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Smiling Demon
Jun 16, 2013

Peachfart posted:

So why do people keep talking about making separate mining and smelting planets? I just smelt on site, it saves time, materials, and energy.

Edit: And oil is the eternal nightmare, you will probably spend more time getting oil unclogged than any other thing in the game.

It most certainly does not save time. If you smelt on site, every time you need a new mine you have to setup both a new mining facility and a new smelting facility. If you have a central smelting facility you set that up once, only needing to touch it if you need more capacity.

Setting up mines is already one of the most annoying aspects of late game play. Compounding that with on site smelting sounds painful.

You do save some resources and energy, but if you do the math it isn't very much.

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neogeo0823
Jul 4, 2007

NO THAT'S NOT ME!!

Peachfart posted:

So why do people keep talking about making separate mining and smelting planets? I just smelt on site, it saves time, materials, and energy.

Edit: And oil is the eternal nightmare, you will probably spend more time getting oil unclogged than any other thing in the game.

In the long run, it's a lot easier to have centralized smelting. You know for sure that the planet can handle the throughput, you can definitely, for sure, ensure that the power supply will keep up with demand, and it makes it easier to just ship in warpers and set the towers to infinite range to send/receive anything you want for the entire game.

zoux posted:

...
Your planet at this point looks like a bowl of ramen.
...

Are you saying at some point that the belts are supposed to get more tidy? Because uh......



That's just my mall, and some of my science stuff.

Actually, here's a good shot of the bulk of my current main production world:

For what it is, it works. It's gotten me all the non-white science research, and basically everything I need up to, but not including, the swarm/sphere stuff.

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

While I didn't start with an explicit mining/smelting facility split, I'm finally consuming raw ore at a rate that was infeasible to keep setting up new smelting as I completely consumed the veins. So I eventually retrofit a planet I exhausted the ore of and transported ore to it.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

neogeo0823 posted:

In the long run, it's a lot easier to have centralized smelting. You know for sure that the planet can handle the throughput, you can definitely, for sure, ensure that the power supply will keep up with demand, and it makes it easier to just ship in warpers and set the towers to infinite range to send/receive anything you want for the entire game.


Are you saying at some point that the belts are supposed to get more tidy? Because uh......


Fix your grill

Cobbsprite
May 6, 2012

Threatening stuffed animals for fun and profit.
It became such an instant convenience when I put every building I ever use on automatic production and fed them into ILS towers sent to remote send. Now if I'm building on a planet and need more of something I just plop down a tower and tell it to get what I need and they show up shortly after. It's magic.

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

Cobbsprite posted:

It became such an instant convenience when I put every building I ever use on automatic production and fed them into ILS towers sent to remote send. Now if I'm building on a planet and need more of something I just plop down a tower and tell it to get what I need and they show up shortly after. It's magic.

Cannot recommend enough. I don't have this quite set up since my mall isn't totally done (and I've been correcting a warper shortage that prevents it from being very useful), but it's one of my next projects. Could probably cut my scattering of chests that holds the production buffer (love the "limit number of slots" function, wish smaller chests existed though, I can't remember the last time I needed a full regular one and a 2x2x2 footprint would be nice for some places).

edit: sorry, excuse me, there are variant splitters?!

SkyeAuroline fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Apr 8, 2021

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

I'm so close to a stable production line of carrier rockets for my nearly complete sphere. I get the components themselves finally sorted and now processors are in a dire deficit. I'm setting up a new manufactory in another star system as a flex an experiment. I'm producing antimatter at a not bad clip so artificial suns (and the blueprint mod) make setting up new planets a breeze.

AlphaKeny1
Feb 17, 2006

Is there a reason I should keep producing regular belts and sorters or is it fine to convert them all to speed belts/sorters? That is what I just set up last night. At least for mining, I assume the speed belts are better.

What happens when you destroy a long belt line with stuff on it? Like, does it all go in my inventory?

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

Yep, until it fills your inventory then it gets scattered on the ground. You can clear out some space and pick it back up though.

And no, you're only going to make mkI and II assemblers, belts and sorters to make mkIII assemblers, belts and sorters. I have a 3x3 matrix set up where mk1 stuff just feeds straight into the mk2 assemblers which then just feed straight into mk3 assemblers

AlphaKeny1
Feb 17, 2006

My starting planet is a moon so I just tried to fly to the nearby planet to look for titanium but it wouldn't let me land. It's an ice giant and I don't see any features on it when I'm sailing above its atmosphere. Am I doing something wrong?

Venuz Patrol
Mar 27, 2011
ice giants and gas giants dont have a surface. you unlock buildings later that can harvest resources from them, but you'll never be able to make bases on them.

Peachfart
Jan 21, 2017

AlphaKeny1 posted:

My starting planet is a moon so I just tried to fly to the nearby planet to look for titanium but it wouldn't let me land. It's an ice giant and I don't see any features on it when I'm sailing above its atmosphere. Am I doing something wrong?

Yeah, that planet isn't an actual planet, just a resource gas/ice giant. Look around and find the other planets in your local system.

mmkay
Oct 21, 2010

You can see what resources are available on a given planet in the map view. Also as far as I know your starting planet always orbits a gas/ice giant.

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."

Venuz Patrol posted:

ice giants and gas giants dont have a surface. you unlock buildings later that can harvest resources from them, but you'll never be able to make bases on them.

How do you power the resource harvesters?

Kazzah
Jul 15, 2011

Formerly known as
Krazyface
Hair Elf

Dirk the Average posted:

How do you power the resource harvesters?

They don't need a power supply. You need a bunch of fully-charged battery buildings to construct them, and they just never run out of juice.

Shipon
Nov 7, 2005

Kazzah posted:

They don't need a power supply. You need a bunch of fully-charged battery buildings to construct them, and they just never run out of juice.

To be more specific, they siphon off what production they have to power it based on the fuel value. Each one needs 30 MW and will subtract off the gross production the equivalent value.

Venuz Patrol
Mar 27, 2011
this topic strikes at something i think is essential that's completely missing from the game, which is space stations or some other form of free-standing infrastructure that could be used for directing interstellar logistics or just making cool bases

AlphaKeny1
Feb 17, 2006

Thanks! I flew to a lava planet to make some titanium ingots and now I'm starting to eat up yellow cubes! Time to figure out how interplanetary transportation works and what I need for purple.

Duzzy Funlop
Jan 13, 2010

Hi there, would you like to try some spicy products?
Since I've been reading about people specifically doing things onava planets: what's the benefit of those? I didn't see anything in the game mechanics that would make them special, since you can't "pump" lava afaik?

Venuz Patrol
Mar 27, 2011
i dunno if lava planets have any exclusive rewards, but at least from what i've seen they have insanely dense mineral deposits, so they make good secondary targets for offworld mining

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
They also tend to have small amounts of below sea level and tons of hills making them good places to stock up on soil pile if you haven't already modded it out.

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

Venuz Patrol posted:

this topic strikes at something i think is essential that's completely missing from the game, which is space stations or some other form of free-standing infrastructure that could be used for directing interstellar logistics or just making cool bases

I believe this has been discussed as a potential "down the road" feature by the devs. Definitely have heard some mention at least.

Dr. Stab
Sep 12, 2010
👨🏻‍⚕️🩺🔪🙀😱🙀
There definitely needs to be more in the way of logistics. I should at least be able to see the demand/supply status of a planet.

That's a way easier way to diagnose production deficiencies than what you can see in the stats panel. It's hard to tell what the bottleneck is when production rates slow across the board to match the bottleneck, but when you see that all the input demand is satisfied except one item, that's a good hint to make more of that, and it'd be nice to do that without running around checking towers.

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

There’s something deeply satisfying in looking up into the night sky and seeing my logistic vessels streak between the stars, despite the fact that should be physically impossible. Then again, this is the Actual Universe.

Grevlek
Jan 11, 2004

SettingSun posted:

There’s something deeply satisfying in looking up into the night sky and seeing my logistic vessels streak between the stars, despite the fact that should be physically impossible. Then again, this is the Actual Universe.

There is a weird visible emission when light is pushed "faster" through water than the medium allows, so it's possible there would be a weird visible emission if we did these things to objects in space.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh



Once I completely enclose the sun in the sphere I can rest.

Haha, no. I'm moving the cannons and silos to another star system and enclosing that in a more elaborate sphere.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

I think you'll find there are many more stars in your cluster, actually. Centrebrain needs photons!

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

I notice while designing a new sphere that it can be large enough to encompass planets with a close orbit. The implications of that are terrifying, and I'm definitely doing that so I can blind myself standing on that planet.

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

SettingSun posted:

I notice while designing a new sphere that it can be large enough to encompass planets with a close orbit. The implications of that are terrifying, and I'm definitely doing that so I can blind myself standing on that planet.

100% ray receiver uptime. Yes, you can ship accumulators from there, too.

Fire Storm
Aug 8, 2004

what's the point of life
if there are no sexborgs?

SettingSun posted:

I notice while designing a new sphere that it can be large enough to encompass planets with a close orbit. The implications of that are terrifying, and I'm definitely doing that so I can blind myself standing on that planet.

IT IS GLORIOUS! I'm doing that again and it will be my antimatter planet. Sometimes if I am lazy I'll just do that with a belt/ring instead of a full sphere.

mmkay
Oct 21, 2010

Since the receivers draw from the entire sphere and not just the part you're aiming at, you can start by building a single node at the poles of the sphere to kickstart the 100% uptime (assuming you've already researched the tech that is).

Kazzah
Jul 15, 2011

Formerly known as
Krazyface
Hair Elf
I finished the game yesterday. I got up to White Science a while ago, but delayed researching the final tech until the sphere was done. Then I realised how long it would take to fill it up with sails and decided I'd done enough. I chose to make the biggest possible sphere, which was a mistake, but a pretty fun one. Anyway, I turned the starting world into what I imagined Sim City 2000 was like as a child, which is really all I wanted to accomplish. Total play time was 84 hours; I probably could have shaved off 20 if I'd gone harder into automation earlier. Even by the end, I was hand-crafting Inserters. Ah, well.

Some shots:










While the sphere is cool, I'm way more proud of what I made of my starting world:







(the dozens of ships in transit is more obvious in a moving image)

Kazzah fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Apr 10, 2021

LonsomeSon
Nov 22, 2009

A fishperson in an intimidating hat!

Ok after like 94 hours into my second save, including like 12-18 hours of Dyson Swarm noodling in order to tool around with all of the antimatter gizmos, I finally started putting together and launching rockets; my sphere started as a belt around the star's equator and since has expanded to be a full sphere with nodes at the intersections of the major grid lines on the non-geodesic grid, except for large circular polar caps.

Now 112 hours in, and did y'all know that anyone who wants to build a Dyson Sphere is going to need an awful lot of Frame Material for it?! Building up from 12/sec to 40/sec of that poo poo on my Launch Ops world just to support my currently-planned build-out to five rockets per second. The production stats mod has revealed that while whacking down Long-Lines setups for production stages and hooking them all into logistics I'm making a lot of arithmetic errors, for which the only reasonable solution is, really, to whack down more Long Lines.

I'm really looking forward to this game when poo poo that is obviously missing like by-planet remote logistics access through a unified stats window is added.

Pocky In My Pocket
Jan 27, 2005

Giant robots shouldn't fight!






I'm like 60 hours deep into my first real playthrough and i made my sphere be just under the size of the innermost planets orbit, which means i get some good views.


I think my next thing is going to have to be making really big supply chains specifically for the frames though, as i'm not getting anywhere near enough of them

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

I'm messing around with a new save and there's an issue that I didn't have in my main one, in that my home system has a single 400k patch of silicon ore within it. That's an interesting complication. The stone conversion into silicon is abysmal so I guess finding a system with good silicon and setting up the means to get there are priorities number 1.

Roundboy
Oct 21, 2008
Initially you really don't need a terrible amount of silicon. You can get away with a few stone to silicon conversions, and just start storing it up, and you should be able to float a decent amount of processors until you go interplanetary.

If you do this as soon as the tech opens you gather a decent amount by the time you need it

But yes you will end up with mines elsewhere, but it's not the showstopper it seems initially

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

Current state of the run: WTB electricity, about to cross 1GW on my home planet alone and nowhere close to keeping up with generation. I wish I knew where this last 300mw of need came from before it started eating my production speed. (Going to have to expand to antimatter, just currently have absolute garbage for lens production and my 40-extractor deuterium planet doesn't seem to be shipping anything nor my "remote demand" picking any of it up.)

WithoutTheFezOn
Aug 28, 2005
Oh no
Gas giants can’t ship, there’s no way to load vessels into those towers. Make sure your demand tower has vessels.

And everyone should remember that each big floaty power pole uses (I think) 360kW of power just by existing.

SkyeAuroline
Nov 12, 2020

WithoutTheFezOn posted:

Gas giants can’t ship, there’s no way to load vessels into those towers. Make sure your demand tower has vessels.

And everyone should remember that each big floaty power pole uses (I think) 360kW of power just by existing.

Yeah, I've got an ILS dedicated to deuterium (and hydrogen, but it's one of several for the latter) pickup that just has way less throughput than it should with 40 deuterium harvesters. So my guess is that it's just not getting picked up properly. Hydrogen flows fine. Are ships not able to warp to gas giant harvesters in another system? If so, that would explain it.

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Dr. Stab
Sep 12, 2010
👨🏻‍⚕️🩺🔪🙀😱🙀
Are the harvesters full or are you just assuming based on the throughput? The math to figure out the extraction rate of an orbital harvester is not easy.

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