Planetary logistic help

[Necrosian]

So i unlocked Planetary Logistics Station(PLS) and and want to tear down old, barely functioning, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is my factory.

But before that i wanted to know what is the best use of the PLS is. Is it to siphon raw/basic materials into PLS to ship to further refining/utilization or setup mini refining hub and the ship refined mats further?

As in:
Mining machine > ore > PLS > Giant refining plant
Or
Mining machine > ore > Mini Refining hub > Assembly hub

[Romual]

Planetary Logistics Stations are basically inferior versions of Interplanetary ones. Only three slots severely limit what you can produce on a single PLS so you will need two or even more for a longer chains, especially if you go for proliferators.

You can use them for simply productions on the planet that doesn't need raw resource imports, since those will quickly start coming from other planets and it is better to setup first step on interstellar ones to eliminate secondary transportation stage (PLS -> IPLS) and increase interplanetary throughput.

[teron]

Refining planets are more for when after you get warpers for FTL flight between systems (note there is a seperate engine upgrade that logistics ships need to allow them to use warpers). Since ideally you want to set them up on worlds that have high % of available land.
E.g. stuff like Gobi or Hurricane Stone Forest, since they will usually be in the high 90% for build able area, thus a net positive for soil that you can use later on other worlds.

They are mainly nice since for example if you have an iron shortage, you can look at your iron world to see if it is an ore shortage, or you need to add more smelters.

One other major tip, (Intersteller Logistics stations) ISLs draw power and warpers from the requesting tower. This means that you can actually mine ore into an unpowered tower, and ships will still grab from it. This also applies to PSLs.

[josmith7]

On your starting planet you're going to be exhausting various ore veins and outcroppings, so once I get PLS I tend to centralize smelting around a PLS attached to a column, or 2, or 4 of smelters.

Then, depending on how close the ore outcroppings are, I'll use some combination of belts and drones to get the ore to the refining PLS.

On the one had this requires more PLS than putting smelting next to every miner. OTOH it means having to relocate smelting every time an outcropping starts to play out and the rate the miners there product ore starts to drop.



(Also, eventually you'll be able to start shipping things in from off-world, and having all your smelters hooked up to a PLS makes it pretty easy to replace on-planet mining with ores shipped in from off-world for smelting and use)

[LorDC]

1) Skip PLS. Just go straight to ILS. Cost difference ins negligible, but ILS are much more convenient.
2) Don't bother with optimizing delivery costs. They are negligible even if you do interstellar shippings on each intermediate product. E.g. saving cargo space by turning two ores into one ingot before shipping is pointless.
3) Since you are probably in mid-game I would recommend to go for a modular apporach where each ILS (or pair of ILS) serves a bunch assemblers that all do one recipe. Stick with a single size for all of your modules and make blueprints out of them. It allows for easy proliferation of inputs and scales well through copypasting.
4) Later on, when you can swap to blackbox-style design where each of you modules makes certain end product like carrier rockets or sails from raw ores.

[teron]

Originally posted by LorDC:

2) Don't bother with optimizing delivery costs. They are negligible even if you do interstellar shippings on each intermediate product. E.g. saving cargo space by turning two ores into one ingot before shipping is pointless.

As LorDC mentioned, even more so as you get more levels in Logistics Carrier Capacity which increases how much a drone and Logistic ship can carry, which has the impact of reducing the cost per trip. Also reduces your consumption of warpers if you are shipping full loads.

For example Logistics Carrier Capacity which is the first upgrade that effects Logistic ships adds 100 to its inventory. This taking it from 200 --> 300 inventory, which is a 50% increase in what it can move, thus a 33% reducing in the number of trips.

Eventually you will hit max logistic ship size of 2K, which means that on full loads you will be moving 10x what the initial ship could move in one shipment.

[Jeremiah Gottwald]

Big factor people tend to ignore when speaking of PLS vs ILS:
PLS can be build denser. A lot denser.

Input HUB and Output HUB on poles (eg smelter worlds) and the smelting columns made of PLS are a lot more space efficient than slapping down ILS.
Due to the space efficiency, the storage buffer of each world is bigger aswell.
Prduction worlds can import their stuff themselves. So the HUBs dont get overloaded with requests.

[Bobucles]

The thing is that being denser doesn't really help. The main limiting factor trends towards space highway access. The small towers don't increase space access, so the main chokepoints still apply. Big towers still have local drones, which are more than enough to handle local issues.

[Schalimah]

To answer OPs question: It is perfectly okay to work with PLS in the beginning.
I would recommend placing a PLS between some resource nodes and belting the raw material into it to be carried off for further processing.
This is basically what you will do in late game.
If you get to a new planet you will build an ILS and miners and reuse your already existing smelting infrastructure instead of rebuilding it on every planet.
In late game I rarely use PLS if ever.

Originally posted by Bolle:

Big factor people tend to ignore when speaking of PLS vs ILS:
PLS can be build denser. A lot denser.

Input HUB and Output HUB on poles (eg smelter worlds) and the smelting columns made of PLS are a lot more space efficient than slapping down ILS.
Due to the space efficiency, the storage buffer of each world is bigger aswell.
Prduction worlds can import their stuff themselves. So the HUBs dont get overloaded with requests.

You obviously can make that work but a polar hub would not be able to keep up with the interstellar throughput on my smelter world for example.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2806866878

[shoobers]

There's two advantages of PLS vs. ILS. One is already touched on. The second is power consumption. PLS do take less overall power to utilize. However, late game that is often negligible.

If you want efficient, and you have Multiple locations on planet you're working with forgewise, PLS can be useful. You'll plobably not care eventually though, and ILS will be fine.

[aphfid]

The advantages and disadvantages will vary depending on personal play style and preferences, and even from game to game depending on how much a player varies their approach.

Fortunately with this game, it's pretty forgiving and it's ok to try things out and experiment.

[kris44dad]

Originally posted by Necrosian:

So i unlocked Planetary Logistics Station(PLS) and and want to tear down old, barely functioning, cluste♥♥♥♥ that is my factory.

But before that i wanted to know what is the best use of the PLS is. Is it to siphon raw/basic materials into PLS to ship to further refining/utilization or setup mini refining hub and the ship refined mats further?

As in:
Mining machine > ore > PLS > Giant refining plant
Or
Mining machine > ore > Mini Refining hub > Assembly hub

I haven't read anyone else's comments on this, so my apologies to the others that like me, have honed this game to a fine art (and it is an art). But, my take...

Basic rule of DSP, if you don't need to reclaim the space and facilities are producing the planned volume, leave it be. There will be times in early game you have the smaller, and later game you build bigger. Both work.

The primary benefit of the PLS is channeling the product. In the case of ore, collecting from the advanced miners to an ILS. The same goes for a planet producing a thing. If you gather all of the "thing" to an ILS for shipment off-world, this provides two advantages.

1) It gives you a checkpoint to see if you are producing enough to satisfy demand, based on the bin state of the ILS. (As long as it doesn't end of being a bottleneck.)

2) Consolidating your product planetary outflow into one place, gives you a complete shipment that's ready to go, faster. Ten ILS on a planet with 500 units each goes nowhere, with default settings. That same 5000 units consolidated into one ILS, is two shipments ready and waiting. Out they go...

[Nihilius]

Originally posted by shoobers:

There's two advantages of PLS vs. ILS. One is already touched on. The second is power consumption. PLS do take less overall power to utilize. However, late game that is often negligible.

If you want efficient, and you have Multiple locations on planet you're working with forgewise, PLS can be useful. You'll plobably not care eventually though, and ILS will be fine.

Aditionally PLS keep ressources local. You can obviously set it that way in ILS, but there is a chance you missconfigure one.

[josmith7]

Another place I use PLS is when setting up an exo-planet just for oil extraction. I'll have an ILS somewhere on the planet hooked up to power (maybe a polar solar array, maybe ray receivers, maybe wind turbines, or maybe imported fuel/accumulators) with drones to pick up the oil and vessels to ship it offworld.

At each oil seep I'd still an oil extractor and a few wind turbines to power it. Then drop a (non-powered) PLS near each extractor (or local cluster of extractors) and hook up belts from said extractor(s). The PLS is set to supply oil, the ILS to local demand it, and so it'll set out drones to each PLS, pick up the oil, and bring it back for the vessels to ship away.


I could use ILS for that, but it seems a waste to use them for a single local supply oil slot; and I don't want to have to make and drag around enough power that each could globally supply its own oil.

[shoobers]

You could also run belts to the ILS from the seeps. Overall less demanding.

[kris44dad]

Originally posted by shoobers:

You could also run belts to the ILS from the seeps. Overall less demanding.

Depends on the amount of oil flowing. Once you hit 12 Level 3 belts worth...and there is some debate as to the throughput capabilities of Level 3 belts vs. drones, after a certain number of upgrades to the drones. I believe the drones eventually win out.