Logistics woes

[Malidictus]

I never really used Logistics in my playthrough of Vanilla Factorio as they always felt like negating a major part of the moment-to-moment gameplay. With Space Age, however, it's practically unavoidable. Unfortunately, I've found the system to be badly, badly lacking. So badly, in fact, that I sincerely hope I'm just missing something obvious. As such, please read this as a request for help. Here are some of my issues.

Space Platform Logistics: Space Platforms entirely disregard ground logistics. In other words, telling a Space Platform to wait until "all requests fulfilled" only considers ITS requests. It'll fulfil requests from the ground in the hot minute while it turns around, but it won't wait to actually fulfil all requests that it can. I don't know of a way to fix that.

I thought that maybe I could circumvent this with the Signal Network. Got myself a Wireless Signals mod (the AAI one) which allows me to send signals from the surface to the Platform. Maybe I can signal the platform when all ground requests are fulfilled. Except... I can't actually read the state of ground requests from the Drop Pod Hub - or any Logistics network, really. I can read their integrated container contents, but not what they're actually requesting.

But to go back to the Space Platform - I'd love to set its requests via Signal Network signal, but... I can't? Why? I can set the requests for every other Logistics entity, including the Silo and the Drop Pod Hub, but not the Space Platform Hub? Why? Is there any way to get around that? Because I genuinely can't think of one. The Space Platform Hub is the bottleneck which controls all inbound and outbound traffic. If I can't set that via signal, then I'm SOL, it looks like.

After the wealth of changes to combinators and train schedules and the overall additional flexibility in Space Age, the logistics system feels outright primitive in how it interacts with everything else. If I'm missing something important, please let me know. I'd love to fix this on my side.

[Ccrack]

not sure if the mod signal is working. on vanilla platforms can only read their own signals

not sure whats going on with your fufilled requests though. for me if i tell my hub to ask for items that the platform has it wont go anywhere untill either the number of items the hub wants is in the hub, or the platform has ran out of items

[MechBFP]

Add a wait timer for like 10 seconds to whenever logic you are using to tell it to leave. Then even if it is told to leave immediately it will sit there for 10 seconds giving it time to drop the items.

[knighttemplar1960]

To prevent the platform from dropping items you can tick (and turn off) the unload option for that planet for that stop and you can set multiple stops.

If the platform and the planet both request the same item neither will be moved to or from.

You can set circuit conditions on the platform, fuel, oxidizer, item storage, accumulator charge, and time passed to make determinations of when to depart.

Inactivity doesn't work because your space platform is constantly grabbing asteroid chunks.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Ccrack:

not sure if the mod signal is working. on vanilla platforms can only read their own signals

It's working. I'm already controlling my Space Science platform via signal, mostly to prevent spilling science all over my Drop Pod Hub when that fills up. I'm using AAI Signal Transmission[mods.factorio.com], which seems to work reliably. The only limiting factor is it eats 20MW to broadcast and 4MW to receive, plus the buildings are huge.

Originally posted by Ccrack:

not sure whats going on with your fufilled requests though. for me if i tell my hub to ask for items that the platform has it wont go anywhere untill either the number of items the hub wants is in the hub, or the platform has ran out of items

You have it the other way around. I'm requesting items through the Drop Pod Hub. I want the platform to drop a number of materials in order to help me settle Fulgora. It's too much stuff to drop all in one go, so I need it to loiter, but only long enough to fully drop its load. However, the Platform does not consider requests from the Drop Pod Hub in its "requests fulfilled" criterion, so it leaves prematurely.

I could send signals up to it, but I'd need to pull information about how much of the Drop Pod Hub's request manifest is being fulfilled, as I don't want the Platform dropping everything and overloading the Hub on the planet. I guess maybe I can duplicate the Hub requests to a combinator, compare its inventory to that, and calculate a "requests fulfilled" condition off of that, then beam that to the platform.

It's just an ass backwards way of doing things, because the platform obviously has access to the Hub. It knows what it's requesting, on account of dropping the correct items down to the surface.

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

To prevent the platform from dropping items you can tick (and turn off) the unload option for that planet for that stop and you can set multiple stops.

You have it backwards. I don't want to prevent the Platform from dropping items. I want it to loiter until it's either dropped all of the requisite items or has run out. I thought that All Requests Fulfilled would do that, but that only considers Logistics Requests and Logistics Trash on the platform. The planet is entirely disregarded. That might be fine for trains because trains aren't hooked on to the Logistics system, but Platforms are.

[Air Bear]

I got it to work. Setup your space ship with the requests you want to bring to another world. So for example: 1000 orange science from Vulcanus to Nauvius. Pre-first step: make sure you are actually collecting orange science on the ground in Vulcanus to a logistics provider/buffer/storage chest, with logistics paths via drone ports to your rocket silos. You need at least 1 rocket silo set to handle automatic requests (there's a check box on the right side of the rocket silo UI that needs to be on). Then you would add the request to your space ship. Double check that it set the origin world to be from Vulcanus. Now go to Nauvius's cargo landing hub and add a request for 1000 orange science to it. If you want to fully automate it, add a requester chest near your labs seeking the default amount of orange science packs or more. Last thing you need to do is set your space ship with a stop at Vulcanus and a stop at Nauvius, both of them having 'fulfill all request' stop conditions. I have a ship that takes a while to produce ammo/fuel so I add a 2 minute timer before it leaves so it has time to rebuild some.

This has worked for me and they have around 20 thousand science packs from Vulcanus/Fulgora back to Nauvius.

If you let stuff sit in the cargo landing pad, and there is enough to fulfill the request there, then the space ship will stop dropping it. For example, I have a request for 20 big miners setup on Nauvius, and 20 on the space ship. Since I have it fulfilled in both locations, it will stop recieving new miners when it goes back to Vulcanus. It does mean I have stuff sitting in my space ship unneccessarily, but I can just set that request on the spaceship to 0 and send the miners down to the ground for now and it will stop getting new miners.

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

It's working. I'm already controlling my Space Science platform via signal, mostly to prevent spilling science all over my Drop Pod Hub when that fills up. I'm using AAI Signal Transmission[mods.factorio.com], which seems to work reliably. The only limiting factor is it eats 20MW to broadcast and 4MW to receive, plus the buildings are huge.

A possible alternative, which does work in vanilla SA for inter-platform and planet to platform communication is Shortwave Fixed[mods.factorio.com]. It does not require connection to the power network at all and can be made into 'channels', unlike the radar WiFi built into 2.0. Small size at both ends with no power drain.

As to the rest of the problem I have no suggestions for how to 'make it work' at all. I do wonder, however, if either you're trying to solve the wrong problem or looking at the intended results the wrong way. Not saying you are, only that you might be.

It seems, from your descriptions, that the "requests satisfied" is only testing if the platform's requests are met. Brainstorm idea, have the landing pad test it's own status and when it's "satisfied" with the total drop it can "dismiss" the platform. The platform, for its part could monitor its supply of to-drop stuff and the wait condition could be "nothing left" OR "dismissed".

I set up my mall restocking trains the same way. The station controlled the filter on the inserter to only accept what it wanted, and if the train had nothing of interest it just green-lighted the train. The train would leave when it was green-lighted, or when it was empty.

Just a bit of food for thought. Certainly not 'answers'.

[Air Bear]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Originally posted by Ccrack:

not sure if the mod signal is working. on vanilla platforms can only read their own signals

It's working. I'm already controlling my Space Science platform via signal, mostly to prevent spilling science all over my Drop Pod Hub when that fills up. I'm using AAI Signal Transmission[mods.factorio.com], which seems to work reliably. The only limiting factor is it eats 20MW to broadcast and 4MW to receive, plus the buildings are huge.

Originally posted by Ccrack:

not sure whats going on with your fufilled requests though. for me if i tell my hub to ask for items that the platform has it wont go anywhere untill either the number of items the hub wants is in the hub, or the platform has ran out of items

You have it the other way around. I'm requesting items through the Drop Pod Hub. I want the platform to drop a number of materials in order to help me settle Fulgora. It's too much stuff to drop all in one go, so I need it to loiter, but only long enough to fully drop its load. However, the Platform does not consider requests from the Drop Pod Hub in its "requests fulfilled" criterion, so it leaves prematurely.

I could send signals up to it, but I'd need to pull information about how much of the Drop Pod Hub's request manifest is being fulfilled, as I don't want the Platform dropping everything and overloading the Hub on the planet. I guess maybe I can duplicate the Hub requests to a combinator, compare its inventory to that, and calculate a "requests fulfilled" condition off of that, then beam that to the platform.

It's just an ass backwards way of doing things, because the platform obviously has access to the Hub. It knows what it's requesting, on account of dropping the correct items down to the surface.

Originally posted by knighttemplar1960:

To prevent the platform from dropping items you can tick (and turn off) the unload option for that planet for that stop and you can set multiple stops.

You have it backwards. I don't want to prevent the Platform from dropping items. I want it to loiter until it's either dropped all of the requisite items or has run out. I thought that All Requests Fulfilled would do that, but that only considers Logistics Requests and Logistics Trash on the platform. The planet is entirely disregarded. That might be fine for trains because trains aren't hooked on to the Logistics system, but Platforms are.

Mess with the cargo values. I had 3 products going from Fulcanus to Nauvius - science packs, some calcite for cliff stuff, and some of the purple titanium stuff. I told it to wait until the cargo values =0 on those 3 and it behaved as expected. You could alternatively add a timer so it has a chance to deploy all its downward rockets before leaving. Maybe adding a timer is why I never noticed the problem you are having? Or maybe because I only ever really requested 2 or 3 types of things at a time, which is easily handled by it's initial salvo of available of rockets as soon as the ship reaches the planet, I never encountered that issue for that reason?

Alternatively, if you are -only- doing this for an initial planet deployment, manually push them down from your platform to the planet because when you shift click on whatever is in the platform, you can get it to fill all the slots in the rocket, which is 10 slots. So you can cram a whole bunch of different things in one rocket to send down. It will only let you do 3 downward rockets at a time, but you can spam 3 rows of inventory items at once instead of waiting for it to slowly trickle down 1 type of thing at a time. It will go much much faster. That's how I did my initial deployments, combined with green inserters pulling everything out of the hub on the ground and pushing them into standard storage boxes.

[Entropy]

Originally posted by Air Bear:

Mess with the cargo values. I had 3 products going from Fulcanus to Nauvius - science packs, some calcite for cliff stuff, and some of the purple titanium stuff. I told it to wait until the cargo values =0 on those 3 and it behaved as expected. You could alternatively add a timer so it has a chance to deploy all its downward rockets before leaving. Maybe adding a timer is why I never noticed the problem you are having? Or maybe because I only ever really requested 2 or 3 types of things at a time, which is easily handled by it's initial salvo of available of rockets as soon as the ship reaches the planet, I never encountered that issue for that reason?

Calcite gathering from Vulcanus is resource waste of rocket parts if u unlocked advanced asteroid processing. Just gather it from space and drop down.

[Air Bear]

Had not and still have not unlocked that. Whenever I get there, trust me, I'm throwing up platforms just to make cliff explosives :)
Also really hoping I can get copper from space eventually

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Air Bear:

Had not and still have not unlocked that. Whenever I get there, trust me, I'm throwing up platforms just to make cliff explosives :)
Also really hoping I can get copper from space eventually

Being unable to remove cliffs annoyed me SO much that I ended up grabbing the Minable Cliffs[mods.factorio.com] mod. I thought it was a neat stopgap. It allows me to still remove cliffs by hand, but it's tedious enough that I'd still very much appreciate cliff explosives.

[Spellsinger]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

You have it backwards. I don't want to prevent the Platform from dropping items. I want it to loiter until it's either dropped all of the requisite items or has run out. I thought that All Requests Fulfilled would do that, but that only considers Logistics Requests and Logistics Trash on the platform. The planet is entirely disregarded. That might be fine for trains because trains aren't hooked on to the Logistics system, but Platforms are.

Like Air Bear suggested, use the "cargo" values on your platform. Simply tell it to wait until cargo=0 on any of items you request down on the surface and it will stay over your head dropping stuff while it can, then leave if anything runs out.
If there are multiple items, setup one decider combinator on the platform, hook it up to the hub, and set a list of conditions in it with OR - if true, output some signal, for example L = 1. Make the platform wait until L = 1. Done.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Spellsinger:

Like Air Bear suggested, use the "cargo" values on your platform. Simply tell it to wait until cargo=0 on any of items you request down on the surface and it will stay over your head dropping stuff while it can, then leave if anything runs out.

Could, but that would only consider cargo on the platform. Since cargo is dropped by supply from the ground, the platform would get stuck if it showed up with more cargo than is being requested. "All" cargo would never drop, thus the platform would never leave. I would still need to control it via signal from the ground.

I think the simplest solution is to entirely circumvent the Drop Pod Hub's requests and set them remotely via Combinator. Values would effectively be "request - threshold", with the "leave" signal being when everything is 0. Of course, this would cause the plarform to get stuck if it showed up with not enough items, but I can avoid that by using a fixed constant combinator group for both the requesting hub and the providing station, ensuring that it doesn't leave Nauvis without everything that's being requested. THAT can be handled by "All Requests Fulfilled".

Honestl, I'd treat platforms like trains if I could - which is to say one platform per cargo type. Except they're so expensive and fiddly to make and it takes SOOO long to load them up with resources that the only real use I have for them is delivering "personal logistics" items like high quality belts/inserters/loaders/etc, which aren't needed in large quantities. Might as well use one generic "Traveller" platform to deliver all that in one go.

Granted, one of my mods breaks rocket capacities for certain items (due to a quirk in capacity calculations for items with productivity enabled), but that's not something I want to rely on. I fully expect the development team to fix that when time permits, so best to treat rocket capacities as standard even if they're not.