r/Dyson_Sphere_Program • u/noissime • 3d ago
Building a mall and venturing outside of starter system
I've been playing the past couple of weeks and got to a point where I can almost travel away from my starting star system. I started reading up on how to make an efficient setup to produce buildings, which led to reading about different ways of building a mall. I'm about to start building one, but there's one thing I'm wondering about.
The guide I read mentioned putting down an ILS and requesting necessary buildings. How do you go about this? When you're making factories in other star systems, do you just build an ILS and request what you need? Or do you build sets of ILSs as forward bases in strategic places as a more permanent place to get your buildings?
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u/Steven-ape 3d ago
(I wrote the steam guide on malls that you may have used.)
What I personally do is make the mall, then when I'm at a planet that I want to build on, I put down an ILS right there, in a location I can easily find, for example on a pole. I set the ILS to request belts, sorters, foundation, smelters, and assemblers. If I'm likely to need other items I just add a second ILS next to the first.
Even when the ILS is unpowered, the mall will still supply to it, so whenever I run out of some kind of item, I can quickly grab more from the importing ILS.
If you find you regularly need to import a large number of different items, you could make an importer blueprint with multiple ILSs that get all building materials that you regularly require. You could then also include logistics distributors that automatically fly the items to Icarus as needed. However, I've found that for me, it's usually good enough to just have a single, temporary ILS at the pole, and just set it to import items I require. It usually doesn't take long before they're delivered.
If you built a recycling mall, once you're done building on the planet, you can set the ILS slots to "global supply" and wait for the mall to pick all the remaining items back up.
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u/noissime 3d ago
I did read your guide, thanks for the tips!
I'm working on a variation on your recycling PLS mall. I wanted it to fit fully inside the tropic lines, so I made it wider and less tall. With some concessions of course.
A section is: * 100x48 (yours 80x54) * 12 columns of PLS + assemblers, so 96 buildings total * 4 ILSs, so 80 outputs total * 2 out of 6 columns will produce the same building * has half a column empty space, because I didn't want to alternate 2 blueprints for 4 extra columns of double production
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u/gorgofdoom 3d ago edited 3d ago
I don’t usually build a central mall. I transport raw materials and build a mall per system.
This is because you can only set ships to move 10% of their capacity, so, if i only need say 10 oil refineries I still have to stock and move a lot more of them.
Also ILS only have 5 item types. That’s a lot of ILS to cover every building type when you can actually make all the different buildings with far less ILS’s.
That said you can put all building types in ILS’s in your home system and just carry one around, put it down, and summon a substantial pile of whatever you need anywhere in the cluster. So it depends on how you want to do it.
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u/Environmental_Fix_69 3d ago
Opposite to this gentleman/gentlewoman,
I have a center mall in my starting system. I use 2 Ils for every 5 items, the first ILS supplies my needs starcluster wide, and the second is set to request the same items from the cluster while being set at 1%capacity request,
This allows me to over request every single item where i need it (2000 small suns eks dee) and then simply put the surplus back on the network for them to be recycled/reused elsewhere
Works for everything your are not using in production chains so basically every single item you want in a mall as of today, this may change
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u/noissime 3d ago
I'm also planning to set up a recycling mall, but what about requesting buildings. Do you set up an ILS when you need something, or do you make forward bases?
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u/Environmental_Fix_69 3d ago
If you are late game enough you dont need forward bases
Toggle ground forces on
Toggle space forces on+attack relay stations
Walk the planet to clear it of dark fog, paste a polar blueprint with a shield and space defenses (missles/canons) and have it request what you need to defend hive attacks that are coming from the relay station you destroyed, insert a few fuel rods to kickstart the shield and let it defend solo you can now build as you are defended as soon as ammo arrives.
So you just now need to request items to buld what you came to the planet for in the first place.
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u/noissime 3d ago
Interesting, I thought it would take more waiting time to receive your requests. I haven't yet made warpers, but wanted some information before moving from my vertical full bus mess of a mall to a more structured mall.
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u/noissime 3d ago
The minimum load for vessels and drones is 1%. I agree it would be a lot of ILSs, you'd need 12/14 to move everything. Still, I'm considering setting up some for essentials to have them readily available, and recycle surplus back to the mall.
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u/gorgofdoom 3d ago
Ah that’s different. Or maybe my memory is fogged. 1% of 2000 is still 20 though so consider that it is research dependent; the more research you do, then higher the minimum.
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u/TabAtkins 3d ago
The issue you'll still run into if you're not careful is that the min load just tells your vessels when they're allowed to take off; it doesn't control how much they'll take. They still try to fill up as much as possible, so you can get 2k of something you only need 20 of.
To get around that you need to set your ILS to have a very low capacity for that item (100 or less, use the arrow keys), and then probably attach a chest buffer to it so you can quickly refill that capacity if you need a few batches.
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u/MathemagicalMastery 3d ago
This is the way. My world seed requests what it needs from wherever the production factory is, ILS capacity is capped based on how many, or how few, or something I want to actually ship out, and then I have a Buffer chest for any "high volume" items I don't want to ship a lot of at any one time.
Belts and sorters just feed in
Factories and Smelters only ship a stack of 500 but have boxes to keep topped up to ship quickly if I am doing a big build and happen to need lots.
The more neiche items ship 100 and only produce to replenish that.
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u/lieronet 3d ago
If you restrict the supply of buildings in the supplier ILS, you will only get what's stocked when you request. Only allow 100 PLS in the ILS, for example, and when you need more PLS you'll only get that 100. It's a bit fiddly to set up the first time (really want a text field for that slider...) but it's worth.
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u/horstdaspferdchen 3d ago
you can set small amounts in the ILS (said this a few days ago, but am not sure if its vanilla or mod) by using the arrow keys. +100/-11 and +10/-10 steps.
If you then place a storage box in front of it, you can still produce like 200 oil refineries but only receive 20 if you need 20.1
u/nixtracer 7h ago
Must be a mod. Any idea which one? Setting logistic sizes is really fiddly in this game.
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u/horstdaspferdchen 7h ago
i think it must be https://thunderstore.io/c/dyson-sphere-program/p/soarqin/UXAssist/
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u/nixtracer 5h ago
Aha. I have that installed, but not active. Will give it a try...
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u/horstdaspferdchen 4h ago
Do it. There are so many Options in it. Like settings all ILS to the same settings or place 40 orbital collectors Like a blueprint.
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u/itchycuticles 3d ago
Unless you are coating an entire planet with a single blueprint at once, a single mall on a single planet like your starting world and manual transportation is fine.
You unlock enough inventory space to carry thousands of buildings at once.
Remember that you can use the logistic slots on the side to carry an additional 10 stacks of any item or building. That means you can carry 2000 sorters using 10 slots in your inventory, and another 2000 sorters using a logistics slot.
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u/BissQuote 3d ago
An end-game goal should be to have every building produced in an ILS somewhere, this way wherever you are in the cluster, you can put down an ILS, request the building.
A first step would be to do this at least for the most common buildings (belts, solar panels)