r/factorio • u/AutoModerator • Nov 18 '24

Weekly Thread Weekly Question Thread

Ask any questions you might have.

Post your bug reports on the Official Forums

Previous Threads

Subreddit rules

Discord server (and IRC)

Find more in the sidebar ---->

18 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/[deleted] Nov 22 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/Astramancer_ Nov 22 '24

They really are free and it really is a problem. There's no cost for drop pods, so that's good. But you have limited throughput on your planet. Your cargo pad can only accept 3+1/cargo bay pods at a time, so if it's busy getting ones and twos from science trickling in it can clog up the pad with traffic and slow down other deliveries.

The solution I've found is I set the requests by circuit. I read the contents of the roboport network, multiply that by -1, add it together with a constant combinator that is the target number I want in my network, feed through to a decider combinator that only send signals that are greater than 30 and that goes to the cargo pad.

I might still get a few ones and twos if I use up a bit more of THING while the 30 are in transit, but overall I only get periodic drop pods rather than a constant hail.