How do you guys manage the new ILS priority system?

[The Doctor]

Just looking for optimal ways to make use of the Group/Routing/P2P systems and when/where I should be using them.

Right now (and this is probably the incorrect use of the system) I have a setup where on my main planet, I set each and every single one of the ILS's to Group 1, as well as setting the ILS groups on other planets in the same system to Group 1. When I hyperjump to a different system, I set any ILS there to be in both Group 1, and Group 2, and ill make any ILS there with that config as well. In another system it would be Group 1+Group 3, etc. Basically the hope is that the ILS's will pull from within a system first, and then when the system is exhausted, they pull from the main (1) group.

How are you guys going about the grouping system?

[josmith7]

I largely don't.
The only time I do is when for some silly reason I'm trying to exhaust a given planet's resource and so I set up a route between it and the systems that have the highest demand for the prioritized exported resource(s).

[Bobucles]

That's the neat part, you don't. Priority isn't needed for the most part, however ILS stations can stall themselves by reaching too far for resources and running dry while waiting. Haul in resources from across the galaxy using dedicated ILS towers, then have work stations pull resources only using local demand. The ILS towers empty out with full blue bars, and the work towers can stay full.

The only thing that needs real priority management is hydrogen. Several processes make it, several processes consume it, and the order it gets consumed is very important. If too much hydrogen gets imported from gas giants, the whole system clogs up. Everything else can be produced non stop and won't cause any real issue.

[Shiroe]

I try to tweak those settings a bit to try and have one import/export hub per starsystem, but any ILS with warpers can still yank stuff from any random ILS set to supply on any random planet; at best you can have them prefer certain ILSes over others.

[The Doctor]

Originally posted by Shiroe:

I try to tweak those settings a bit to try and have one import/export hub per starsystem, but any ILS with warpers can still yank stuff from any random ILS set to supply on any random planet; at best you can have them prefer certain ILSes over others.

So is what im doing with the groups as good as it can be then? In that it should prevent stray systems from getting involved?

[Bobucles]

The only priority system that really matters is to make orbital collectors low priority so they get harvested last. However, low priority is not an option.

Every single hydrogen producer and consumer needs to be in a network, have their orbital collectors disabled, set to high priority, and then a separate network of orbital collector harvesters get the normal priority. It's a very involved process and a single mistake will ruin the entire setup.

It is far easier to set up lines of hydrogen burning power plants so they can soak hydrogen production. Gas giants produce such a huge amount that they won't be hurt. Hydrogen burners also suffer from lack of burn priority. They require a large energy exchanger network to burn reliably.

Basically, the simple and foolproof solutions are not available. You have to work very hard to get janky fragile solutions. ILS priority doesn't really help for the important problems. The problems ILS priority can solve never cause real issues in the first place.

[josmith7]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

The only priority system that really matters is to make orbital collectors low priority so they get harvested last. However, low priority is not an option.

I'm confused -- I've always found the game to automatically prioritize ILS sources of hydrogen/deuterium/fire ice over those from orbital collectors. No explicit prioritization needed.

The only times I run into trouble was where I'd inadvertently set up some planet where it was both importing and exporting hydrogen and the imported hydrogen could move to the export ILS stations. At that point the system could clog because that planet would effectively be laundering the orbital origin of those materials and making unlimited amount available at the same priority as any other ILS (though with the new group system you could deprioritize those infinite ILS sources -- but it still seems better to simply not create such loops in the first place)

[Shiroe]

Unfortunately there indeed isn't a "not" setting. Neither is there pairing to be done _from_ Orbital Collectors, so for my Fire Ice gas giant I ended up naming them all, so I could point-to-point pair them all from 2 ILS-es on the planet orbiting it. (I wanted to process that fire ice/sec from planet C2 on planet C3, but unfortunately an ILS on planet A4 was all "Oh, that fire ice on C2 is more tasty that the fire ice mined from veins on planet B3, so let's warp logistics vessels to C2 instead", starving the factory I just built on C3. Hopefully those 2x20 P2P pairings allow C3 to nab the fire ice from C2 before the ILS on A4 can. (Don't feel like doing the inefficient thing of giving the ILSes on C3 warpers so they can grab from B3...))

[pemmons1]

I set many ILSes to group 1 on the planet with a Dark Fog farm, to help ensure that the loot is removed and put to use. Another planet producing turbines, for example, can have an ILS behind the production line to receive motors, coils, gears etc. and feed them into the process. This ILS will also be set to group 1, perhaps exclusively.

[Bobucles]

I'm confused -- I've always found the game to automatically prioritize ILS sources of hydrogen/deuterium/fire ice over those from orbital collectors. No explicit prioritization needed.

It seems more like a free for all to me, but towers tend to favor the closest things. If a ILS has spare room it will grab hydrogen, and it doesn't really care where the hydrogen comes from. If any single one of those sources has orbital collector access, then your hydrogen imports will be uncontrolled.
There probably is a clever, simple ILS solution that gets everything balanced out. Burning hydrogen will at least prevent deadlocks.

[Shiroe]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

I'm confused -- I've always found the game to automatically prioritize ILS sources of hydrogen/deuterium/fire ice over those from orbital collectors. No explicit prioritization needed.

It seems more like a free for all to me, but towers tend to favor the closest things. If a ILS has spare room it will grab hydrogen, and it doesn't really care where the hydrogen comes from. If any single one of those sources has orbital collector access, then your hydrogen imports will be uncontrolled.
There probably is a clever, simple ILS solution that gets everything balanced out. Burning hydrogen will at least prevent deadlocks.

I guess for now the only workaround for such gas giant resources would be to have all processing done in-system and have zero warper-equipped ILSes have a slot for hydrogen/fire ice/(any others?) in any of the other systems.

[josmith7]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

I'm confused -- I've always found the game to automatically prioritize ILS sources of hydrogen/deuterium/fire ice over those from orbital collectors. No explicit prioritization needed.

It seems more like a free for all to me, but towers tend to favor the closest things. If a ILS has spare room it will grab hydrogen, and it doesn't really care where the hydrogen comes from. If any single one of those sources has orbital collector access, then your hydrogen imports will be uncontrolled.
There probably is a clever, simple ILS solution that gets everything balanced out. Burning hydrogen will at least prevent deadlocks.

Yes, if you have an ILS that's able to export hydrogen that originally came from an orbital collector things will go wrong.

The clever simple solution (in my experience) is to endure that:
If an ILS is remote demanding hydrogen and locally supplying it then no ILS on that planet shall both local demand and remote supply hydrogen (no re-export).

It's perfectly safe (again in my experience) for a planet to have:
a) An ILS remotely demanding and only outputting on belts for local consumption.
b) An ILS remotely demanding and locally providing as long as all local demand sources are either PLS or have remote set to demand or storage
c) An ILS remotely supplying hydrogen as long as that's all locally produced hydrogen (for example byproducts of cracking fire ice or refining oil)

In those situations, even if I've got a gas giant with 40 collectors all 100% full of hydrogen an ILS on its satellite will prefer to send a vessel warping halfway across the cluster to grab hydrogen from an ILS with remote supply over sending it a fraction of an AU to get hydrogen from the gas giant's collectors.



The only other trick is to set up your belts or whatever such that if you're trying to both produce and consume hydrogen locally that that local hydrogen had priority over any imported hydrogen of any source. Otherwise it'll back up with no place to go and jam your production lines.

[pemmons1]

The output of a Dyson Sphere around an O-type star is amazing. Even though a single shell is only 15% constructed, I can't always keep up and maintain a good balance that converts photons to fuel rods and anti-matter for research. At present I have apparently overbuilt fuel rod production, leaving research starved.

I want to prioritize research, which is on the home planet. All other related production is on a planet around the O star. This means that most transport is local, via drones. Only the anti-matter for research must be inter-planetary. Anti-matter and anti-matter fuel rods are being made at several sites on the planet. Can anyone suggest a strategy to transport anti-matter home as a top priority? (I suppose I must convert a PLS to an ILS. Whenever I use the former, I live to regret it). Does the priority system work for drones, or only for vessels?

[Shiroe]

Originally posted by pemmons1:

Does the priority system work for drones, or only for vessels?

Only for vessels. Sounds like lowering fuel rod storage sizes in the output PLSes, so (over)production is halted for a while, would b the thing to do.
(And drones can be so troll at times: have 2 identical factories that turn A, B and C into D, but don't have enough supply of A, B and C to completely fill the PLSes of the 2 factories to the set mark, and see 1 factory have 100% A, 0% B and 50% C, while the other having 0% A, 100% B and 50% C and both intermittently running unless I boost supply of A and B...)

[josmith7]

Originally posted by pemmons1:

The output of a Dyson Sphere around an O-type star is amazing. Even though a single shell is only 15% constructed, I can't always keep up and maintain a good balance that converts photons to fuel rods and anti-matter for research. At present I have apparently overbuilt fuel rod production, leaving research starved.

I want to prioritize research, which is on the home planet. All other related production is on a planet around the O star. This means that most transport is local, via drones. Only the anti-matter for research must be inter-planetary. Anti-matter and anti-matter fuel rods are being made at several sites on the planet. Can anyone suggest a strategy to transport anti-matter home as a top priority? (I suppose I must convert a PLS to an ILS. Whenever I use the former, I live to regret it). Does the priority system work for drones, or only for vessels?

You can fudge the prioritization of drones by messing with the minimum load slider. A PLS (or ILS) that's set for 90% minimum load will get materials at higher priority than one set at 100% minimum load (even if the supplying PLS/ILS has more than that minimum number of items. And one set at 80% gets delivery priority over one at 90%.

So you can ensure that the ILS which is exporting antimatter get prioritized over the PLS that are making fuel rods by lowering it "Min. Load of Drones" setting below that of that PLS.


(This is kind of a brute force prioritization as it'll apply to all the items the ILS handles, not just the antimatter -- and if set too low that min. load setting can cause a bunch of extra flights, using up a bunch of unnecessary energy)