Mass Drivers

[Starkiller]

Ah, then I didn't need 9 mass drivers for Earth. I have 3 Mass Drivers
each on Mercury, Venus, and Mars. Since that was 9 Mass Drivers, I
decided to play it safe and place 9 Mass Drivers on Earth to 'catch'
the packets.

Eric

[sloanjh]

You can now build Mass Drivers on planets that will send mineral packets to other populations in the same system. ...
 One Mass Driver can launch 5000 tons of minerals per year and catch any amount of minerals per year.
...
Each 5-day increment, a mineral packet will be assembled and dispatched toward its destination. The packet is assembled by calculating the amount of minerals that can be sent. This is based on the number of mass drivers * 5000 tons * (Increment Length/Year). A roughly equal amount of each available mineral will be sent. This is done by the program checking each mineral type in turn and adding up to 10 tons to the packet. This process loops until either all available minerals have been added or the packet reaches its maximum size.
...
Steve

Should we be able to specify which minerals to send? (just put a list of tick-boxes, so you can ticky off the ones you're interested in sending).
e.g. a system with 2 populated worlds, one produces lots of neutronium, one lots of duranium. Would be nice to allow trade this way.

You can't do this at the moment but it would be a useful option

Steve

Did this (selecting which minerals will be sent by a mass driver) ever get coded up?  I can't find it anywhere.

I'm in a situation where I've got a freighter perpetually parked at Mars accumulating Sorium for shipment to Earth.  I need to do this because Mars is both a manufacturing and mining center - I need the other minerals for production on Mars, but the sorium needs to go to Earth since that's where the fuel factories are.  I'm beginning to hit the same problem with Venus - I'd like to put maintenance facilities there, but then I'd have to shut down the mass driver so that the (small amounts of) maintenance minerals don't get shipped off to Earth.

John

[schroeam]

Try using the Mass Driver with the maintenance facilities.  I think I've done this in the past and the maintenance facilities used the minerals before the mass driver sent the packet.  It all boils down to how Steve set up the order of operations for each cycle.  But I agree with the usefulness of being able to select which minerals to send and which to keep.

Adam.

[Hawkeye]

While we´re at it, how about the ability to set a "reserve level"? Like, being able to tell the Massdrivers on Mars to keep 100t of all minerals on the planet and only launch the surplus stuff?
Would also be usefull if I want to assemble some prefabed PDCs or build a few facilities while still shooting the minerals not needed for those tasks to earth.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I have added these suggestions to my 'to do' list so they might make it into v4.1 but there is still a lot to do on the rewrite.

Steve

[sloanjh]

I have added these suggestions to my 'to do' list so they might make it into v4.1 but there is still a lot to do on the rewrite.

I'd be happy if they're on the 4.2 to do list - I'm getting anxious to see 4.1

John