Logistic application for rockets: ST-esque beaming

[Lav]

TL;DR

New logistic application for rockets: beaming (Star Trek style).

What ?

Suggestion is to introduce a new satellite type - beaming satellite - and two chests to go with it (beaming requester and beaming provider chests).

Once launched into orbit, the beaming satellite is capable of beaming a certain amount of resources from placed provider chests and into requester chests. Throughput of a single satellite is quite low, but it doesn't depend on distance. If there are more requests for beaming than the beaming satellites can satisfy, requests will be picked at random up to the satellites' capacity.

Maybe: player's modules to enable resource beaming to/from player.

Why ?

The game currently lacks an option for "low throughput large distance" transportation. A typical application would be a supply line to remote outposts - right now player is forced to build a major supply line (railway, train, storage, refueling, bots etc) even if the outpost only needs a dozen ammo cartridges and couple repair packs per hour. This severely limits player's options as far as exploration and outpost construction is concerned.

Another useful application would be low-volume products like blue circuits.

Player's resupply in the field would also be quite helpful, allowing for longer and more ambitious rangings.

Beaming has extremely low CPU load (no moving objects at all!), so a megabase with a large number of rockets launched could increasingly replace logistic networks with map-wide beaming, thus improving game FPS.

[JohnyDL]

I like this, it would make sense of the beaming chests were bulkier (2x2) and hold many fewer items maybe relative to the number that could be transmitted so say the beaming is a stack per n ticks per satellite you then have the box able to hold 2 stacks and it only transmits full stacks to get rid of/reduce the randomness problem further

Player beaming might be something that can be done at/between silos, if this is part of the tech tree, as another thread recently mentioned viewtopic.php?f=6&t=53938

[Koub]

I think this belongs to the "mods" domain. I don't feel a "teleport eldricht techno-magic" thing has its place in the Vanilla Factorio (even though the idea is neat by itself).

[Lav]

I think this belongs to the "mods" domain. I don't feel a "teleport eldricht techno-magic" thing has its place in the Vanilla Factorio (even though the idea is neat by itself).

But Factorio does need some eldritch techno-magic. It's supposed to be in the future, and the entire theme is character's progress from scraps to modern technology. Modern for him though, not for us, and his modern technology already includes interstellar travel, force fields and portable fusion reactors. Beaming isn't that far off.

[JohnyDL]

I don't know, I mean scientifically speaking we already do quantum level information teleportation in labs and have for 2 decades, I remember reading somewhere we'd leveled it up to photonic teleportation, a critical step towards quantum desk top computing, I don't know how feasible matter transportation is IRL but it's only magic (imo) in the sense that Arthur C Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I wouldn't call it eldricht.

Portable Fusion Reactors are as science fantasy right now to us as teleportation, it relies on being able to make cold fusion workable amongst other issues, but calling it an Iron Man Arc Reactor rather than a Star Trek Transporter makes it seem a lot closer to the present just because Iron Man is set in the present and Star Trek is set in the future.

Given beaming would necessarily be after rocket launches I can see the point in it being a game extension (DLC or Mod) rather than a vanilla thing in some respects but I thought some of the movement in the 0.15 tech tree was deliberately to make the Rocket Launch not the end of the game, this kind of services that goal too. Making a need to balance science satellites with infrastructure ones, but we already balance the making of sciences with infrastructure and UPS requirements so that seems right in line.

The player teleportation extension might require not transporting other materials for 1 second, some matching fancy animation, at least 100 satellites (more depending on distance) and some recharge time so it's an expensive almost one way trip that has a huge cost to discourage use rather than I need to be over there, *pop*