Agricultual Science Pack

[Korsun7124]

Can we please get rid of spoilage on agricultural science packs. A small quality of life improvement that will make Gleba less painful. Hard enough trying to make items on Gleba, now it's a race to get the science packs to the lab. At least extended the spoilage time of agricultural science packs.

[Ranakastrasz]

Or at least add a leeway, where you have the top 20% or something during which it gives full yield.

[quineotio]

Can we please get rid of spoilage on agricultural science packs. A small quality of life improvement that will make Gleba less painful. Hard enough trying to make items on Gleba, now it's a race to get the science packs to the lab. At least extended the spoilage time of agricultural science packs.

I don't have an issue with needing to get the science packs to Nauvis quickly. But I do find it annoying that whenever I have Gleba science running I have to micro-manage the research queue. If there was a way to automate research so that it switched to something else when there was no Gleba science that would be nice. Or alternatively, if there was some way to remove the spoilage in a later tech - like freezing the packs in the cryo plant.

[Kyralessa]

I'm sure there are plenty of mods you can use to disable spoilage for the agricultural science pack, or even for everything if you like.

[meganothing]

Can we please get rid of spoilage on agricultural science packs. A small quality of life improvement that will make Gleba less painful. Hard enough trying to make items on Gleba, now it's a race to get the science packs to the lab. At least extended the spoilage time of agricultural science packs.

I don't have an issue with needing to get the science packs to Nauvis quickly. But I do find it annoying that whenever I have Gleba science running I have to micro-manage the research queue. If there was a way to automate research so that it switched to something else when there was no Gleba science that would be nice. Or alternatively, if there was some way to remove the spoilage in a later tech - like freezing the packs in the cryo plant.

You might not have realized, but you can safely let the science packs from gleba spoil when you don't need them. There is absolutely no cost involved. All stuff on gleba is infinite, including the science packs and the material to send a rocket up to the platform. Fuel and ammo on the gleba-nauvis line is infinite. Dropping the stuff from space down to nauvis is free.

So just increase your production of those science packs so that you always have enough on nauvis. If that leads to massive spoilage when they are not needed, who cares?

[quineotio]

You might not have realized, but you can safely let the science packs from gleba spoil when you don't need them.

Yes I know, I do this. The problem still exists though for a few reasons:

1. Gleba science production is not high enough to equal the science I've already built on Nauvis - which is almost always the case, especially in the beginning, and even after it's probably a good idea to have higher production of other science packs so that Gleba science doesn't spoil on the belt. You want Gleba science to be used as quickly as possible, which means having a higher production of other science and excess lab capacity.

2. Gleba science comes on a rocket, which means is gets delivered in batches, and therefore consumption is spikey.

So it would be nice to be able to automate research somehow, or otherwise remove the spoiling aspect so I could build a buffer. I think the cryoplant would be good for this - it's an underutilized building at the moment, and you'd already need to have solved the initial Gleba challenge before you get it.

As it is, I hook up an alarm to the lab section that tells me when agricultural packs are there, which helps me to switch techs manually, but it's fiddly.

[NineNine]

You might not have realized, but you can safely let the science packs from gleba spoil when you don't need them.

Yes I know, I do this. The problem still exists though for a few reasons:

1. Gleba science production is not high enough to equal the science I've already built on Nauvis - which is almost always the case, especially in the beginning, and even after it's probably a good idea to have higher production of other science packs so that Gleba science doesn't spoil on the belt. You want Gleba science to be used as quickly as possible, which means having a higher production of other science and excess lab capacity.

How is this a problem? Build bigger!

2. Gleba science comes on a rocket, which means is gets delivered in batches, and therefore consumption is spikey.

How is this a problem? Build more rockets!

So it would be nice to be able to automate research somehow, or otherwise remove the spoiling aspect so I could build a buffer. I think the cryoplant would be good for this - it's an underutilized building at the moment, and you'd already need to have solved the initial Gleba challenge before you get it.

If you want a buffer of Ag Science, it means you need to build more of it.

As it is, I hook up an alarm to the lab section that tells me when agricultural packs are there, which helps me to switch techs manually, but it's fiddly.

Again, it sounds like you just need to build a lot more Gleba Science. Not a bug. Not a problem. That's how the game is designed to be played.

[The Phoenixian]

It sounds like a big part of the issue here is getting the freshest possible science packs to Nauvis. Especially as Robots aren't picky about which packs they take. If I'm reading the issue right, I'd like to make a suggestion based on my own run in with that problem: have you tried a freshness sorter?

Attached is a design I use to ensure that logistics shipments only send items above a certain freshness. Two chests, Three inserters, the last of which can only pull out spoilage. One chest for storage and retrieval, the other for fermentation. This version is geared towards robot logistics, and has some added since that's generally where the control is needed.

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Copy blueprint

For a basic overview:
Input Line -> Inserter -> Provider or Storage Chest -> Inserter -> Non-Logistics Chest -> Filtered Inserter (Spoilage Only) -> Output line

The amount of freshness is tied to the ratio of the size of the two inventories, so a setup with a fermenting chest that's set to hold twice as much will keep the items in the first chest at around the top third of freshness and the bottom two thirds will fall into the fermentation chest.

Limits: Stacks cannot be allowed to mix and average their freshness. In order to prevent this, the inserter feeding the setup and the inserter moving items to fermentation cannot be allowed to move at the same time. This will require some combinator logic, and my own work is fairly jank, but should be functional. (In theory you can get away with just wiring the first inserter to the fermentation chest and putting an "only active if fermentation chest has every slot filled" condition on [ Exact Item = stack size * slot count] but in practice it locks up if too much is pulled out at once and has to be manually reset.)

Final caveat that this version is also built with the assumption of modest production on Gleba (Around 180-240 min, or four-to-six agri-science chambers at constant output) and frequent shipments, whether or not they're needed on Nauvis. I'd expect it to still work perfectly fine for a setup that doesn't have those assumptions, but I haven't tested beyond that scope so it might need some tweaking.

[trancexpress]

For me it was sort of a psychological barrier, always needing to use up agricultural packs because making them at the start was a pain. At some point (as suggested above) I just upscaled them and started letting the unused ones rot. From then on I had no issue with them spoiling, they just get made for free (as also pointed out above).

[Tertius]

Attached is a design I use to ensure that logistics shipments only send items above a certain freshness.

What for? As soon as a pack exists, its freshness doesn't matter in comparison to another pack. Just ship all and use all. Make sure all packs have best freshness in general, but there is no advantage in sorting out packs more spoiled than others. If you feed all packs to your labs, you have some science throughput. If you sort out packs, you have less packs, so you have lower science throughput. Every single pack counts, no matter the freshness. The task is to ensure best freshness in general, for all packs. Optimize the whole workflow from farm to lab consumption. This is what you need to work on, not on sorting out sooner-to-spoil packs.

[The Phoenixian]

Attached is a design I use to ensure that logistics shipments only send items above a certain freshness.

What for? As soon as a pack exists, its freshness doesn't matter in comparison to another pack. Just ship all and use all. Make sure all packs have best freshness in general, but there is no advantage in sorting out packs more spoiled than others. If you feed all packs to your labs, you have some science throughput. If you sort out packs, you have less packs, so you have lower science throughput. Every single pack counts, no matter the freshness. The task is to ensure best freshness in general, for all packs. Optimize the whole workflow from farm to lab consumption. This is what you need to work on, not on sorting out sooner-to-spoil packs.

I originally went into the idea because I was curious to see if I could come up with a way to avoid shipping half-spoiled bioflux when there was better available, but in my current run Gleba production outpaced the bottleneck on science, I decided I'd put it to use.

At the end of the day, It's was a fun design challenge, and it felt like it might be useful in some scenarios. Like massively overbuilding some part of Gleba production without affecting shipments offworld. Larger crop, pickier eatings, and all that.

[pioruns]

Related question:
How can I detect if biolab has stalled? I would like to use this to manually switch from one research to another. For example if I run out of Fulgora bottles, alarm will trigged that biolabs have stopped and I should switch to Gleba research. I use requester chests to feed biolabs.

[quineotio]

Related question:
How can I detect if biolab has stalled? I would like to use this to manually switch from one research to another. For example if I run out of Fulgora bottles, alarm will trigged that biolabs have stopped and I should switch to Gleba research. I use requester chests to feed biolabs.

You can read the contents of the belts and set up an alarm to show you when there are no bottles on the belts.

[pioruns]

Related question:
How can I detect if biolab has stalled? I would like to use this to manually switch from one research to another. For example if I run out of Fulgora bottles, alarm will trigged that biolabs have stopped and I should switch to Gleba research. I use requester chests to feed biolabs.

You can read the contents of the belts and set up an alarm to show you when there are no bottles on the belts.

Thanks, that will definitely work. But I feed from requester chests directly into biolabs, will have to think if I can figure something out without adding belts

[The Phoenixian]

Related question:
How can I detect if biolab has stalled? I would like to use this to manually switch from one research to another. For example if I run out of Fulgora bottles, alarm will trigged that biolabs have stopped and I should switch to Gleba research. I use requester chests to feed biolabs.

You can read the contents of the belts and set up an alarm to show you when there are no bottles on the belts.

Thanks, that will definitely work. But I feed from requester chests directly into biolabs, will have to think if I can figure something out without adding belts

Another option for a chest based design is the "read working" logic signal in the biochambers. Which will output one signal per each linked chamber. Could help you check not only whether your science production is working or stalled, but also how much of it is working.

[quineotio]

Thanks, that will definitely work. But I feed from requester chests directly into biolabs, will have to think if I can figure something out without adding belts

Do the same thing, except connect the chests.

[Kyralessa]

You can feed with inserters from biolab to biolab. But you should use a design that allows pulling out spoilage, since agricultural science packs can spoil in your biolabs.

[pioruns]

Thank you for the answers.
I currently attach requester and active provider (for spoilage removal) to each biolab. But I think I may redesign my tile slightly to have one requester per several biolabs, to save drone utilisation. I only need to check one biolab for stalled work to make alarm, so I will figure out where to do circuit checking.

[adam_bise]

ooor u can set ag science to 99 hour spoil time by changing the spoil rate in map settings file

[pioruns]

ooor u can set ag science to 99 hour spoil time by changing the spoil rate in map settings file

Will that disable achievements?