Purpose of Flight Control Center?

[Shelly]

At this point the flight control center seems useless and is just a worse landing pad.

Cons:

• It requires 100 energy to maintain (landing pad zero)
  
• it uses 5 CPU (landing pad 1)
  
• It has 4 Ouput belts but no storage plus it wont accept the materials i purchase which are still landed in a manually placed cargo pod
  
• it has 4 input belts but as said above no storage it will only accept materials that are required for the current cargo pod to deliver.
  
• 4 belt inputs without a storage inside the FCC is not a build and forget solution if you want more than 4 different resources they block each other in merged belts.
  
• 5 fully upgraded hauling drones with a nearby places storage load a cargo pod faster than a mk5 belt
  
• it is very costy to build compared to a simple landing pad and takes up way more space
  
• it only accepts one cargo pod at the same time

Pros:
i dont see any

So whats the purpose of this thing?

[resonance]

It's an auto loader. Belt your stuff in one side and back out the other in a loop to storage bins and drones don't ever need to touch it. At least that is what it is supposed to be. The stupid hauler drones insist on ignoring orders and delivering to it even when you say not to, which is extra annoying since once they decide to jump in, the belt just stops loading to let them get their stuff in... even if they are way underground and across the map.

[jed]

I've found it useful in early/mid-game when most of my contracts are for the 5 basic products (concrete, steel, silicon, aluminum, titanium). I belted those 5 up with a conveyor lift and into the FCC. As long as the contract is just for those 5, it's a far quicker way to load the cargo pod than drones (again, early/mid-game, maybe not late game).

[Bodger]

I have not used the FCC, but have noticed that vast majority of my allowed time for a contract is the amount of time it takes to load the cargo pod on the pad. So maybe that is a good solution for that, perhaps will try it.

[Shelly]

Ive built this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3299262768

Storages next to the landing pad/FCC and i am running 30 hauling drones with priority set to max.
I checked the time and they loaded a large cargo (9000 tons) of silicon (1800 pieces) in exactly 16 seconds (4x speed) after the contract was accepted.
A mk5 belt can carry 600 pieces per minute (thats 2400 per minute on 4x speed), which means you need 2-3 MK5 belt inputs of the same resource to match this speed. The only advantage is that the loading get automated without keeping drones busy, but seriously my drones in this stage of game are permanently "idle" when i dont have an active contract.

Plus 4 belts input limit yourself to 4 resources only as merging belts with different resources causes a deadlock.

[resonance]

Originally posted by Shelly:

Plus 4 belts input limit yourself to 4 resources only as merging belts with different resources causes a deadlock.

That is what the outputs are for. You have everything go through and loop back around to the storages, so everything is constantly flowing. It will take what it needs as it comes through and spit out the rest. Only downside is needing to make sure you have more than adequate storage, because once of those fill up, then it will cause the line to backup.

[jhughes]

You can do all items with one belt in a loop using filters on the conveyor connectors .. you can run everything out on one bus, and run that in a loop, filter the output back into the storage (only take X back here) Anything not loaded goes back into storage.

[Lexx Lothar Sloan]

Not being able to direct a market pod to the FCC is a significant oversight, as is its inability to accept slag. Slag is produced in enormous quantities, it makes perfect sense to be able to put it it on a conveyor to the FCC and free up your drones for more important work.

[Shelly]

Originally posted by resonance:

Originally posted by Shelly:

Plus 4 belts input limit yourself to 4 resources only as merging belts with different resources causes a deadlock.

That is what the outputs are for. You have everything go through and loop back around to the storages, so everything is constantly flowing. It will take what it needs as it comes through and spit out the rest. Only downside is needing to make sure you have more than adequate storage, because once of those fill up, then it will cause the line to backup.

interesting i didnt come up with that but putting all kind of resources in a loop lowers the speed of charging a specific resource even more as the carry capacity of the belt is shared by all types of resource.

I am still not convinced that the automated setup that doesn't require drones make up for 5 CPU and 100 energy usage especially when drones do the job faster (ye drones require CPU, i know). especially since drones have basically nothing else to do in late game than loading cargo trucks or cargo pods.

but i think its a matter of preference i prefer drones for maximum versatility.

[VladK02]

It's mainly to sell bricks right now.

All about auto-loading the enormous quantities of bricks.

But you still have to shift-click to sell so.... still effort.

And by late game, once you have 100+ drones, honestly? 50 cargo drones will load faster. :P

[JeanDeaux]

Without some kind of a smart part calling, I agree it's most a waste of effort. Way too much effort to manually keep this thing automated.

[sgt.greywar]

Originally posted by Shelly:

Ive built this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3299262768

Storages next to the landing pad/FCC and i am running 30 hauling drones with priority set to max.
I checked the time and they loaded a large cargo (9000 tons) of silicon (1800 pieces) in exactly 16 seconds (4x speed) after the contract was accepted.
A mk5 belt can carry 600 pieces per minute (thats 2400 per minute on 4x speed), which means you need 2-3 MK5 belt inputs of the same resource to match this speed. The only advantage is that the loading get automated without keeping drones busy, but seriously my drones in this stage of game are permanently "idle" when i dont have an active contract.

Plus 4 belts input limit yourself to 4 resources only as merging belts with different resources causes a deadlock.

You can get the FCC autoloading far earlier than you can get enough drones to compare etc...

You leave the drones out of the loading process to focus on other things (see a billion other threads where people don't get this and complain that their drones wont do X because they are loading).

This is literally why you don't keep using the landing pad.

[Oobie]

Originally posted by JeanDeaux:

Without some kind of a smart part calling, I agree it's most a waste of effort. Way too much effort to manually keep this thing automated.

This. It's 'automated' but manual.

[Kysumu]

One other advantage which might seem like small beer if you're mid/late game, but using the landing pads costs you 4,000 credits for each cargo ship pickup, the FCC costs nothing.

[Klandor]

Originally posted by Kysumu:

One other advantage which might seem like small beer if you're mid/late game, but using the landing pads costs you 4,000 credits for each cargo ship pickup, the FCC costs nothing.

Yes, but, as other people have noted, is that 4k per shipment worth the 100 Power and 5 CPU required to operate the FCC? I'm probably in mid-game. I'm building the Laser, which I probably will not complete in time and I have not even RESEARCHED the FCC. The ONLY reason I'd research it at this time is if there is some other research locked behind it that I need...

[Oobie]

Well, I tried it out and it has it's uses. I set up a loop, I open the storage and the stuff goes into a loop in, out and back around through two Landing Control Centers.

With this I was able to just release one resource, like iron, and then just keep taking contracts for large amounts of just that one item. It was not so bad, but still a bit limiting not being able to do two resources at once, I guess Make two loops? A bit of a hassle. But still, If you have 12K of something and need to sell it off over several contracts one after another, it does the trick.

I still would like it to 'pull' what is needed on demand.