I’m wondering if anyone who does pi knows if there is a way to set the priority of materials in storage facilities and launch pads to be processed by factories, if you’ll refer to my posted image, I want to know is there a way to ensure that materials in my launch pads are processed by the factories first and then from the lower storage facility and then the inner storage facility. guidance would be appreciated as I’m planning on going over to a 36X factory only set up with 6 characters on 6 planets each and id like to make sure I have every detail dialed in proper to avoid crushing and dumping products on the side of the roads, thanks
As far as I know there is no way to set priority, the factories just pick up goods via the defined routes every cycle if the goods are available.
Why do you need priority? Are you using different factory chains that use the same inputs?
knowing the priority would be nice so I can avoid having produced materials crushed/lost due to launch pads filling up with produced mats and not taking out the tier one production mats from the launch pads first, I want to make sure the launch pads empty out first so that there is always room for the gel matrix bio paste from the advanced factories and the oxides, superconductors and biocells that a being produced in the basic factories, in the picture you can see I have 3 launch pads each connected to an advanced factory with a storage facility in the center and one in the low middle, each of the launch pads holds the tier 1 mats that are for making the tier 2 mats that are then sent back to the launch pads before going to the advanced factories that then spit 3 pieces of GMBP out to their attached launch pad every cycle, the plan is to send down the tier 1 mats to the launch pads and then expedite them to the storage facilities and then fill the launch pads back up with more tier 1 mats and leave just enough room for the newly produced GMBP and the precursor t2 mats, id like to know the priority and be able to rely on it working properly so i can fill it up with t1 mats and sleep peacefully at night not having to wonder if I’m tossing my money out the window as my stuff gets dumped on the roadside of the link due to no space in the pads
The higher tier materials have a lower combined volume than the combined volume of the input materials, so if you send back the products to where the input came from you will not have a full storage problem.
However when the input comes from multiple launchpads it may not fit in one destination launchpad, so what I do in such a situation is to spread the outputs too, by routing some of the factories to output to one launchpad and other factories to another launchpad.
While there is no usage priority you can calculate volumes and set up routing in such a way that your end products fit without problems.
yeah I’ve already calculated the space ill need for output mats but there is no guarantee at this point that it will take the mats from the launch pads first and thus continually making more space in the launch pad for the end product as it piles up, my concern is that it will take randomly from storage in the network and then perhaps it starts taking from the storage facilities and not the launch pads and could then create a back up issue where the launch pads have filled up and are taking mats from the storage and just wasting materials at that point.
How is it random? The goods will only take the routes you define.
for eg. If I have some oxygen in launch pad 1 and some in storage fac.1 and storage fac.2, I want to make sure that the factory will pull from the launch pad then when the launch pad is empty it starts pulling from storage fac.1 and then storage fac.2 last, not randomly from any of the 3 places I have oxygen stored.
That doesnt work. If a factory can’t pull from a storage location that is empty, it will not chose any other storage location, it will simply stop working.
that’s not true, you can route from mats from multiple storage locations to the same factory. do you even know how to PI bro???
you can see in these two images that the advanced factory NM-U4J has a biofuel input routed from both launch pad 8J-OSK and storage facility JM-QTK, what i want to make sure is that it will pull from the launch pad first and then the storage facility not whichever one the “well trained” staff in the facilities feel like delivering from.
I heard a rumor a long time ago that it will pull mats from the storage location that you route from first, but I’ve never got confirmation of that, iv also heard that it will pull mats from the storage location that is closest to the factory first but i have no way of knowing because there is literally no information on how routing works in terms of priority anywhere. its as if it was never even thought of by CCP or any players who do pi.
Also, fun (annoying actually) fact I just learned while working on this set up, you can not route to a an instillation that is more than 6 links away, very silly… smh.
Why in hell do you want to do that? You do know how much resources your factory needs to keep running and you do know how long you want it to run between hauling runs, so the solution is to feed multiple factories from one storage location and place exactly the needed amount into each storage location so the factory will run x amount of time. And once x is up, all input materials have been transformed into the higher products (which are then located in the launchpads), while all the storage facilities should be empty, so you can refuel them with the exact next amount to run again x days.
I never never seen anyone feeding a factory with the same resource from multiple storage facilities, because thats basically a waste of cpu/pg, nobody needs that redundance. Each factory should have 1 incoming route per resource an 1 outgoing route per product.
Even if you would set it up the way you do, I don’t think there is an option to tell the factory which route to use first. The game will use an internal list on which all routes are stored, but you don’t know how this list is sorted. Could be by creating time of the route, could be by length, could be by ID-number of the storage location… You will have to test it. But really, you can completely avoid it by just pre-planning your inputs, so you will never need multiple storages per factory… I assume thats why the devs have never even thought about it and to be honest, it’s the first time I hear someone “missing” that feature here at the boards…
Oh, I have never tried that.
You can guarantee that your factory pulls from the right launchpad if you don’t create multiple input routes.
Why do you need multiple inputs for the same factory?
If you want your factories to pull from two input locations you can let some factories pull from one input location and other factories from the other, which removes the problematic randomness.
so that i can put a lot of materials on a planet and walk away and come back in a week and have a crap ton of Gel to go to market, I’m starting to feel like I’m going to have to draw out a detailed diagram of my set up and how it works. more mats stored on the planet means longer run time with less trips too and from the planet to fill it up.
CCP Could remove the randomness by developing some sort of priority or letting us know if you can set priority by routing from one storage first and then the second and third… Sure would be appreciated CCP 
I understand that it’s nice to have two input launchers for a longer run.
But I just told you a different way you can already remove the randomness while using multiple input locations, which doesn’t require changes to the game.
Why not try that?
maybe my diagram can explain it, but ill say i need to route multiple inputs from multiple storage so that i can equalize the mats in each storage container and make sure that i have the right amount to produce full runs, i cant just send down a random amount of each t1 material to any launch pad. I don’t play like that! i send down the right amount for full runs with no leftovers sitting in the factories
3x “Hex” advanced factories are producing GMBP,
tier 2 mats are produced in the 18 “Dimond” advanced factories and fed back to launch pad in color sector.
Green sector input / output LP1
Purple sector input / output LP2
Red sector input / output LP3
green LP1 holds equal parts of Oxygen and Oxidizing Compounds that are feed into the 6 Green diamond advanced factories that then output their Tier 2 Oxides back to LP1.
purple LP2 holds equal parts of Water and Plasmoids that are feed into the 6 purple diamond advanced factories that then output their Tier 2 Super conductors back to LP2.
Red LP3 holds equal parts of Biofuels and Precious Metals that are feed into the 6 red diamond advanced factories that then output their Tier 2 x back to LP2.
then T2 mats are fed from LP 1,2 and 3 into the 3 hex advanced factories (red, green and purple) that then spit out their GMBP back to the Launch pad nearest to them in their group.
Storage A and B are to hold equal amounts of all 6 T1 mats, Oxygen, Oxidizing Compounds, Water, Plasmoids, Biofuels and Precious Metals.
the issue is that mats are being pulled randomly from launch pads and storage facilities creating the potential for GMBP to be destroyed / crushed when sent to their respective launch pads due to launch pads not being emptied first, they are filling up with GMBP and not making more room for the GMBP. this is why being able to set a priority is key so that we can make sure that there is always room in the destination storage because you cant route an output mat to multiple storage locations, that would be ideal as then it would just put the output in any storage location that had room.
Okay.
Running the numbers, I see you have half a launchpad plus two times a sixth of a storage facility per input material, or 5000 + 2*2000 = 9000 m3 total.
The total input volume of three filled launchpads plus two storage facilities is 54000 m3.
The total volume of the final state consists of only the launchpads which is 30000 m3.
P1 → P2 production takes two times 40 P1 units hourly to produce 5 P2 units.
P2 → P3 production takes three times 10 P2 units hourly to produce 3 P3 units.
P1 → P2 volume goes from 15 m3 input materials to 3.75 m3 output materials, a factor 4 smaller.
P2 → P3 volume goes from 22.5 m3 input to 9 m3 output, a factor 2.5 smaller.
In total you reduce the input volume of 54000 m3 by a factor 10, which means the output is 5400 m3.
A few observations:
- Your produced volume (5400 m3) easily fits in the destination launchers (30000 m3). It requires a little over half a launchpad, while you have three.
- The only risk of full launchpads is thus right at the very start.
My recommendation:
- Remove all randomness by defining one route per factory: let one basic industry per hexagon draw from A, one basic industry from B and the others from the respective launchpad. (This isn’t perfect - you would feed 2000 m3 to the factory drawing from A and B and a split 5000 m3 among the other 4 basic factories, but removes the randomness.)
Or an easier fix:
- Do not completely top the lauchpads off but leave a little space empty and you won’t have any issues either. 6 times 3.75 m3 = 22.5 m3 should allow you to produce the first round of P2 in each launchpad. 9 m3 is enough to have the final product in the launchpad.
Leaving 31.5 m3 out of 10000 m3 empty in the launchpads is 0.3 percent of your total volume or in other words the time you can leave your planet alone, which is negligible.
It completely fixes your issue.
i apprecaite your trying to math it out and come up with a solution. i think the best solution would be some sort of fix from ccp where we can set priority some how, my suggestion is that priority be set in the order that the routes are set, so for eg if i have a a factory with routes from 3 storage locations that all have oxygen for eg. then it should draw oxygen from the storage that was first routed to the factory then from the next one that is routed to the factory and so on, this would mean that we could always accurately know what facility mats are being taken from and what order they will empty in, ALSO! we should be able to route output mats to multiple storage facilities and so then it will just place the outputs in whatever facility has some available room, no room in the first no problem it will see if there are other storage facilities that it has ben routed to have space in them and then drop them there, i understand that if a facility is full that the materials be destroyed but not having a way to plan and prevent this and a way to set draw priority is a mistake or oversight from development imo, the other option should be that all production stops and you receive a notification that your factory has jammed up. having to put less mats in my storage or hoping that it doesn’t jam up shouldn’t be the “solution” pi just needs a bit of love and attention as its been sorta ignored.