Science & Industry

The central component of your colony should always be a storage unit (or Launchpad) Your extractors will harvest a lot more at the beginning of their program than at the end so all your P0 needs to be buffered through storage.

You do not need to link the extractors directly to storage - the route can cross several links and transit factories as long as you don't exceed the capacity of any link in the chain - you will be told if you do.

I route P0 from extractors to storage - then to basic factory - P1 back to storage and then to advanced factory - P2 back to storage. Each stage of processing reduces volume. Launch the P2 and collect once a week. 1 storage unit in the middle is all you need. Route everything to/from it.

You use expedited transfer to move between storage units (i.e. to a launch pad if you're not using it as your storage unit). This is a manual process and has a frustrating cooldown between transfers. Transfers between storage units should rarely be necessary.

This assumes you are harvesting P2. P0 and P1 are a lot more bulky and you will need to launch more often.

You *can* route things directly from one factory to another, but in my experience the PI system is very buggy and this leads to lost cycles, missing requirements and waste.

Route to and from a storage buffer, always. Even if the storage is immediately taken into the input hoppers, it's still better to have and use a store. A lot of people use the Command Centre storage as the buffer in cases where they are expecting the buffer to always sit at zero.

If there's no available space at the routed destination, then the additional resources are lost.

That's why it's not safe to route directly.


I don't understand the rest of your comment, please clarify.

to put it another way:

1: Always route to and from a buffer storage.

followed by

2: PI chains predicated on mass haulage of P0 commodities is a road down which madness lies.
and
3: Time spent thinking about how you can spend the least amount of time in an Epithal is time well spent.


@OP:
In my experience, direct to P2 single planet setups are problematic to keep running smoothly and have a pretty low yield overall.

Herewith my CCU-IV Extraction to P1 setup, P1-P3 factories look like this at CCU-V.

You can route via a chain of links; you don't have to have a single link from the ECU to the storage or factory, as long as there's a valid path though your setup the route will just use multiple links without stopping (as long as no link is overloaded).

Most people extract R0 and process to P1 on the same planet, then lift it off and take it somewhere else to further processing. There is a limited number of P2 that can be built on a single world.

the route is ECU->Silo->Factory->Launchpad. Four factories feed into each launchpad, meaning it takes ~5'ish days to fill up completely with ECU cycled daily.




My apologies for not being clearer, that's a P1-P3 factory setup, in this particular case, Data Chips.

The red factories take Silicon and Industrial fibers from the launchpads and smash them into Microfiber Shielding. The Yellow ones take Biomass and Oxygen, cracking them into Supertensile Plastics. The Blue factories then take those P2 outputs and combines them into Data Chips. There's one launchpad per P1 input, so it'll run for around two days before needing a refill.

It's been some time since I had multiple launchpads on a planet, but I think you get a drop-down menu to select one of your launch pads if you have more than one.

There are a variety of different setups you can use on a planet, but, generally speaking adding advanced processors to a harvesting planet with eat into your CPU and power grid. Thus limiting the number of extractor heads and amount of resources you can pull off that planet. The most economical resource you can pull off a planet is P1.

In terms of routing, buffer storage can be provided either by a Launchpad or a Storage unit. Though generally speaking I find that keeping intermediate products separate from the Launchpad simplifies the process of exporting. Which means less time sitting in space in a vulnerable industrial. Thus the routing which I use is as follows:

Extractor Control Unit(s) >>> Storage >>> Basic Processor(s) >>> Launchpad.

or

Extractor Control Unit(s) >>> Storage >>> Basic Processor(s) >>> Storage >>> Advanced Processor >>> Launchpad. (for a P2 setup)

You should recognise that routing to storage/Launchpad is always necessary. As any surplus intermediate product needs to be buffered and stored. Say for example you have two Basic Processors feeding into an Advanced Processor. If one of those Basics should run out of input, then, the second one will keep feeding P1 and hence waste product. If you buffer it, then the surplus will instead fill the storage and be ready for use later.

Another thing to note is that routing does not require direct links. As long as structures are connected to the network the materials will transit through the intermediate strictures and continue to their destination. Just like a train line with multiple stops.