Long Distance Transport

[RickiusMaximus]

Loving the game so far - one thing though, long distance transport - how are you guys dealing with it?

For example rocky sparks can only be built in the mountains but require stumpy sparks that can only be built in the forest..... the distance between the two is very large... and the distance again from their to where my aether distillers is immense

I see the teleporters have several access slots - is it possible to transport goods via them?

Or are you all just building really long roads with loads of sparks on them?

[Rai]

Stone roads and hauling sparks. You do need 180 rockies to unlock their recipe for the workshop, but its much easier to just transport 360 stumpies up the mountain in your inventory than making a highway full of carry sparks (which you will eventually replace with haul sparks anyway).

[ikeaman]

stumpies only require wood and shards, personally I made them at the closest tree to my rock spark monument, still a long distance but not nearly as bad. You can also just do them "mannually" by bringing a lot of stumpies to the mountain like Rai said.

Actually a lot of the time it seems the fastest way is to do stuff for missions is to not fully automate things because you can transport things way faster which is a bit of a bummer for an automation game. For me the best mission was when I needed to make choppies because it had many steps so doing it manually would have been annoying so I automated it. The way sparks work is really different from other factory games so it makes for interesting automation challenges.

That said, I feel like long distances is an issue.. in other automation games you usually have one big factory that everything connects to but in this it's not the best way to do things most of the time.. I think it might be because there is no power so even if you make too many planks for what you need at one spot and you need planks at another you can just make planks at the second spot too instead of bringing your extra planks because there is no disadvantage to doing so, in other games that would be a waste of power to have a second production when your first would be enough. Also in other games long conveyor belts work the same way as short ones while in this the longer the distance the more sparks you need to put on them to carry items at the same speed so often it's better to make separate productions to not have to make tons of sparks to carry things long distances and if something has to be carried a long distance you might as well carry it yourself instead of putting a 100 sparks on a path... Haulers kinda fix that issue but we get them too late, maybe some should be given as mission rewards ?

[mmt_olivier]

Hey! We appreciate everyone giving advice :) Just wanna add that the next update will feature trains. While there are currently already many ways to make long distance transportation effective, trains will definitely become another important tool for that!

[Soulfly]

a Fix i use in the start (still new to the game)
is:

just to fill enugh sparks on the Road to they Que up
you can always watch if there is a Que up there they get the Need item, if so take some of them off.

[JoraJukov]

As the first comment suggests, I'm also using Hauling Sparks and stone roads.
This is how it looks like.
There is a long and bold trail heading from East to West visible on the map:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3311001666

This is how it looks from the players perspective. Each road serves as a bus for particular product. To increase the throughput, each road is divided by segments with buffer chests, so there are more than one Hauling Spark servicing each road:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3311002139

[JoraJukov]

Originally posted by mmt_olivier:

Hey! We appreciate everyone giving advice :) Just wanna add that the next update will feature trains. While there are currently already many ways to make long distance transportation effective, trains will definitely become another important tool for that!

Hi! An offtop question. I failed to find any info on a particular date of upcoming August release, neither here on Steam nor on your web-site. Can you please share it so I wouldn't check the game status every day? :)

[An'Mar]

Originally posted by JoraJukov:

Hi! An offtop question. I failed to find any info on a particular date of upcoming August release, neither here on Steam nor on your web-site. Can you please share it so I wouldn't check the game status every day? :)

because they haven't anounced a ecxat day neither will they.