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I'm using a tremendous amount of explosive rockets just to get my platforms back and forth to/from Aquilo. Each round trip consumes about 1000 explosive rockets (which I pick up from Gleba). At only 25 explosive rockets per rocket trip, it's taking a ton of resources just to keep platforms flying back and forth between Aquilo and the rest of the solar system. Am I missing something really obvious?

Check the asteroid recipes again and see if you can't find a way to make rockets on the ship

Researching the Technology for Advanced Asteroid Processing enables you to extract Sulfur from Carbonic asteroid chunks in addition to the regular Carbon. Together with the Coal Synthesis recipe you can then produce Explosives & Rockets locally on your Platform, rather than relying upon Imports from the surface of each planet.

Good luck!

Thanks to both of you who suggested making the rockets aboard the platform. It seems like I'm going to need a really huge platform to be able to make 1000+ explosive rockets in a single trip, but I'll give it a shot. Do people also make the piercing ammo on board platforms, too? I never even considered making the ammo on board because it seems like I need so much of it. But it does make sense in that I always have waaaay more asteroid minerals that I could ever use....

Most people make yellow ammo on their ships and don't bother with piercing rounds. Red ammo costs more resources per damage dealt, needs more complicated logistics, and yellow ammo already does plenty of DPS to medium asteroids even without the infinite physical damage researches.

Do you use target filtering on turrets, i.e. rocket turrets only on big asteroids, gun turrets on mediums, yellow ammo gun/laser turrets on smalls?
It might lessen the need for more expensive ammunition.

Muche wrote: Fri Jan 24, 2025 8:51 pm Do you use target filtering on turrets, i.e. rocket turrets only on big asteroids, gun turrets on mediums, yellow ammo gun/laser turrets on smalls?
It might lessen the need for more expensive ammunition.

I do, yes. And railguns on the huge asteroids beyond Aquilo.
With explosives at level 9, it still takes me about 1000 explosive rockets to make it from Gleba to Aquilo and back.

I don't think explosive rockets are useful with asteroids, just make regular ones.

jdrexler75 wrote: Fri Jan 24, 2025 9:06 pm I don't think explosive rockets are useful with asteroids, just make regular ones.

Explosive rockets have splash damage, so I thought they'd be better against big asteroids, especially when they come in multiples. Is that not right?

Somebody already mentioned Coal Synthesis, but if you don't have that you can also send explosives up, they have a rocket capacity of 500 IIRC, then you can use iron from space mining to make the rockets on the platform. It's how I get rockets on Gleba before coal synthesis.

Jarolleon wrote: Fri Jan 24, 2025 10:31 pm Somebody already mentioned Coal Synthesis, but if you don't have that you can also send explosives up, they have a rocket capacity of 500 IIRC, then you can use iron from space mining to make the rockets on the platform. It's how I get rockets on Gleba before coal synthesis.

Oh, thanks, I've completed the game recently, so yeah, I've got coal synthesis. I just never though of putting it on a space platform!

As far as I know, yellow rockets are going to be more cost effective.

NineNine wrote: Fri Jan 24, 2025 9:14 pm Explosive rockets have splash damage, so I thought they'd be better against big asteroids, especially when they come in multiples. Is that not right?

The splash damage doesn't matter against big single targets. And they're also basically three times as expensive, on account of needing triple the explosives; so you have no hope of breaking even on that unless you're hitting at least three asteroids with every single rocket. They only become better than normal rockets when asteroids are *extremely* dense, like at the Shattered Planet.

InUniverse wrote: Fri Jan 24, 2025 11:25 pm

NineNine wrote: Fri Jan 24, 2025 9:14 pm Explosive rockets have splash damage, so I thought they'd be better against big asteroids, especially when they come in multiples. Is that not right?

The splash damage doesn't matter against big single targets. And they're also basically three times as expensive, on account of needing triple the explosives; so you have no hope of breaking even on that unless you're hitting at least three asteroids with every single rocket. They only become better than normal rockets when asteroids are *extremely* dense, like at the Shattered Planet.

That's good to know. I'm trying to build a generic ship that I can use everywhere, so I'll incorporate explosive rockets into my new design, too. (I have completed the game, so I'm going to start heading toward the Shattered Planet ASAP).

Jarolleon wrote: Fri Jan 24, 2025 10:31 pm Somebody already mentioned Coal Synthesis, but if you don't have that you can also send explosives up, they have a rocket capacity of 500 IIRC, then you can use iron from space mining to make the rockets on the platform. It's how I get rockets on Gleba before coal synthesis.

Even with coal synthesis, I still decided I would rather ship explosives up to my Aquilo platform from Nauvis rather than making in situ. It basically only takes one rocket, so it doesn't cost much extra, and saved on quite a bit of infrastructure on the platform.