Friday Facts #441 - Space logistics improvements

[BanditFactory]

Platform-to-platform transfers are going to be great for upgrading existing space platforms with new buildings like quality asteroid collectors — you’ll be able to load them up into one platform that visits all the planets your other platforms visit, instead of having to either redirect your platforms or transfer small quantities of items to other planets.

Yeah I can already see it now, massive cargo ship that primarily acts as a logistic backbone for other platforms. It can gather materials the other platforms require, and also make a ton of items from the materials you get from traveling around in space. Basically a flying space mall with requests set up for harder to make items.

[thriem]

I have one "big" request - can the rocket spew "high density smoke" so it feels more like a rocket and less like a little too-eager match on fire?

I mean, like other fires do, just in big and probably white/gray.

[DwarF]

Awesome!, Now you only need to fix the tedious schedule problem. I know you can copy base between platforms but we need copy past inside the same platform schedule manager.

[m1das]

I see a lot of potential in controlling space platform hub requests with circuit conditions.
Although, It would be cool to be able to specify which planets the platform can import from. Maybe have an optional filter accepting only planet icons as a signal (with white and black lists), leaving default as "All" . Sort of like "Set filters" in inserters.
Other than that, looking forward to the next FFF, can't for 2.1

[motmontheinternet]

I don't want the rocket filled up with extra items just to fill it up. I never want to launch items unless I request that item unless it's a supply ship carrying calcite or something. In the case of supply, I always want a full rocket of one item. When the platform is building, I don't want any extra items under any circumstances, and I'd rather have one or two extra rocket launches because of that. The fact that the new system is saving rocket launches by prevent full stack spam is improvement enough.

I'm honestly not a fan of the rocket silo endlessly drilling a tube into the planet core, it's not satisfying to watch it work. Maybe add a gap where the tube fully descends into that hole and a new tube begins construction.

The rest of the update sounds great, especially platform to platform trade.

[Eternal]

holi shiet... ill defo start new "map" when this comes out... u tellin me all my problems got fixed???? holi shiet...

[cheetored20]

So, i haven't started reading the replies, but my first thought when reading the ability to change silo capacity was if quality silos would have a higher weight limit, or if there would be a quality production version of rockets.

[spacedog]

I really wish all circuit connection parameters had the little R and G buttons like Combinators do

Agree. That would be so nice for inserters too, comparing the red signal to the green signal in the condition for the inserter. Seems like low hanging fruit.

I can't see any universe in which they'd leave this out of 2.1. It's one of the most requested features, and for good reason since quite a lot of things that should be trivial to implement with trivial circuits are hard/impossible without it. It would be one of the biggest and most surprising misses for 2.1 to not have this.

[Breys]

These are great additions. I hoped these would make it into a space logistics improvement:

1. Cargo Landing pad can only be set to either Read Contents or Set Requests. Did you consider enabling both and assigning one to each of Red/Green networks?

2. On Space Platforms could you partition a separate inventory for items that are meant for the platform and not available to planetary requests? Example is a ship that is delivering nuclear fuel cells to a planet but needs to retain some for its own power. Having a row of inventory which you request to as a partition of total inventory would allow you to always stock certain items on a ship and not make them available to planetary requests.

Did you consider these and could they be possible to include?

[Hurkyl]

I'm a bit surprised that you went with the "sort based on request count" solution than the greedy solution (load heaviest items first). I'm curious how much difference it would make in terms of rocket utilization and in terms of "I was hoping that other item would come first" effect. And what gets overdelivered by the overdeliver to fill rockets procedure.

Especially since in my own experiment with the greedy solution (I coded it up in combinators before I realized mixed rockets wouldn't autodeliver) worked particularly well: item weights in Factorio seem to be the sort that works well for that.

[Chaoseed]

If you need to build a space platform, don't you just load the rockets manually?

[bobucles]

Nearly any item can be directly replaced with a matching item of different quality. However, the space ship hub does not have an equivalent item so it can't be swapped. I guess ship to ship transfer will make this relatively minor issue(quality only alters hp) a moot point. Just take the old quality ship, pack it all up, and launch it to the new quality ship.

[wizcreations]

Why am I not getting Friday Facts notifications by email anymore? Do I need to resubscribe?

[wizcreations]

Sounds like some great changes coming for 2.1!

One point of feedback: it would be more clear on item import to show an image of all planets rather than an empty selection.


I need to figure out how to use Custom Minimum Payload. That would fix the issue of "not enough items to fill one rocket," right? I'm thinking specifically of items that I request in large quantities but don't yet have enough in the logistics network to deliver. I have been struggling to get my rockets moving when I only have a portion of a stack. I'll often manually send an interplanetary ship onward when my production is bottlenecked on one planet. I'd rather not have other production completely shutdown waiting for a delivery when I can make a partial delivery.

[Lorewalker]

First off, the space logistics changes look fantastic. Mixed rockets, platform-to-platform transfers, and the new Radar Universe mode together are a huge step up, and I appreciate how openly the tradeoffs were laid out.

I wanted to suggest one thing: a diode on the rocket silo, telling you *why* it isn't launching. This would give some additional visibility into whether it's waiting on supply, holding for more requests, or about to fall back to a single-item rocket.

[FasterJump]

I Really like the mixed payload feature.

In 2.0 I used combinators to decide which material should go on the rocket, but it was a pain to keep the inventory clean, especially when multiple platforms are in orbit at the same time. My current circuit logic kind of work 90% of the time, but these 10% were a problem I hadn't solved yet.

Pipetting Recipe from item or ghost (feature request/suggestion)

There is one thing I would really like in 2.1: being able to select a machine recipe by "dropping" a held item (or held ghost item) in the machine UI. (some might say, what if there are multiple recipes? I would reply, this would work similarly to the "set recipe" circuit feature)
(I already know about copy paste from an assembler to the next with Shift+Right Click - Shift+Left Click)

[jackthesmack]

Will the problem be fixed where I can't set the pickup planet in my logistics group from a planet's surface?

Surface:


Space Ship:

[toths]

The platform to platform feature is seriously game changing and TBH, might even be a little over powered. I think there should be some cost to sending packages between platforms, or at least some sort of ship to ship launcher system kinda like how space exploration worked with their cargo guns. Being able to just get close to another platform in orbit and launch like 20 cargo drops between them seems both awesome and OP. Will have to play with it when it arrives.

[Hesiodich]

Platform to Platform is nice for ship building with quality items from fulgora, usually took 30min to get the asteroids shards and startup the spaceship, so shipping it to Nauvis is easier.

Are there any plans of reworking the Spacemap at its current state seems like an alpha freature, it can be improved in so many ways, planet sprites rotating, planets orbiting the sun, the path would follow a true orbit, also spaceships would orbit around planet not just a stacionary pixel... There are so many improvements that can be made there to make it feel more polished, it has quite some synergy with planet mods

[DarkArchitect]

I was waiting for some motivation to start a new run after 100% the game.

There goes my summer