Automatic Rover unloading station

[Wolfgang]

This would bring the automation further as Rovers (and Rover trains) could be automatically unloaded.
The station would be a plattform (made with the large printer for the large rovers and with the medium printer for medium rovers) on which you can drive onto. You would be also able to connect a maximum of 4 of these together (like with the rovers) and you have the option to place two autoarms on each side of the plattform for maximum unloading speed (one on each side for the medium unloading station). Each plattform would be for a different rover of a rover train.
I know that many resources can be stored in canisters and this is where this idea comes in:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/361420/discussions/3/3115896179321305554/
Basically these are tier 2 autoarms which would be perfect for it.
Additionally you should be able to tell which things shouldn't be taken by the autoarms.

[JohnnyZerg]

+1

[vindicar]

There is no need for this to be a separate building when regular platforms and regular autoarms can do the job just fine. You might as well just ask to make a "base" platform that has dedicated slots for every building a base needs.
Larger autoarms are a different topic entirely.

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by vindicar:

There is no need for this to be a separate building when regular platforms and regular autoarms can do the job just fine. You might as well just ask to make a "base" platform that has dedicated slots for every building a base needs.
Larger autoarms are a different topic entirely.

How can you automatically unload your rover train currently? AFAIK there is no way unless it is completely connected to the base which is then no longer automatic.

Though if you know a way of "drive in with rover train with stuff and it automatically gets unloaded" please share it.

[vindicar]

Autoarms can pick small objects off rovers just fine, even without them being connected to the base. The only place they can't pick objects from is player's backpack.
I used this trick to load soil from my digging rover by juggling full and empty soil canisters back and forth. Just gotta make sure your cans are all in correct mode.

The problems start when...
1. your rover train is long, which requires you to have two long rows of autoarms, which is a lot of power. Alternative is to have a small area where many arms can reach and to drive through slowly.
2. you have small equipment on your rovers that you want to stay there. This forces you to use filtered autoarms, which limits what resources you can have or requires a lot more arms to be used. Though again, you could just drive past a row of arms, one for each resource.
3. you want to unload medium items off the rover too.

It's not clear how your unloading platform solves these issues. If it did, it could indeed be an addition... though I don't t hink it's likely. =(

P.S.: to further automate things you can use sensor gates to actuivate the arms only when your rover drives into unloading area.

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by vindicar:

Autoarms can pick small objects off rovers just fine, even without them being connected to the base. The only place they can't pick objects from is player's backpack.
I used this trick to load soil from my digging rover by juggling full and empty soil canisters back and forth. Just gotta make sure your cans are all in correct mode.

The problems start when...
1. your rover train is long, which requires you to have two long rows of autoarms, which is a lot of power. Alternative is to have a small area where many arms can reach and to drive through slowly.
2. you have small equipment on your rovers that you want to stay there. This forces you to use filtered autoarms, which limits what resources you can have or requires a lot more arms to be used. Though again, you could just drive past a row of arms, one for each resource.
3. you want to unload medium items off the rover too.

It's not clear how your unloading platform solves these issues. If it did, it could indeed be an addition... though I don't t hink it's likely. =(

P.S.: to further automate things you can use sensor gates to actuivate the arms only when your rover drives into unloading area.

Can you share a screenshot of it please? Would love to build that in my base and all my attempts have failed so far.

[vindicar]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2375925528
This is a bit complicated setup because unloading soil involves passing small canisters back and forth. Setup for regular resources would only need arms working in one direction.

1 - medium soil cans with output enabled. They act as the main soil storage, and are emptied as the factory functions.
2 - storage for small soil cans. It's actually necessary. Empty cans placed there are detected by medium cans, grabbed, filled, and placed back here.
3 - Pairs of filtered autoarms. One arm in a pair passes full soil canisters off rover, another passes empty canisters back. Please note how they are angled, so their area of operation is focused on the storage 2.
4 - Soil centrifuges. Each pair of arms can easily serve 2 centrifuges. I used switches to depower arms if both production lines they power have filled thier storages.

The gate is only to disable autoarms while I'm away digging. It's not really needed, but is neat.

So the idea is, you focus a few arms at one spot, and slowly drive your rover train so every storage passes that spot. Alternatively, have a regular storage in that spot, and jsut turn every canister on your rover into output mode (can be done with a button repeater).

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by vindicar:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2375925528
This is a bit complicated setup because unloading soil involves passing small canisters back and forth. Setup for regular resources would only need arms working in one direction.

1 - medium soil cans with output enabled. They act as the main soil storage, and are emptied as the factory functions.
2 - storage for small soil cans. It's actually necessary. Empty cans placed there are detected by medium cans, grabbed, filled, and placed back here.
3 - Pairs of filtered autoarms. One arm in a pair passes full soil canisters off rover, another passes empty canisters back. Please note how they are angled, so their area of operation is focused on the storage 2.
4 - Soil centrifuges. Each pair of arms can easily serve 2 centrifuges. I used switches to depower arms if both production lines they power have filled thier storages.

The gate is only to disable autoarms while I'm away digging. It's not really needed, but is neat.

So the idea is, you focus a few arms at one spot, and slowly drive your rover train so every storage passes that spot. Alternatively, have a regular storage in that spot, and jsut turn every canister on your rover into output mode (can be done with a button repeater).

Very interesting. I will try this the next days and if this is exactly what I want then I can mark this as the answer.