DESCRIPTION
Some are using these huge rockets to send spying satelittes or orbital ion cannons above their heads, but why not using them as a cargo to quickly send a payload to a distant outpost ?
They are quite powerful to handle a chest content, and quicker than any train !
Moreover, they do not need to reach orbital altitude, so a simplified and much cheaper version of these rockets and rocket-silo can be built and used for this only transportation purpose.
To establish a transportation path :
- Research the "Cargo rockets" technology.
- Build a Cargo departure chest on the side of a rocket silo (or a simple dedicated cargo rocket silo). Open it and rename it if you want.
Verify that the silo checkbox is checked : it means that the nearby silo was recorded and linked.
The content of this chest will be sent as a payload.
- Build a Cargo arrival chest at the delivery location. Open it and rename it if you want.
Open one of the chests and use the "To" or "From" button to link them together (it opens a list of possible departures or arrivals).
To send a payload :
- when the rocket is built and ready, you can manually launch the payload
using the Launch button of the Departure Chest (do not use the Launch button of the silo !).
- or you can check the "autolaunch" option. In this case, the rocket will be launch as soon as it is ready (i.e. constructed) and every stack of the departure chest is full.
Note that you can use the red cross to limit the size of the chest.
Tips:
- The departure chest is also a requester chest.
- The arrival chest is also a smart chest and provides information to any circuit network.
- You can check the "map mark" option to display the name of the chest on the map.
- You can link several departure chests to one rocket silo. But if you switch all these chests to autolaunch, the first filled chest will always be launch first.
- The delivery is quick but not instant. There is a transit time. The departure chest is emptied when the rocket starts to rise.
Then you have to wait the incompressible time of the launch/rising phase (around 15 sec). Then the trip itself has
a duration that depends on the distance. But it's very rapid : around 0.01s / square. So a delivery to a 500 squares distance will take a total of 15+0.01*500=20 seconds. These durations can be customized in the config.lua file.
- When a payload is launched or delivered, a message is sent to every player of the force, with the duration of the travel. This verbose mode can be disabled in the config.lua file.
- If you want to optimize your cargo rockets transportations, you may use an item compression mod like
boxing.
- If you want to keep track of the number of rockets you are launching, you may use
Score Extended.
- The mod is taking forces into account in case of a PvP multiplayer and multi-teams map.
Credits: this mod is adapted from
an original idea of Qon.
