Science & Industry

I have a quick question about PI routing and storage facilities.

If have the following links:
Launchpad <===> Storage <===> Processor(s)

With a route from the Launchpad directly through the Processor, if I put 5k of stuff into the launchpad, will any of it sit in the Storage facility and wait for the Processor, or will it assume that it's not there at all?

What I'm trying to do is to figure out how to put down 30k of materials into a single launchpad and have it route/overflow automatically without having to manually do expedited transfers all the time.

If that's not possible, is my only option to do an expedited transfer from the Launchpad to the Storage and then route from the storage out to the Processor(s)?

Materials won't "Pull" themselves from alternate storage units. When you set up a route, it looks at the site of origin and only routes stuff if that site has the materials needed.


Here is my suggestion:

Assuming you are doing a factory planet and want your processors to combine two different materials.

Place a launch pad, a storage facility and up to 8 processors, as follows.

LPPPP
SPPPP

Connect the all the facilities in each row to each other, and put a link between the two rows in the middle two p's.

Deposit 10k m3 of material 1 in the launchpad, use an expedited transfer to send it all to the storage unit
Then deposit 10k m3 of material 2 on to the same launchpad. Have all 8 processors feed off the launchpad and storage unit, depositing their product into the storage unit (which has more than 10k m3 capacity).

When you are ready to extract your product, use an expedited transfer to kick the finished goods into your launchpad and send them to the POCO. You can use fewer than 8 processors, but I would not recommend more than 8. If you want more production on the planet (or more capacity so you can leave it alone for longer) just put in another set of launchpads/storage/production units.

PPPPLLPPPP
PPPPSSPPPP

This will give you 40k m3 storage, 20k of each product. Having more than 1 storage unit per launchpad is not efficient since you can only transfer one batch of materials per launchpad before having to wait for the cooldown. By having two launchpads for two storage units, you can make both transfers in one sitting without worrying about the cooldown. Sending the finished goods up to the launchpad from the storage unit can be done at the same time since the storage unit has its own cooldown.

Hope this helps!

Pinstar,

Thank you as well for your response along with Denal's. That is most likely what I will be doing. Just trying to work out how best to do various combinations. Thank god for Excel.

Dont see, why not route the output directly to the launchpad.

you can set it up to pull from both and deliver to both, but it will not fill one and then the other. It may be possible to affect this by the lengths of the links the nearest will load faster but not sure if that would work. You will most likely end up with materials in both facilities, but once one is full it will send to the other. If you want feed products in the storage facility that you imported a expedited transfer is the only way. You are better off having two launch pads than a launch pad and a storage facility.

The best use I have found for storage facilities is when extracting and manufacturing on the same planet. Have all extracted material feed into a storage facility, and then into processors from there. only route your finished product you will be exporting to a launchpad. This works well for a planet setup where you will remote manage extraction and manufacturing but want to limit the need to be in the same system for extended periods of time. A pure manufacturing planet can make great isk, but requires daily delivery of mats, regardless of how much storage you have for outputs.

The best you can do for importing mats through a single launchpad is two full lauchpads worth. fill it, transfer to storage, and fill it again. Then you have to wait for the cool down before you can transfer again. I believe you can shorten the cool down for transfers by upgrading links. A second launch pad and storage facility would allow you to import 40,000m3 of mats to feed your operation at a time, but you will need to be careful with your routing to make sure there is room for the outputs. A third launchpad for outputs would allow the operation to run longer between refills. You can always route the outputs to multiple launchpads so if one does not have the room it will dump to another. This quickly cuts into the number of processors you have room for though.

It is easy to set up a very low maintenance PI operation, but it will not make as much isk as a high maintenance operation. You need to decide which you want. you can not have both. With PI the more time you spend managing the operation and moving mats around the more you can make. There is not way to set up a maximum isk operation that does not need constant attention. this is intended by design.