Pneumatic Transport Tubes For Materials

[vonVile]

Just like water pipes we could send solid materials from one point to another instead of Dupes having to walk the distance to deliver something. A good example of how it could work is that say you wanted to send Algae from a Bio Distiller to another part of the colony, but you have a Dupe barred from leaving the area where the Bio Distiller is. He would instead place the Algae in the tube to another part of the colony. There would also be a Gas/Water filter device to output materials to were you assign them to go.

 

[Moggles]

I like this and it's been suggested a few times. I'd be up for a whole system with its own overlay of pneumatic tube piping.

Give storage compactors or an improved larger storage compactor (researched) a tubing connector similar to wiring. Additional buildings may be required as drop off and pick up points. Any storage compactor connected to the network shares its resources and is accessible from the drop off and pick up points.

Drop offs would work like storage compactors. You can select which resources to deposit just like storage compactors. The storage compactors inherit might this setting. When there is no storage space in the connected compactors available the dupes would pause delivery to the drop off point.

Pick up zones are built where you need resources. For a small amount of time a dupe would operate the pick up point building to collect a resource. The network will send the requested to the pick up point.

The system would be most beneficial over long distances when the time taken for the dupe to run back to the compactor is greater than the time taken to deliver it over the network.

I've imagined this as a system similar to wiring with no real physical movement in the network just so that you don't have to go to the extent of having inputs/outputs and programming the simulation of the resource packets moving around a network, clogging up etc. Although that would be cool.

[Developous]

Pneumatics... definitely a good option for an upgrade from compression.

[Maverick42]

Factorio is probably the best place to start in trying to decide how to implement automated solids transportation.