Interplanetary Launcher & Signal Broadcaster / Receiver - suggestion!

[nets]

Hi,

I'm a person who loves logistics challenges and automation challenges. Configuring signals, doing stuff based on conditions, its stuff that's straight out of a large network engineers day to day (routing protocols, filters, flows etc).

After playing the DLC (Spaced Out!) for a while now, and I've settled several colonies, i've come to the conclusion that the way these work today is frustrating, and its the way they work that is the problem.

Lets take the Interplanetary Launcher. It has a minimum of 2 items/kgs before sending. Ok, so thats supposed to add to the challenge. But if i set it to 100 Kg/items, have a conveyor meter and measure out 100 items, it will sometimes send 99, sometimes 100. And leave items back. I have no idea if its the conveyor meter or if its the interplanetary launcher, but there is something definitely not working right. The counters don't work! So now I'm left with an additional item in the launcher, i have to either wait or find some way to jerry rig another item onto there. THIS IS FRUSTRATING. The tool is inconsistent and impotent.
Also if i have to send 130 items of another thing, it will only send 100, then we have to manually intervene. THIS is ALSO frustrating. Manual intervention and automation should only come together if the automation logic is insufficient, NOT because the tools are misbehaving or holding back failure information.

What if the "Metal refinery" only made 79 items when you requested 80? .. What if it made 81? What then would that do to your wolframite? Determinism is important in a sim game.
This causes frustration, instead of accomplishment. The challenge shouldn't be fighting how machines work, it should be how you detect/manage the situations that requires items to be sent. How do you control the flow? We can't even detect if items are still lingering in the launcher.

The way this SHOULD work is that there is a button on the launcher (that is the same as automation wire green signal) for when to send anything. A manual toggle or the green signal and off it goes. The launcher shouldn't have any "minimum item" amount, (EDIT: It can have a 1 item minimum), it should send all items it can (up to say 200kg/capsule), multiple capsules if necessary/possible. Anything else makes the tool impotent. We still need the "Enable/disable" signal port, to turn off the launchers when bunker doors go down, so it has to be another port in addition. (EDIT: Since the PL is inherently throughput limited by radbolts, it could have output automation port that signals when it has enough radbolts to send one item, so the simplest activation signal would be to hook up the output automation port to the send-activate signal, and at least you'll send a capsule.)

Now for the signal receiver/broadcaster. Sure it causes some challenges if they are covered in regolith/bunker doors/broken, but we can work around that by managing signaling better. One can do a lot of interesting logic with memory toggles and automation. One of the things this game does very right is the automation wiring/system. Its simple, its based on logic anyone can pick up (on/off) and is freely available information on the internet (and is actually useful to learn for posterity).

But the 5 tile limit signal length limit is too hard, and the solution is too costly performance wise (ditched rockets). Combine this with the fact that you have to re-enable the transmitter after changing the name (because of course you made a mistake), is just frustrating, especially since a DUPE has be there to do it - Good luck doing that on a ditched rocket. The material costs are entirely irrelevant, its the frustration, and *cognitive load*, and effort, that leads to sourness.

5 tiles is too short, but it could (and in my opinion should) be determined by game difficulty level. Make the signals travel 10 tiles on standard difficulty, and 5 tiles on harder difficulty. Barring that. Add another building, a high performance transmitter that requires power, to ship the signals further. It could even be determined by (some setting? and) requiring more power, oh no, now you need more power remotely! Barring that, remove the limit entirely. I don't have trouble with signal routing through multiple planetoids. But as it is right now, from someone who loves the PREMISE of these challenges, the current implementation causes frustration and grief. Overcoming them does not really add to accomplishment.

Love Nets

PS. I love the game, and don't take this as an attack on the choices that lead me to post this, but rather, as a little red light that is blinking ever so faintly.
 

Edited March 16 by nets
Slightly tweaking the suggestions.