Rocket Silo Automation Guide [Updated for QoL 1]

[ruhrohraggy]

Really simple now it seems...Thanks to LordAizen-chairsama-sensai for pointing out how you can scan for rockets from the bottom of the map np.

No need for a filter anymore either...

I'm kinda "whatever" on the whole scanner thing, but it beats the more complicated automation.

 

 

[Caochu]

Very interesting video, thanks ! I didn't bother play with the rocket automation now, thinking it might be bugguy or unfinished in it's current state, but you showed me that you can make it works, and that's pretty cool. I will dare to design multiple rockets now, cause that automation will alleviate the repetitive tasks associated.

Also, thanks for the captions in your video, it makes it clear and I only had to watch once to fully understand the whole thing. Plus, loved the puft prince bouncing on the bottom left, that was quite catchy haha

[tzionut]

I will not bother whit this until the bugs whit rockets aren't patched. The design is of but if my rocket will come without the engine....

[Lifegrow]

5 hours ago, Caochu said:

Very interesting video, thanks ! I didn't bother play with the rocket automation now, thinking it might be bugguy or unfinished in it's current state, but you showed me that you can make it works, and that's pretty cool. I will dare to design multiple rockets now, cause that automation will alleviate the repetitive tasks associated.

Also, thanks for the captions in your video, it makes it clear and I only had to watch once to fully understand the whole thing. Plus, loved the puft prince bouncing on the bottom left, that was quite catchy haha

If you remove the bunker doors from your launch chutes (which a lot of us have started doing because of the bunker animation bug) then you really only need a buffer, filter, a not gate. That'll auto launch your rockets and retract your gantry at least.

Great vid though OP, very helpful and clean descriptions. xox

[Sigma Cypher]

Nice job!  What is the buffer gate coming out of the hydro sensor set to, about 10 seconds?  And the buffer gate that holds the gantry until the launch is complete -- about 5 seconds?

[ruhrohraggy]

6 minutes ago, Sigma Cypher said:

Nice job!  What is the buffer gate coming out of the hydro sensor set to, about 10 seconds?  And the buffer gate that holds the gantry until the launch is complete -- about 5 seconds?

Thanks!

The buffer gate out of the hydro is set to 40 seconds, buffer gate for the gantry is set to 60 seconds. It's a little deceiving because the game is playing in triple speed, so it's in-game seconds, not real seconds.

I do mouse over most of the timings so you can see them in the video. (I forgot the hydro sensor buffer gate)...

[ruhrohraggy]

So I've used this in a live playthrough...and after working through some problems here and there, I found...that this works great.

 

Spoiler

My steam plant is on the left. I use the steam geyser to keep things nice and toasty. I ended up getting impatient and pumped 500 g/s water through the top of my bunkers to heat it up and spit it out into the steam reservoir.

However, I haven't completely looked into it, but something odd is that I haven't had to use my steam plant on the left for the last 4 launches. I have only used the steam re-cycled from the silo. And as you can see...my recycled steam reservoir is full...hmm...

One other oddity, I ended up having to set my liquid sensor to 440kg for some reason. I'm playing at 10x speed...so maybe this had something to do with it?

I'm really not sure what's up with it...It should be 880kg... 1800 seconds mission duration - 40 seconds for doors to close...i want the bunkers to open at 1760 seconds...

0.5 kg/s * 1760 s = 880kg.

Weird.

[Alfons100]

Question, why aren't we using Space Scanners to detect Rockets or am I misintrepreting it as a whole?

I hope we get some Long-time Buffer gates, or that we can freely adjust the time to anything, plus that it doesn't reset when you restart the game.

[Sigma Cypher]

It sounds like your water is being divided between two tiles.

I've noticed that if I use creative mode to fill tiles with water for example, and paint over a "tiled tile" by mistake, that tile will also get filled and be transparent to water from then on out. Same with gas. I notice there is standing water to the left of your water clock with no obvious source for water, so perhaps this happened to you?

I've been using the water clock since I saw your post to measure 12 and 15 cycle trips - just add mechanical airlock doors on the side and open 3 of them to measure 12 cycles for example (see attached).  No change to the hydro sensor is needed, and no issue with needing half the expected water yet, even on 10x speed.

I've been using your silo automation too and I love it. I just added a few and gates with hydro sensors to reset clocks and doors and to toggle launch permission; the same thing that happened in your video (forgetting to set new destination) happens to me every time

[ruhrohraggy]

21 hours ago, Alfons100 said:

Question, why aren't we using Space Scanners to detect Rockets or am I misintrepreting it as a whole?

I hope we get some Long-time Buffer gates, or that we can freely adjust the time to anything, plus that it doesn't reset when you restart the game.

 

Answer : They will be added in the next update. I am not playing on the current experimental build. I'm actually rather excited for this new scanner based detection system...because I have a wicked sick 6x scanner network I spent a very long time designing, and I'll have a great excuse to build it in a live run.

I know what you're saying. I wish buffer and filter states were saved...for now we have this :

Which is great.

20 hours ago, Sigma Cypher said:

It sounds like your water is being divided between two tiles.

I've noticed that if I use creative mode to fill tiles with water for example, and paint over a "tiled tile" by mistake, that tile will also get filled and be transparent to water from then on out. Same with gas. I notice there is standing water to the left of your water clock with no obvious source for water, so perhaps this happened to you?

I've been using the water clock since I saw your post to measure 12 and 15 cycle trips - just add mechanical airlock doors on the side and open 3 of them to measure 12 cycles for example (see attached).  No change to the hydro sensor is needed, and no issue with needing half the expected water yet, even on 10x speed.

I've been using your silo automation too and I love it. I just added a few and gates with hydro sensors to reset clocks and doors and to toggle launch permission; the same thing that happened in your video (forgetting to set new destination) happens to me every time!  So why automate at all? Good question ... Because it's fun I guess.

 

Nah, that happened because my original water clock pump overheated, I had to move it over. It's a single tile it's filling anyway. The water on the ground has 2 sources, 1 source from the steam my rockets been generating that leaks out the door, and the other from the 1000kg of water from where the pump was originally at.

I still think it might have to do with the tick-rate of playing at 10x speed...but I can't be sure without testing. For now, I've got the timings worked out, so all is well.

It's great that you've found an alternative solution, and I kinda like that idea...It might actually be more useful building that in advance to cover all future rocket missions...

My original setup was just for demonstration, and I showed how you can just play with the numbers on the sensors and valves to change the clock without rebuilding the system.

I'm glad you're enjoying it. I had fun designing it / solving the return trip problem. 

I haven't gotten into testing out cargo trips or anything, as I'm still using my rockets for research, but I'd like to point out again, that if your rocket has something to do at the planet, there is actually no need to re-select the destination.

I didn't fully understand the mechanics at the time of building. (Which isn't great, but I was having fun...)

Rockets coming back immediately seems to be hit or miss. I was able to have it do repeat research missions without having to re-select anything, until the planet was fully researched. Cargo missions however, don't seem to want to co-operate.

The other extremely obnoxious module is the oxidizer for loading oxylite. It refuses to load the amount I tell it...So i end up having to play a little puzzle mini game of : Keep loading gantry closed... Load container submerged in water, after airlock, with amount of desired oxylite, lock a dupe in there, and lock all dupes out, activate gantry, dupe loads in desired amount from container. Seems to work...but it's stupid AF, *smh*.

Once the patch hits, I'll work on tying my 6x pulsed scanner network into this, so not only will we have precise timings for rockets AND meteors, we'll be able to save a butt-load of power while we do it.

[Lifegrow]

@ruhrohraggy I'm a little confused.

I rarely bother to automate rockets, but for a build I have in mind i'm trying to figure something out. How do you keep the uppermost command signal active after the rocket is launched? (i.e. to keep gantries retracted until the rocket returns).

My rockets launch, then shortly after the uppermost signal turns false, but in your video yours doesn't seem to do that. I'm a confused boy. Plz halp.

[ruhrohraggy]

13 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

@ruhrohraggy I'm a little confused.

I rarely bother to automate rockets, but for a build I have in mind i'm trying to figure something out. How do you keep the uppermost command signal active after the rocket is launched? (i.e. to keep gantries retracted until the rocket returns).

My rockets launch, then shortly after the uppermost signal turns false, but in your video yours doesn't seem to do that. I'm a confused boy. Plz halp.

That original video is made on stable branch. The signal stays on while the rocket is away.

If you are playing on QoL beta, the signal shuts off after launch, since it's now up to the dishes to detect the incoming rocket.

Hope that clears things up.

There is a work-around to this however, and before I fully understood how the rocket automation worked, I had one in place. A clever use of a memory gate will hold the signal for you until the rocket gets back. I don't like this however, because memory gates are reset to their original state when you load in.

Though, I plan to shift into using the scanners to handle the automation.

Which would be one monster guide if I decided to share...which I probably won't. I'd be tying in my 6x pulse scanner network into Rocket automation, and then adding in how to get the most out of the solar panels that are handling the scanners.

That's like 3 entire systems...I doubt there'd be any real interest in that.

[ruhrohraggy]

Disregard....a solution has been found.

[LordAizen]

On 11/20/2018 at 2:53 AM, ruhrohraggy said:

If someone has figured out a way for scanners to detect incoming rockets during meteor storms, without the scanners getting pummeled to death and set on fire during said storms, please give me a heads up

I was playing around with scanners and found that a scanner will detect a launch even if the bunker doors are closed. So I hooked up a water clock to it's output and set the clock to open bunker doors after 2.9 cycles. Then when the scanner detects incoming rocket, it resets the clock. Haven't had much time checking it but it's been working well so far.

wouldn't this be a simpler automation?

[ruhrohraggy]

43 minutes ago, LordAizen said:

I was playing around with scanners and found that a scanner will detect a launch even if the bunker doors are closed. So I hooked up a water clock to it's output and set the clock to open bunker doors after 2.9 cycles. Then when the scanner detects incoming rocket, it resets the clock. Haven't had much time checking it but it's been working well so far.

wouldn't this be a simpler automation?

Launch can be handled with the rocket output, so I don't really care about launch.

Landing is the issue. Does it detect an incoming rocket while the bunker doors are closed? Again, I haven't / won't bother with this...I've already got it working perfectly with above automation. 20+ missions, no issue.

[LordAizen]

14 minutes ago, ruhrohraggy said:

Does it detect an incoming rocket while the bunker doors are closed?

yup, it does.

Actually you don't even need to bother with the water clocks anymore. With 0 visibility, the scanner detects incoming rockets at 96% or approx 56 seconds. All you have to do is just hook it's output to bunker doors and you're golden.

[ruhrohraggy]

41 minutes ago, LordAizen said:

yup, it does.

Actually you don't even need to bother with the water clocks anymore. With 0 visibility, the scanner detects incoming rockets at 96% or approx 56 seconds. All you have to do is just hook it's output to bunker doors and you're golden.

Thanks for the info.

That's pretty lame on their part though...but whatever. Should make things a lot more simple...I'll fiddle around with it. Thanks.

[Nitroturtle]

47 minutes ago, LordAizen said:

yup, it does.

Actually you don't even need to bother with the water clocks anymore. With 0 visibility, the scanner detects incoming rockets at 96% or approx 56 seconds. All you have to do is just hook it's output to bunker doors and you're golden.

So it sounds like you only need one scanner per rocket, I like that.  I was worried it was going to require several and wasn't sure where to put them all.

[ruhrohraggy]

Confirmed....not that I didn't believe you...guess it servers me right for making assumptions and not testing properly.

*thumbs up*

Automation now simplifies to this. Still feels cheesy, but whatever, I'll take it.

[Chained Phoenix]

OK I'm confused about what everyone is doing here and why... I've got my setup so it opens as the rocket returns and when it's about to launch (as pictured).  Also you can change one of your meteor detection network to spaceship and it doesn't decrease the network quality.  I have 100% network quality with 6*100% scanners, even though one is set to ship not meteors, so just use one of your normal ones instead of building another (separate it from the automation grid for your doors though obviously).

Anyway this set up uses an or gate with an input from the rocket and one from the sensor.  Sensor notices the rocket coming back, opens the door and retracts the gantry, rocket is about the launch, it's sensor does the same.  Am I missing something?  Why use the filter gate?

 

 

 

[ruhrohraggy]

Nah, good point. Doesn't seem to even need the filter gate anymore.

Before QoL 1 the rocket would take off immediately upon receiving an active signal, meaning your bunker doors didn't have a chance to open on time and would get destroyed.

Seems they keep ninja changing things, and I keep missing it.

As to why I built a seperate scanner? Don't worry about understanding that one....personal design choice with regards to how autistically I have my main scanner network setup. It was also to show, that the scanner detecting the rocket can be buried underneath a bunch of solid mass and have no sight to space, and still work for detecting rockets.

So if you're using a silo, you can just place the scanner underground next to the rocket.