Depot versus storage

[chic.aeon]

Can someone explain when you would want storage other than depot? Thanks.

[Tex_Recoil]

When you are make so much of one item that you would need bigger storage say over 1k. think of how many depot you would need to store 1k of a item (depot=180 stored item) Storage =4k of one item stored.

[Jon_Smith]

I think its worth breaking down that in that tech you get larger life support buildings, and larger depot storage.

You specifically mention the depot vs storage so I'll focus on them and just mention life support at the end.

For its position in the tech tree, a depot vs a storage usually won't give you much benefit.
A storage holds 4,000 of a resource, it was added into the game I think after there was alot of demands as in late game scenarios you can be swimming in resources, it takes the place of approximately 22 depots so can save a huge amount of space.

Once you get a Mohole up then you might be getting alot more metals per sol than you need, depots can quickly fill up. This is where storage is a real nice feature.

There are downsides though, they are slower than a depot, drones take longer getting resources from them since they need to be moved to the front of the depot into the small loading area, they are also slower to fill up and they take a small amount of power and maintenance.

My recommendation is to skip it as a tech and swing back for it once you don't have any other good techs to think about or are starting to find storage is a pain and depots are filling up quickly.

Now for the life support stuff. These are actually great and can provide an immediate benefit as more stored water and oxygen can help get you through a disaster. They hold 10 times the supply of the smaller counterpart and have a much smaller overall footprint than if you built 10 of the others ones. But again its a convenience thing. You can skip the tech and just build 10 of the smaller ones. I think the smaller ones overall will take up abit more maintenance and could be more of a pain if spread out during cold waves etc.

So yeah, get them if you want the convenience and space saving. Don't if you are happy to build more of the smaller ones.

[chic.aeon]

OK. Thanks. Wanted to know if there was a feature I had overlooked :D.

[Ericus1]

Never. There is never a time you want to use large storages without the mods that fix them. Because they are so access rate limited in the vanilla game any resources that go into them basically never come back out again, and the only purpose they realistically serve is to inflate the number in the bar across the top of your screen. Large storages are where resources go to die.

There is never a single issue with running out of space on a colony map, so the fact that you need 20 small depots to hold those resources is literally irrelevant. They cost nothing, can be destroyed without needing to be completely and incredibly slowly emptied first, and they allow decentralized storage that can be completely accessed all at once if needed rather than a hugely rate bottlenecked single location that then has to be shipped around your colony.

And ask yourself why you are even trying to store 4k of a resource anyways? If you want a food buffer scattered around the map for each dome you're not going to accomplish that with a large depot. If you want to store up 1k of MPs to build a wonder, the incredibly slow rate at which the MPs can be pulled back out is going to massively slow down construction of that wonder versus just consuming whatever amount your colony is actively producing.

Large storages are worthless in the vanilla game.

[brian_va]

I sometimes run a concrete trading economy. You can easily trade it for excessive amounts of food, which can be traded for metals and polymers as well. Depending on the map, tons of concrete is cheap, easy and requires no people, freeing them up to do other stuff, or reduce the need to import goods. Having a main trading area that centralizes this is easier, for me anyways, than having it spread out. That's where those large storages come in handy, to give the drones space to load/unload from. But I'm sure not everyone plays that way.

[Ericus1]

Again, while trading is viable, you are only hampering the speed at which you are trading because of the bottleneck access rate at which drones can remove that concrete from storage when needing to load a trade rocket. There is also no need to store 4 thousand units of concrete to trade it.

Building 4 or 5 small depots near your trade pad gives you ~1k of storage in the same space and would be all you ever need to run continuous concrete trading missions while shortening loading times by a factor of 10 at least, since drones could pull from the depots concurrently and with no rate limit.

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by Ericus1:

Never. There is never a time you want to use large storages without the mods that fix them.

I added a new feature recently in Faster Warehouse that really makes the distro of items smooth, not just fast. Team it with Shuttle Reservation System A.I mod
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1382739530&searchtext=faster+warehouse

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Ericus1:

Again, while trading is viable, you are only hampering the speed at which you are trading because of the bottleneck access rate at which drones can remove that concrete from storage when needing to load a trade rocket. There is also no need to store 4 thousand units of concrete to trade it.

Building 4 or 5 small depots near your trade pad gives you ~1k of storage in the same space and would be all you ever need to run continuous concrete trading missions while shortening loading times by a factor of 10 at least, since drones could pull from the depots concurrently and with no rate limit.

Speed is reduced, sure. A couple trade pads runs quick enough for me, more pads and more drones increases capacity if needed. Play your way, I'll play mine.

[Ericus1]

Not talking about trade pads as the bottleneck, talking about storages. And you're giving bad advice to a player asking specifically about the utility of storages versus depots, which - as I said without the mods SkiRich suggests which I do recommend people use - is none. You can play however you want, but don't give a player asking specifically for good advice bad advice because it's how you like to play. This thread isn't about you, it's to answer the OPs question.

[brian_va]

Yes, and I gave an example of when and how they can be useful. Granted, they are not for someone who needs maximum efficiency, but they do exactly what they say they do, they hold large quantities of items. Use them or don't.

[Ericus1]

No, you did not. They are not useful in that situation, because the bottleneck of access will only impede trading versus just using a handful of regular depots. When someone asks SPECIFICALLY when should I use X versus Y, you don't tell them to use Y in a situation where X is a much better solution.

You are giving bad advice.

[Jon_Smith]

Ericus1, can you just stop?

The OP didn't ask whats the maximum efficiency way to use them.
He asked when you would want to use them.

I explained how they work and gave some scenarios where someone might want to use them, for example to save space. I was quite clear however that they come with downsides and its only if you want to trade off those downsides.

Your response told him how he should play. You leave no room for preferences. Never you say. In your mind it has to be wrong because you don't like them.

brian_va explained when he wants to use them, for him it seems valuing space is a priority. He likes his stuff in one place, he is prepared to do that trade off I mentioned of efficiency in order to use up less space.

How arrogant can you be to argue with him that he is wrong to have this preference? To play the game he enjoys?
Can you get your mind out of it being the way you want to play and accept other players may enjoy playing in different ways?
I for example don't want to play with mods that change the depots, in my opinion then don't need 'fixing', the slower speed is the consequence of a higher storage size. I didn't say you are wrong simply because your style of modding buildings you don't like is a play style you might want to do. Thats fine.


There is no bad advice given in this discussion. Its about what a player might want to do, not min/maxing. If a player wants to use it because it saves space or looks cool, thats fine to him thats useful, who are you to tell him thats wrong. Its not bad advice unless he says something factually wrong, which he didn't, he never claimed they were more efficient, he simply claimed he likes to store alot of resources around a trading hub, thats a reason someone might want to do it.

Stop being so arrogant and apologize to brian_va, you are out of line.

[BGR]

Originally posted by Ericus1:

Never. There is never a time you want to use large storages without the mods that fix them. Because they are so access rate limited in the vanilla game any resources that go into them basically never come back out again, and the only purpose they realistically serve is to inflate the number in the bar across the top of your screen. Large storages are where resources go to die.

There is never a single issue with running out of space on a colony map, so the fact that you need 20 small depots to hold those resources is literally irrelevant. They cost nothing, can be destroyed without needing to be completely and incredibly slowly emptied first, and they allow decentralized storage that can be completely accessed all at once if needed rather than a hugely rate bottlenecked single location that then has to be shipped around your colony.

And ask yourself why you are even trying to store 4k of a resource anyways? If you want a food buffer scattered around the map for each dome you're not going to accomplish that with a large depot. If you want to store up 1k of MPs to build a wonder, the incredibly slow rate at which the MPs can be pulled back out is going to massively slow down construction of that wonder versus just consuming whatever amount your colony is actively producing.

Large storages are worthless in the vanilla game.

My large storage area must have been sprinkled with some martian pixie dust because they work just fine without any modifications.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2464147602

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Jon_Smith:

Stop being so arrogant and apologize to brian_va, you are out of line.

theres no need, i blocked him so i wont see it. appreciate it the same tho.

[Ericus1]

Originally posted by BGR:

My large storage area must have been sprinkled with some martian pixie dust because they work just fine without any modifications.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2464147602

And what does that actually accomplish for you, other than aesthetics? That giant storage block is functionally useless and does not help your colony in any way.

I never said they don't functionally hold 4K of resources, I said they are useless for anything other than inflating the stored resource number across the top of your screen. If you want a storage you can readily add and pull resources from quickly and easily and actually helps to facilitate the flow of resources around your colony, the large storages are not the thing to use.

The guy was telling the OP to use them in a trade hub, which is just nonsensical. He just couldn't accept that his extremely inefficient playstyle is not good advice to a player asking for efficiency advice.