How can I request items from a specific space platform?

[DemBones]

I've noticed there aren't very many iron patches in my immediate area so I thought I'd setup a quick space platform that only generates iron ore and sends it to the surface as a stop gap until I find some more. However, if I setup my landing pad to accept all iron ore requests, it will drain my space science platform's iron ore too. Is there a solution to my problem that doesn't involve manually dropping resources? I looked around a bit but couldn't find anything, but it's possible I've missed something.

[WalrusJones]

Its not too hard if you understand the logistics requests:

You can set a cap on a material on your space platform hub, IE: No more then 200 iron in the platform hub, all excess will get voided to the planet surface (You can even use logi groups to make it so it has different caps over different planets.) You could have your iron furnaces on the space platform pull from the hub which would then stop drops whenever your excess gets too small.

You can also regulate how much material enters the platform hub by running wires from it to your inserters, say, if your platform can make repair packs you can make it stop stockpiling at five stacks, since the platform wires broadcast how much of each item it has. This can be good for preserving space for ships that want to have large stockpiles of a thing without fully filling the hub,

[DemBones]

Thanks for your reply. How do I set that cap? I tried using a schedule but it didn't seem to do anything. The landing pad isn't requesting iron ore so it doesn't steal it from space science. I guess I just have a little more to learn about space platforms.

[Chuck]

I think the solution is just to only put the ore you plan to send down in the cargo bay. Any other iron ore can just sit on belts until it gets used. So on your research platform, dont store iron ore in the cargo bay. I havent gotten to the point where im using iron ore in space for anything other than research packs and fuel so maybe theres a reason youre putting iron ore in the cargo bay other than those 2, but otherwise i just dont see the point to storing much up there.

On my ships the only thing that goes in the cargo bay is ammo and planetary import/export materials. On my research platform iron stays on the belts until its needed, and the only thing sent down is space science. Its a smaller scale research crafting operation, only 4 assemblers. If you want bigger space science platforms, id recommend not doing that and just making more platforms.

[malogoss]

Originally posted by DemBones:

Thanks for your reply. How do I set that cap? I tried using a schedule but it didn't seem to do anything. The landing pad isn't requesting iron ore so it doesn't steal it from space science. I guess I just have a little more to learn about space platforms.

It's kind of like your personal logistics requests. You can request 500 belts, bots will bring you 500 belts. Or you could request 0 belt and set the maximum amount you'll have to 200. What is in excess of 200 will go to your trash slots and the bots will take it from you.

You stop requesting from the landing pad on the planet. Instead, you set a 0 iron request and a maximum quantity of iron ore the platform meant to export it can have in stock. Like your personal request, the excess goes to the platform's trash slots. But instead of bots handling that, it gets dropped to the landing pad.

Then to prevent your landing pad from getting full of iron ore in case you're not using it for a while, same idea, leave its request of iron ore at "0" but set a maximum it can have in stock. Bots will transfer that to storage chests and you should be good.

Hope that made sense. It's all about the number to the right of the slider when you set a logistic request.

[DemBones]

That worked! Thanks!