DSP: Logistics Towers

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Logistics Towers

I made it back safely to the bootstrap base. That was a fun little scare. Nothing major, but hey, when you're all alone even small bits of craziness like that can be fairly shocking. Forever onwards though. Now that I have the titanium and processors from the mining base, I can begin construction of the logistics network. My habit until now is to bring the resources via belt to a location near where I've built all my other buildings, and then had the fabricators produce the items for me. But not this time! I want to use these damned things finally.

I have the Icarus construct a few using its onboard fabricator. It's slow and annoying, but the first few pop out, and I indulge myself.

Don't ask me how the Icarus could construct those, much less carry around multiples of them.

 See how disorganized and sloppy that looks? Welcome to the power of the logistics system! Each of these planetary versions can store up to 50 logistics drones and have three types of items each. Each item it can choose to either supply to the logistics system or demand from it. In this case, I have a tower that is demanding the three items I'd need to produce more planetary towers. Plus one from the lower tower. Each drone consumes power for flight proportional to distance, but power is essentially free and the ease of construction means I'm not too worried about them. 

All of which means that once I plug in the materials into the system, I'll be able to demand from anywhere. Halfway across the world? No problem. I can tweak the settings too if I'd like, but for now this should work out fine. 

But why bother? The sloppiness is intentional to a degree. The quicker I can construct buildings, the quicker I can build the dyson sphere. Having to carefully construct transport lines so I don't muck things up later takes valuable time, and I'd rather not waste it if possible. There's also the relation of raw materials to outputs and further down the chain. As I mine out worlds the production will by necessity be decreased. Under the old system that means that unless I go back and tidy things up items further down the chain will slow production as well. By adding things to a larger network I can much more easily notice changes in production and change them. Lastly there's the problem of splitting and evening out lines getting more problematic. The preference is that I have a guaranteed input line to each fabricator where I know how much is being added. The shared pool will even that out as well, so I don't have to worry that I have one line only producing 75% of what it could while another is producing 50%, as an example.

Middle Managers In Space

I won't change things immediately. But this is a major change that has me fairly excited. And it seems like the "supervisors" back home have rolled out some new initiatives. Namely some goals they'd like me to reach, and little awards to give when I hit certain thresholds.

I mock a little, but I do like achievements to pop up when I hit bits like this. And goals to hit are great for new players to use as guidelines

They brainstormed a bunch of these things, and even added some retroactively for me. But hey, it's kinda neat to see that my bases combined have used 1 terajoule of energy so far. That's not an insignificant amount of energy. Helps relieve the monotony I suppose.

Back to base building. Obviously nothing is going to come out of these towers unless I build other towers to supply the materials, so that's next on the list. My plan is to only introduce items steadily to the transport network. Working backwards of a sort. There's no reason to tear up the infrastructure I already have right at this point. But any new construction is going to go through the system, so it'll gradually end up being on these lines. And that's for this planet. It's coming up soon where I'll be expanding further out, on multiple planets. That'll be quite the experience.

Each tower can have some drones in it. These drones can fly to collect items, or to deliver them

Isn't it pretty? The sky will be bustling here shortly as I increase logistics usage. Thankfully the onboard processors are good about managing collisions so I shouldn't have to worry about them at all.

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DSP AAR: One More Step to Towers

 

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One More Step to Towers

Processing chips done, I'll head back to the base with a fresh load of Titanium for my industry there. One step closer to logistics ships and the ability to build a better base. There's some setup and research still to be done, but I'm almost there. Annoyingly this is when the constraints of the bootstrap base really start rearing their ugly heads. One of the things I've tried to do is keep items sourced closely to the other bits that need them. Oil products have generally been by themselves, so I could keep things tidy by separating them from the more metallic items.

That luck can't continue as I build more exotic items. And the logistics systems are actually quite the exotic item. Flight is harder than it seems at first glance. Humans didn't get it going until industrialization and even then they used some shortcuts. Unlike back on Earth, I can't count on resource planets having an atmosphere worth anything, so I'll need a system that works without air. And preferably one that doesn't involve consuming resources that I'd rather put into making a Dyson sphere. Of course, I'll also need a system that can go between planets in the void of space. Early rocketry can technically work, but that's not nearly efficient enough for me. Instead we'll use a variant of the engines on the Icarus for flight.

The idea of space flight without using some sort of propellant is funny to me, but nice to have

 

A new addition to the old line, and showing exactly what kind of nonsense I'll need to do to get things working. Sorters stack, so I went the easy route and trucked over graphene over to build my particle containers. What kind of particles you ask? I really don't know. The stuff we're working with now is downright strange.

How will this system work? Get a tower. Get it good and high with an elevator to make take off easier. Take some simple drones with a large cargohold. They don't need to be complex, the tower machinery and the particles involved will do most of the work. Load them in, power the entire thing with a frankly large amount of power, and we should have flying cargo ships that only use up electricity. And with the green energy I'm producing now, that makes it practically free!

A slightly different way of doing construction. The thrusters only go to making drones, so might as well keep them connected

Two more constructions. Unfortunately I only brought the few processing units I had made before, so it's off to Zibel 1 again to pick some up. Same as with titanium, I'm almost ready to get things completely automated, but I'm not quite there yet. I still need to research the exacts for some of this technology and I'll need the titanium and chips. A quick jaunt over and back and uh oh...

Space Flight is Maybe Not so Easy

I wasn't reading my checklist before I left for a routine mission. I forgot to pack extra hydrogen! No hydrogen means no extra energy generation and I'm forced to resort to the zero point energy generator the Icarus started with. It's infinite energy, but a tiny amount. It's not a major scare, but the idea of spending so much time to reverse course if I were to miss the location makes me shudder. I made it back safely, but I'd have preferred to not run into that trouble at all! Clearly the next energy source is on the cards for development. 

So far I've gotten by with burning fuels. Mix a fuel with oxygen and you get energy. Oxygen isn't plentiful in space, but it has been plentiful enough on these two planets that the Icarus can grab it constantly with little processing required. Easy to store and plentiful, I don't need to think about it. But the energy source is less plentiful, and hydrogen is the best possible burnable fuel I can use. If I want to get more energetic I'll need to go nuclear. There's a simple reaction available where you smash deuterium together with a single proton to produce quite a bit of energy. For me it means I can store eleven times the energy I could with burning the hydrogen and burn 50% quicker to boot which is quite the upgrade. But that's only soon. First, flying cargo ships. Next, turning the inside of the Icarus into a mini star.

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DSP AAR: Space Flight Made Easy

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Space Flight Made Easy

For fact: Jupiter has the volume of 1321 Earths. The scale here is a little off.

 Cargo acquired, time to head back to Zibel 3. Space travel is already a little dull. Though there are further upgrades to Icarus that should make things nicer. Higher speeds, more energy to hit those higher speeds, and more inventory capacity to make those trips worth it more. So that's ok. Soon enough I'll have it more automated. Easier to have machines do the work for me.

Back at the base, production is setup for analyzing some new construction techniques. It primarily researches using two of the toughest materials I can create right now, titanium crystals and diamonds. Crystals are quite the unique type of material, and should allow for some very nice technologies soon. I'm particularly eyeing the tech for a ship-based logistics network. Being able to send materials across the world or from world to world in a point-to-point manner will help immensely. Belts are great, but they very much do have their own limitations.

It is the odd case indeed though that I know enough of what I'll need in terms of materials, but yet not knowing how exactly to get it done. Research is still ongoing. And as usual, as soon as I fix one thing, another thing starts lagging behind.

And so it's a good time to start thinking of the next project: building the materials so I can build my logistics towers. There's two types of towers: planetary and interstellar. Both can employ logistics drones that'll transport materials between two towers on the same planet. The interstellar towers also have an additional height for easing the launch of logistics vessels that can go to other planets; at this star or others. Each come with their own set of materials that are still in the research phase that I'll need to develop the basics for. And after that, I can really start designing a better base. More options means a much better possible design.

The nice bit is after this I can develop a base with all the tools, and make something I wouldn't call a "bootstrap base" after its done. Unfortunately, the additional materials will make for some headaches in design. If you'll see, I've got science production in the center. To the east of it was production related to the beginning metal resources. To the west I've had products primarily relating to oil products, carbon, and now some titanium. Now I'll need to mix the two.

I say "now" but realistically I mean soon. More immediate is that my first burst of titanium is gone, and I'll need a lot of computer parts. Which are best sources from Zibel 1. So off I go again! Time for the Icarus to serve as a courier.

I decided to go with a white overall paint job with purple highlights

Luckily for me the two planets are close by in their orbits so this should be a quick jaunt over. I'll bring over some equipment to build processing units and bring back titanium while the constructors do their work. So 2-3 trips total. It's nice that the planets are so close. Did anyone ever tell you to make a list before you go on a trip? Well I forgot. I had everything but the very many smelters I'd need to for the process. Ah well. I'll take a load of titanium back with me when I go to pick them up so it's not a complete waste. 

And voila! Processor hot off the press. Almost literally, in a fun turn of events, considering how that term initially came about. You may notice that these lines are nothing like what I have back on the original planet, and there's a reason for that. The bootstrap base is ideal for producing many different types of items, and keeping them close together cuts down heavily on transport belt usage. So it's both efficient from a materials standpoint, but also thinking time. 

Here I'm not so worried about either. I have numerous transport belts that I can pick up and reuse eventually, so I'm fine with maybe being a bit wasteful, and I'll only produce a few products here. in this case I have multiple lines of raw resources only going to the eventual goal of producing processors. If I want to produce different items on this planet, I'll do it in different locations around the world. Logistics vessels will vastly change what my planets end up looking like.

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