Long Distance Resource Nodes

[jboord44]

I just did my 2nd space delivery, now onto tier 5 and 6, and I feel like I"m running out of local resource nodes, and I already have some really long belts transporting coal and iron hundreds and hundreds of meters. And yet, I don't see a freight option until I complete tier 6. To complete tier 6, I'm gonna need some serious production lines going with tons of resources feeding into them.

How do you guys overcome this? Im struggling to find enough ore nodes to get enough materials into my lines. Maybe I have an inefficient setup and that's the issue or I'm doing something else wrong. Any tips?

[HuMaNgUtAn]

Easy answer - Use vehicles.

Better answer - Don't limit yourself to building in a single central location - build where the resources are, so for example build a fully self sufficient computer factory as close as possible to copper, caterium and oil - the only resources required to make Supercomputers, Computers, AI limiters, High speed connecters and circuit boards all in 1 location. (Edit - with some alt recipes like caterium computers)

[Suzaku]

Tractors, trucks, trains, and drones. You unlock several ways to transport lots of materials long distances. You unlocked tractors and truck stations back in Tier 3.

[jboord44]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Tractors, trucks, trains, and drones. You unlock several ways to transport lots of materials long distances. You unlocked tractors and truck stations back in Tier 3.

Yeah but I haven't worked with them yet bc that feels like manual work, I'm not imagining how that will be fully automated but then again Idk, could be wrong. I'm coming from factorio where you build trains, you automate the ore coming in, the pickers unload and feed into your smelters, it's all automated. I don't understand how the trucks work I guess, I'll have to youtube it or something

[sansee]

Another thing is to OC the miners to get as much ore out as you can.

[Suzaku]

For wheeled vehicles, you record a path for them and they follow it. You just set up a truck station at each end, connect belts to feed them a fuel source and whatever materials you want to transport, then record a path with the vehicle going through the truck station's loading area. Once the path is set, you just turn on autopilot, and the vehicle will drive itself along the route you made endlessly, or until it runs out of fuel.

Update 5 will further improve vehicles by giving them smarter pathing, and more info about how much fuel is needed, round-trip time, and resource throughput.

[Vegas Doc]

I'm pretty sure that there are bountiful amounts of resource nodes in all of the different landing zones, I've never had a problem with that, I've even used a few of the nodes to feed the Awesome Sink until I needed them, at least in first six tiers, with slow belts, pipes, miners, and extractors.

Maybe you're not using your mergers and splitters (logistics Mk 2) in the most efficient manner. I find that the beginning of a production line is often over producing the middle and ends of that line, so you can split them into a side line, instead of using a single resource node for each line.

On production lines that are "waiting" for the materials from the resource nodes, you can merge the products of two or three miners/extractors into the beginning of the production line to keep the input buffer container full; that is if you use a buffer container, some people just will feed the constructors directly with the resource input(s) instead. But, I like to have an input buffer, that I can supplement by hand from other resource sources in order to keep that line flowing, especially if I need the part for a Space Elevator shipment. I have buffers at each stage of the assembly line, that I can hand feed a few more modular frames for example into it, to supply the manufacturers further down the line. Happy Pioneering!