nauvis), resulting in more and unnecessary rocket lauches, wasting materials and time again (like up to 4 times more rocket launches in the previous example).
What remains is for people trying to do like me, stuck space platform requiring manual intervention, with no real solutions except than launching rockets by hand or living with the inefficient setups.
Something like either
- read smallest minimum payload across all waiting platforms for each requested item
- read all orbital requests aligned with the minimum payload of each waiting space platform
would solve this issue and allow creating efficient setups, what the main goal of this game is.
