ILS production chain VS ILS Hubs

[RyuKajiya]

So I have build plenty of blueprints for modular production lines where I have an ILS to get in raw materials and depending on recipe also recieving the product or have a second ILS at the end of the line for the end product.
They are easy to use and can take care of everything themselves.

But I have played with the idea of centralizes import/export hubs. But my thoughts are always that this will cause bottlenecks at the hub. But I wonder if that is realy the case.

What I mean is have PLS at the production lines and maybe at a pole have ILS that bring in resources. Then use planetary drones to supply those to the PLS. Still wondering if also using the hub for exports or maybe have ILS that takes product of several production lines to export those.

Has anyone some experience with comparing the two?
As said my main concern is bottlenecking but is that realy a problem?

[Bobucles]

ILS throughput is practically unlimited. Stations can move multiple small ships and a large ship every second, and every single external station can queue routes at the same time. It's very possible for a station's queue to max out in 1 tick. Station do have energy limits for intergalactic travel, even at 300MW max load. They may need 5-10 seconds to recharge between each ship launch, for long distance travel.

The more likely limit is travel speed. Cargo ships reserve ILS space when they fly, so only 10-20k of resources can be in flight at once. You mostly have no control over who reserves what and how much space they're allowed to reserve. A station can reserve 20k of iron plate from a 5 minute route across the galaxy, so it has no room to order any plates from the neighbor 10 seconds away. The station starves because its queue got filled with scenic route transport.

Because of that lack of control, Hubs become very important for large scale travel. They're very simple to set up. The hub demands from off planet, and it supplies locally. The other ILS stations demand from on planet, and do not touch off planet. Oh, and set every station to 300MW recharge once you hit the star reactor stage. There's no reason to do less.

[Omniconda]

combination of both? the poles dont have alot to do on production worlds other then power and defences, so you can relieve any import bottleneck with extra ILS while maintaining ILS on the individual builds, i feel PLS on could limit imports if all ships are busy serving another tower.
ILS in with group settings at the poles might also be a good idea for targeted imports (strip a planet or system of res before you build on it)

also consider keeping intermediate production on planet with PLS while having the rest available.

[josmith7]

Yes, I've seen import ILS bottleneck - but it's uncommon, and usually happens when your logistics vessels are still very slow; before they've been upgraded. (But can also happen if you lack sufficient power production to turn the ILS charge rate up to the full 300 MW - especially if pulling for a source that lacks logistics vessels of its own)



The issue (when it becomes one) is that the the maximum amount of a given slot's material that can be inbound or promised to the ILS is equal to its inventory. And that's just 10 vessels worth. So if your factory can consume a vessel load of material faster than a vessel can make a round trip it'll end up stalling, waiting on the next vessel -- and early on logistics vessels might take a few minutes to make that round trip. (It'd certainly be nice if the game would notice that your consumption at that ILS was 2x or 3x as high as it's throughput and pipeline additional vessels from supply ILS to help fill it)


I mostly see this with my massive 'from faw' 2,250/min white science build. Early on a single ILS just can't feed the 20,644/min it wants of silicon ore; no matter how many ILS supply it. So until I research sufficient upgrades to logistic vessel engines I end up having to add an assisting ILS that also imports silicon ore and belts it into the blueprint's main silicon smelting ILS.

But a slightly related problem can be if you've got 2 or 3 high throughput items in the same import ILS and your don't have vessels and warpers in your export ILS - so the same 10 vessels have to handle importing all 4 or 5 items; and that cuts the throughput of each individual item below what your factory demand is. In that case you either need to rearrange which items go through which import ILS, add a 2nd ILS importing one or more of those high demand items, or add vessels+warpers to the remote exporting ILS to spread the load across more vessels.

[pemmons1]

My simple question is: Why transport a product two or three times when once will do?
Direct from source to destination entirely with ILSes. Why not?

[Bobucles]

(It'd certainly be nice if the game would notice that your consumption at that ILS was 2x or 3x as high as it's throughput and pipeline additional vessels from supply ILS to help fill it)

There are belt counters that can spring an alarm. I never used them, but they'd probably be the right tool to check if a supply belt has dried up.

I do wish that ILS could be given alarms. Getting an alert when a belt is dry is okay for most products, but you probably don't want an alert after a base runs out of fuel rods. It's already in deep danger at that point. I'd like to have alerts when an ILS resource gets low, so I could track critical things like fuel rods or proliferator and fix them before they run out.

My simple question is: Why transport a product two or three times when once will do?
Direct from source to destination entirely with ILSes. Why not?

Works very well, excellent for the entire campaign. The storage values can last a dozen minutes or more, the transport routes only need a few dozen seconds. No problems at all.

It falls apart in the megabase post game. A single belt can eat 120 resources/second. An ILS with 20k storage, feeding 2 belts, will run dry in under 2 minutes. The longest transport routes can last 5 minutes each way, closer to 2-3 minutes with higher tech. Long transport + small storage = your machines run dry.

That's where hubs enter the picture. The hub only has one purpose, to put more ships in space. More ships will give more throughput and get your long distance lines stabilized.

I don't really like how the ILS mixes both in-system transport and long distance warp travel. When everything is in system the ILS is rock sollid, nothing can really go wrong with it. When warp travel is added the ILS runs into more and more issues with spaghetti routes. The worst part is when long distance trips break the ILS's ability to work locally. It takes so much custom jankery to try making the entire network function well. Meh. I kinda wish there was more of a separation between short distance vs. long distance settings, so ILS could handle long routes without starving itself.