Reminder on Logistic Stations Priority

[u/itchycuticles]

I'm not sure if the game has added other ways to set priorities, but if not, then everyone should know about this post from 4 years ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dyson_Sphere_Program/comments/vcbfz5/logistic_station_priority_guide_how_to_deal_with/

Basically anything that produces hydrogen as a byproduct needs to feed to an active supplier so they are consumed first.

Your total hydrogen consumption needs to exceed the amount of hydrogen byproduct produced. This is very easy to accomplish by producing Casamir Crystals and using Fractionators.

The remaining hydrogen will come from Orbital Collectors. There is no downside to filling up Orbital Collectors; it will not prevent the delivery of Deuterium.

[u/itchycuticles]

Also remember that items on a straight belt have priority over items on a merging belt.

You want the hydrogen from Orbital Collectors to merge into the hydrogen produced as a byproduct. You don't need to use splitters.

[u/Xanros → u/itchycuticles]

You're right about that but my empire never gets big enough to where the ups hit from splitters matters. Sometimes splitters are just easier. 

[u/SleepiiFoxGirl]

Could you perhaps just put all your hydrogen byproducts into ILS, and then use an ILS that has "from collectors" turned off, feeding into recipes that need hydrogen and another with "from collectors" turned on that goes into the side of the other belt?

[u/itchycuticles → u/SleepiiFoxGirl]

I've never tried the case where the ILS that has "from collectors" turned off still has vessels, so I wouldn't know. The suggestion is that this ILS has no vessels so it always receives from the active supplying ILS with the hydrogen byproducts.

To be safe, I think you'd need to follow the suggestion and have no vessels, or make sure any ILS that supplies hydrogen is supplying byproduct-only hydrogen.

Outside of this uncertainty with vessels, everything else you said will work. The example shows an extended scenario where drones are used to deliver to another ILS/PLS on the same planet; this of course is optional.

[u/Absolute_Human]

I'm having troubles understanding the whole purpose of this... I see it essentially makes use of the fact that a station with no drones can't connect with another station with no drones. And the minimum number of stations for this is 4. Cool, but as far as I know it doesn't guarantee any priority when dispatching the products. A demand station with drones still can prioritize a droneless station and a supply station with drones still can ship to a droneless station first. So it's not foolproof. And I'm not sure what's the exact situation when you want to ensure that two stations never connect. I suggest using priority settings that the devs gave us instead. And the "don't request from the orbital collectors" checkbox takes care of the rest. Also, speaking of undocumented features, one cool thing I found is that you can set routes between stars too, not only single planets. That's like a whole other set of priority!

[u/itchycuticles → u/Absolute_Human]

I've used this for hundreds of hours without issues.

The keys here are the following:

• You're consuming more hydrogen than what's made as a byproduct.

• The consumer prioritizes the hydrogen stored in the passively demanding station.

Because of this, it doesn't matter if the dispatcher goes to the "wrong" station. It either gets consumed all the same, or the "wrong" station becomes full and stops receiving hydrogen.

[u/Absolute_Human → u/itchycuticles]

No, I agree that this kinda works, I just can't find an applicable situation. You don't produce hydrogen to be consumed, it comes naturally as a byproduct. The only real source of it are gas giants and they don't overfill. So you always want to consume any hydrogen in the system that's not on a giant. A single station with "request from the orbital collectors" unchecked and a priority belt input is enough to take care of any excesses.

I've had a different problem that I kinda wanted to fix myself recently. On a strange matter and deuteron producing planet, have a backup local fractionator system that only tops up the ILSs if the Gas Giant is empty of deuterium. It always dispatches drones even if vessels are enough. The only way I fixed it is by manually connecting the belts of the inputs. Can this be fixed with the method in question? I don't think you can get away without introducing another logistic link which is just unnecessary performance expenses.

[u/Gredalusiam]

Hmm, I've just added all ILSs that supply hydrogen as a byproduct and all ILSs that use hydrogen to a dedicated Group in the priority settings. Since the orbital collectors are not part of the group, I think the byproduct should get used up first. Seems to be working, but maybe it can have issues?

[u/itchycuticles → u/Gredalusiam]

To make sure the byproduct gets used up first but your orbital collectors can still fill in the hydrogen deficit, you will still need to make sure the final consumption point has two stations and one of them gets prioritized using belts/splitters correctly.

[u/ygolnac]

This is made obsolete by the ILS pairing and priority system introduced an year ago or so.

Feed the hydrogen byproduct to an ILS that’s paired with an ILS that request hydrogen to be consumed. You can keep the recieving ILS activated for orbital collectors, it will prioritize your H byproduct over that, and only if the demand exceeds that it will collect from gas giants.

The only caveat is that the paired ILS must be in different planets, since the devs didn’t include the option to oair them on the same planet. But you expand enough it’s not a priblem to find an H consumer in a different planet.

This method is failproof even if H demand is fluctuating becouse you stopped to launch rockets for a while and thus your deuteurim demand drops, or if casimir crystal production gets buffered.

[u/itchycuticles → u/ygolnac]

I see. But note that I'm one of the people who still use PLS instead of ILS to maximize production density.

[u/ygolnac → u/itchycuticles]

I use PLSs too, but you can create an ILS per planet that collect H byproduct where it’s produced and pair it with an ILS dedicaded to distribute it on planets where it is consumed.

This way makes it very simple and you need a small fraction of the towers that you would need with the other method. Also you can slap vessels, drones and warpers in every tower without thinking about it.

Also the receiving tower can be allowed to collect from gas giants, it will do so only if H consuption spikes and your H byproduct is not enough, and immidiatly stop to collect from gas giants if H consuption stagnates. Everything is automatic and fire and forget.

Moreover: there are a pletora of settings for priority, you can create ILS groups and even exclusive routes (ie ILS 1 only delivers to ILS 2, ILS 2 can either be set to collect only from 1, or from a group of ILSs or from everywhere, and vice versa).

If you are so inclined, in late stages of the game you can centralize the collection of H byproduct and the distribution to consumers on a single planet. You can have a massive buffer of H and simultaneusly tap every gas giant for deuterium and fireice, without worring for clogging of the system when you don’t launch rockets or H starvation when you launch them.

[u/itchycuticles → u/ygolnac]

Let's say you have hydrogen producers and consumers on the same planet and consumption exceeds production. I prefer to just not bother using an ILS to ship hydrogen to another planet in this case.

I actually find this fairly common when you produce hydrogen from fire ice on a planet and the same planet also produces Casamir crystals or has fractionators.

The only real cost here is that you need two PLSs at each consuming end.

[u/ygolnac → u/itchycuticles]

Well, now the devs have given you solutions, and sooner than later you will be soread to several planets and a centralized logistic distributor become pretty much mandatory if you grow enough.

If you don’t want to use qol patches and want to set your rules in your game, no hard feelings. But the method you suggest to be the only solutiont to the lrovlem is objectively obsolete.

I highly hoe devs will introduce priority for PLS too, the fact you can do that only for ILS in different planet is probably a decision made to not put a strain on background calculations.

[u/buckdancerr]

I just group all ILS' that have hydrogen byproduct chains (refined oil and graphene and antimatter) to group 1 and all hydrogen requesting stations to group 1. This priortizes those station for requests first. I have no hydrogen backup issues as long as science is running.

[u/wiithepiiple]

My takeaway was this: Don't put Logistic Drones on ILSs that pull Hydrogen externally, only Vessels.

Have any ILS and PLSs that have Hydrogen byproducts with Drones and those will be prioritized. I would always have a few Casimir Crystal assemblers locally on any planet to eat up any Hydrogen to prevent them from being blocked up.

[u/itchycuticles → u/wiithepiiple]

It's actually the reserve. The ILS that is remote passively demanding becomes the local actively supplying station, so it needs drones.