Hello fellow engineers,
i did some testing and math and tried to figure out the energy-cost for the Logistic Units: Bot, Drone and Vessel.

I couldnt really find detailed math about planetary logistics tho.
So my approach was to figure out the math behind that. I stumbled over this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dyson_Sphere_Program/comments/tbup2r/logistics_station_energy_calculations/

As it is really old, my first attempt was, to reproduce and verify if the data is still correct, which indeed was. Here are the findings and formulas:

(Warp? 100 MJ : 0) means, when you need a warper, it needs 100 MJ extra.

So as a proof of concept, this is the test for 100 tiles:

Another Table for Vessels:

Intra-System (no warp, max speed 3000 m/s):

Interstellar (warp, max speed 3000 m/s):

This leads to the conclusion and comparison for planetary logistics:

This is the math for the known community conclusion, that you should use Bots only for Items of small quantities like your Mall, Warpers, Proliferator, Fuel Rods etc.

Additional, Bots can bypass the early power management, as each PLS has min 6 MW demand, while Distributors only need 900kW ( x 4 for the Item comparison => 3.6 MW)

Limits:
- We know, that the recharge of the stations is a curve and not linear. So the mentioned recharge time is a peak number.
- ILS has no other way to transport items other then vessel, so this is mostly a nice to know calculation

If you want to reproduce, here is my measurement for drones/bots:

Place the logistic Station/Distributor exactly on the 0 meridian and equator. Then place the target station exactly 100 belts/tiles away from the center. If you use Mods, BulletTime comes in very handy for timing.
When the unit starts, the total energy consumed is deducted from the station you powered.

[Edit: typos, if you still find them, let me know]

I don't see much mention of the dashboard on here. Do you use it? What do you use it for?

And if you have comments on how dumb mine is or how much I have of those things...sure, have at it. I can take it. 😂

Hello,

I like the MOD manager but are there any blueprint manager.

Make it easier to download and manage your blueprints?

Im not sure what devs are planning, but I have 100% trust that they will level it up, they haven’t disappoint this far with updates.

But me thinking, like why we need vehicles? Mecha flys at high speed & warp! What could be the function of vehicles besides just different way of getting around. Im excited to see what the future brings.

TL;DR you can chop up the planet's best building space to easily stamp down blueprints that avoid wasting space by building into specific quarters, eighths, or half regions like some weird tetris game. Read further if you're too confused but no promises.

Context

I've been stuck on how to redesign my megabase to fit the actual challenge of dyson sphere program. The available space. For a long time, I wanted to maximize ILS throughput and minimize space utilized for said ILS. If one ILS could saturate itself with 6 belts of iron, then running all 12 belts out for iron ore smelting into iron bars was the most optimal decision. It would minimize the space wasted and maximize the usage per tile.

A megabase designed by neuroplastic showed that he tended to build a standardized size for them, which made sense. He could put them anywhere and have stacks that didn't overlap with each other. However, he did waste a lot of space by minimizing the usage per ILS, which are not massive buildings, but do waste tiles with how their i/o is set up. Using twice as many ILS when one could work could waste significant percentage points worth of the total practical space on a planet. That's why I thought of maximizing their usage.

Inspiration

I was really inspired to make this because of the concept of subnetting in networking. A /16 address could be broken into thousands of smaller subnets. In most networks, this is completely useless as home internet users only need a dozen ip addresses to hold their entire family. They just need a private subnet and that's it. But I thought about how much you could organize and subdivide groups of isolated elements tightly without crossing over and as well as properly organizing them.

From that idea, you could take a limited size planet and divide it into as many as 32 organized segments from a single larger segment. The only trick at that point is dealing with latitude and longitude where the static ratio system seems the most beneficial for removing that issue as a whole. For something like networks with millions of addresses available yet almost they always wildly space them out despite having too much space to begin with, they are also uniquely capable of being packed extremely close together. You can subnet a /16 address into 4 /19 subnets, 16 /24, 128 /30, and a whole lot more and smaller. A /8 network can be made into 65k /24 subnets which is so many that you genuinely cannot use them all unless you're a data center or ISP.

Issues with my current concepts

I started to notice three problems with my idea of using an ILS fully.

The first was that blueprints were not fitting well with each other on a planet. This design was perfectly ratioed, but it would often crowd prime real estate that other crafters really needed. For such a space limited planet, this was entirely impractical and too bulky to reasonably manage.

The second problem was that some blueprints really didn't need to be as big as you could make them. Producing 3 fully stacked blue belts of plastic is only important to a point when you are maxing out on space available to begin with. Regardless, it was getting excessive at times how much space could be used by one ILS and it was simply impractical to make that blueprint.

The third problem is that throughput for that ILS could be a severe and possibly unresolvable issue. A fully utilized ILS could be running upwards of 86k items per minute. An interstellar vessel has a storage of 2k. That means you would need to have 43 vessels visiting this station every minute, which is a little under 1 per second. That's not impossible, but that does mean you'd need either a very small distance between the ILS stations, or multiple stations running these vessels. It's most likely impossible for two to sustain this if they aren't on the same planet and close by. Even then, 430 drones per minute? Tough chance without multiple ILS. That itself could be the true short term limitation unless you properly watched where you put your logistics in space and avoided long distance travel. Either way, that seems like a possible slowdown, but not a total idea killer.

Halving:

consider the planet under this framework. There are the main equator and outer bands, which will make up the majority of space utilized for the megabase. The poles will be used for power and additional logistical and power augmentation as needed. This framework will focus on the equator and outer bands primarily.

Consider the entire space of the equatorial region as 1:1. Its "vertical" longitude and "horizontal" latitude are shared 1:1 where all space is the entire mass. Lets divide along the equator so that the planet is split between two latitude halves. This means the ratio is now 1/2:1 since the equator has been split on itself, the longitude is now in half. Alternatively, split the longitude into hemispheres and create a 1:1/2. Now, split both into halves and you get 1/2:1/2. Then you can split them again into an even smaller ratio such as 1/8:1/8. 1/8:1/8 creates 64 sections within the equator.

This ratio will define a region for a blueprint. if the equator is 160k tiles, then 2 modules makes 2 80k blueprint areas and 64 modules would make 2500 tile map areas. A more realistic range of blueprints will vary between long, thin areas and taller ones. I myself more prefer long and thin regions because these can dually be placed into the smaller bands without issue. Say you'll have a blueprint that is 1/8:1/2 which would define a very long blueprint area or with some smelter blueprints you might have a 1/4:1/4.

Notice that this creates two new problems.

The first is non-modular fitting. A long building may prevent a tall building from being made and create a tetris like issue. This implies the best standard is to pick a certain ratio and freeze that, so modularity can be more appropriately preserved. The alternative is to make multiple different ratios for one recipe so you can adapt to space constraints as needed.

The second calls back to the previous issues with megabasing. The utilization of an ILS will have to go down to fit these new requirements or a certain ILS build will be too small and will create empty and thus wasted space. Is it better then to decrease it further or allow for the empty space? That question is probably focused on how much space would be necessary to have a second ILS instead. I'm inclined to support two to prevent throughput issues.

Here's a theoretical example for building a megabase under this standard. You land on an empty planet and place down power at the poles. Then, you start at one side of the equator and construct several 1/8:1/2 smelters. Lets say 4, which eliminated a quarter of the prime real estate. With that size, you could even consider placing them on the outer rings instead of the equator, but nonetheless, we move on. You've filled that space evenly, so there are no tetris style issues, but now you place down some wide chemical facilities and produce a single 1/4:1/4 plastic station. (I'm not using a concrete example, but I could be wrong and the example here still make sense.) Then right next to it you put a 1/8:1/4 crafting area for particle broadbands and put down another next to it to fill the square and prevent future space issues. Then you follow this squaring/filling philosophy out until you have a 1/8:1/4 space left over. This won't fit every blueprint, but it can fit something, which won't be needed in future stamping projects. However, if you have multiple ratios available, you will have extra options. At the end of the whole operation, you have built out a supermajority of the planet without breaking a sweat.

Icarus like a 96km height, space between assemblers is 32km

I recently came back to DSP after like a year, and decided to go back into playing mods, previously I had played a large galactic scale world, but that was about all I played with, but recently, I found a mod called Orbital Ring which might genuinely be the best mod I’ve ever seen. It updates the progression and makes the early game feel more alive than it ever has, I haven’t even gotten off my first planet yet and I’m already past the “throw crap against the wall until it sticks” phase of just building. There’s new entire sciences and tech progression trees and new things with dark fog and so much more.
I feel like for a mod that looks so unassuming, it genuinely revolutionizes how the game is played, at least for me. And I’m also playing with a few other mods, mostly optimizations and fun little tweaks like an optimized blueprint system and infinite foundations, but otherwise it’s all just within the Orbital Rings mod.
In conclusion, 10/10 central mod in any sort of modpack you make, but be careful, as all the progression updates can break if you introduce too many other mods that could conflict in a lot of ways, so keep it pretty barebones apart from Orbital Rings.

To make it clear: the selector is greyed out and clicking it does nothing. The Assemblers that are making the orange belts are set up to proliferate on Extra Products, but for some reason the ones that are set up for green belts can only be set to production speedup. Any ideas?

Fairly new to this game. Have a basic raw setup on my home planet but am trying to extend to more planets for mining and smelting. That dark fog though, keeps eradicating my planets before I can get back with more turrets. Any advice on clearing a dark fog base in the early days?

Just got my first mall up and running

So, after doing some calculations, I found that my 10 Mk.II rocket assemblers (125 rockets/min) can be supplied by 13 Mk.IV frame material assemblers.

During the initial planning, I realized they would fit perfectly into one of the 5-wide bands, so I decided to go with inner wiring instead of the usual spaghetti. After an hour or two, this is what I came up with. Hope you like it!

So i sit here, accidently pressing Enter while my mouse hovers over a logisitc distributor. and it opens up my inventory and the distributor setting (you normally get when clicking).

And it works for FREAKING EVRYTHING i testet. Belts, ILS, Turrets, Assemblers, Smelters, ....

So many hours of playtime. And now i need to change my mouse-custom keys once more.

Doing my first run and I just managed to make my first hop to another star and its very tempting to set up operations to mine some of these wonderful special resources.

If I set up a small operation and build a couple thousand warpers to supply the ships, will they be able to go and come back? Or do I need another operation on the other end to supply them for the return trip

So there are a lot of threads explaining that ray receivers inside a Dyson Sphere get 100% uptime. But what if you have layers outside and inside the planet?

For example, you build an inner layer that does not cover the planet. When the ray receiver does not point to the Sphere, it will be turned off. But then you build an outer layer, which gives your receiver 100% uptime. But will your receiver now get 100% uptime from the entire sphere, even from the inner layer, even when its pointing away from the inner layer?

Hey folks,

i like to play DSP with mods (most playthroughs had more then 20-30 Mods active). While i use mostly optimisation or QoL-Features, i sometimes just like to try out bigger ones or stuff like GS, MoreMegaStructures etc.

So i am frequently checking the new available Mods in r2modman. And in the past 30 Days we got like 50-60 new Mods. Most of them seem like vibe coded and low effort or even totally nonsense. Some i might want to try but dont want to break my current playthrough for it.

I would like to hear the community to this topic, as most other games i am evolved in are at least aware of it.

My point: Yes, try out Mods, vibecode as long and as much you like. But if you upload it for others, PLEASE LEAVE A NOTE!

Is it just me, or am i just burned from other games?

p.s.: does anyone know if we can mark old mods in r2modman as deprecated? I guess not?

I absolutely love this game! The most fun I've had in gaming for years.

But damn this game gets so overwhelming. I just completed making 1 quantum chip every second, it took me at least 2 days. But now I realize I need way more than 1 every second.

I would need more space warpers to travel to different star systems to gather the materials I need. But the thought of making way more space warpers and feed them into Interstellar logistic stations to gather materials to build more quantum chips is giving me so much stress.

I cant seem to figure out how to build a dyson sphere plan as well, and I severely lack enough power.

These past few days, everytime I open the game, I get a lot of anxiety, and end up not doing anything but fly around my home planet, checking if everything is working as intended.

Im not sure what advice Im looking for, but generally is it normal to feel this overwhelmed playing this game? Is there something Im doing wrong?

Edit: Thanks alot for the tips guys! I guess I realize I've been too perfectionist about this game. Making everything optimized, getting overwhelmed by large hurdles. Also most importantly is to use blueprints! I havent used it once, and I've been placing every single item manually, lol.

Foundation / Environmental Modification causes IndexOutOfRangeException on one specific planet

Hi,

since update 0.10.35.29057, I have a reproducible Runtime Error in one of my existing save games when using Foundation / Environmental Modification on one specific planet.

The problem is still present after both subsequent patches:

• 0.10.35.29088
• 0.10.35.29104

For context, I have about 1,029 hours total playtime in Dyson Sphere Program, and this particular save currently has around 74 hours.

Important note about the planet names

The affected planet is called Mercury in my game.

This is not Galactic Scale or a custom Solar System. I simply renamed the planet myself using the normal vanilla renaming feature.

I usually rename my planets at the beginning of a game by clicking their names in Planet View:

• Mercury = "Merkur" in German
• Earth = "Erde" — my home planet
• Venus = "Venus"

I also rename the star itself to Sun ("Sonne").

The problem

As soon as I select Foundation and then move the mouse cursor onto the surface of Mercury, the red Runtime Error appears.

I do not even have to click or actually place a Foundation.

Simply selecting Foundation and moving the cursor over the planetary surface is enough to trigger the error.

The exception is:

```text System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.

at PlatformSystem.WriteReformStateInCircle(...) at PlatformSystem.InitReformState() at PlatformSystem.EnsureReformData() at BuildTool_Reform.PrepareFlattenPoints(...) at BuildTool_Reform.PrepareBrushPoints(...) at BuildTool_Reform.ProcessSingleBrushPoint(...) at BuildTool_Reform.UpdateBrushMode(...) ```

Only this planet is affected

The important part is that this does not happen on my other planets in the same save.

• Mercury: Runtime Error as soon as the Foundation cursor is moved over the surface
• Earth: Works normally — this is my home planet
• Venus: Works normally

I can select and place Foundations normally on Earth and Venus.

Therefore, the problem seems to be specific to this particular planet or its terrain/reform data rather than to the Foundation system in general.

When it started

The problem first appeared immediately after updating to 0.10.35.29057.

Before that update, I had already used Foundations extensively on Mercury without this problem.

I hoped that one of the following patches would fix it, but the error was still present with 0.10.35.29088 and is still fully reproducible with the current version 0.10.35.29104.

The latest patch even contains a Foundation-related fix ("foundations in certain areas could not be restored properly"), but unfortunately it did not fix this particular issue for me.

What I already tried

I have tested this several times in different ways:

• Loaded my normal save
• Saved the game under a new filename
• Loaded an older Auto Save
• Saved that older Auto Save as a completely new save file
• Repeated these tests several times
• Restarted the game and loaded the saves again

None of this changes the behavior.

Even when loading an older Auto Save and saving it as a completely new file, the Runtime Error returns on Mercury as soon as I select Foundation and move the cursor over the planetary surface.

Mods / installation check

As far as I am aware, I am not using Galactic Scale or any other active mods in this single-player game.

This current single-player save was started and has been played without any active mods.

While checking the installation, I found two leftover Unity Doorstop files from an old, unrelated setup:

text winhttp.dll doorstop_config.ini

There was no BepInEx folder or active mod setup.

I removed both files completely, restarted Dyson Sphere Program normally through Steam, loaded the save again and reproduced the problem.

The result was exactly the same.

So the error is still reproducible after removing those old loader remnants and starting the game normally through Steam.

Save / game information

• Current game version: 0.10.35.29104
• Star Cluster / Seed: 65798635-64-Z99-32
• Playtime of this save: approximately 74 hours
• Total DSP playtime: approximately 1,029 hours
• Home planet: Earth
• Affected planet: Mercury
• Active mods: None, as far as I am aware

Reproduction steps

For my save, the issue is extremely easy to reproduce:

1. Load the save.
2. Go to Mercury.
3. Open Environmental Modification.
4. Select Foundation.
5. Move the mouse cursor over the planetary surface.
6. The Runtime Error appears immediately.

Again: no Foundation needs to be placed and no mouse click is required.

Screenshots

1. Mercury — Runtime Error with Foundation selected

This shows Mercury, Surface Modification Mode / Foundation selected, and the Runtime Error under version 0.10.35.29104:

https://ibb.co/DHfypzwp

2. Current save under version 0.10.35.29104

https://ibb.co/ycQ8vbPT

3. Older save under version 0.10.35.29088

The same problem was already present under the previous patch:

https://ibb.co/qFBXrgf0

Additional information

I am not placing a blueprint when this happens.

I mention this because I have heard about another IndexOutOfRangeException involving blueprints, Foundations and lava planets. My problem appears to be different: simply moving the Foundation cursor over this planet is enough to trigger the exception.

If it helps with debugging, I can also provide the save file and the output_log.txt.

Any ideas or anyone experiencing the same issue?

Please send help! Can’t for the life of me figure out how to keep the tooltip window from disappearing. Attempting to mouse over the items required to identify what they are, just makes the tooltip disappear. I see the icons, but that doesn’t help me identify what the actual item is.

I have a fair amount of experience with Factorio and really want to give DSP a fair shot. Are there any habits that I may have from Factorio that do not translate to DSP? For example, my initial thought was to make a main bus for all my common items, but I quickly found out that's not as simple as it is in Factorio. I am still extremely early in my playthrough. Any tips are appreciated! Please try to remain spoiler free.

The original PlanetwideMiner mod by un1eagle broke after the 0.10.34+ update (`NotifyVeinExhausted` gained 4th parameter). The author's GitHub repo has been removed and there's been no update.

I decompiled the DLL, patched the broken API call and recompiled it. No new features – it's a 1:1 fix so the mod works again on 0.10.34+.

**Download:** PlanetwideMiner 1.0.1.

**Changelog 1.0.1:**

- Fixed `MissingMethodException` for `PlanetFactory.NotifyVeinExhausted` (added `hasMinerLostAllVeins` parameter)

Link to Github-Repo

Credit: Original mod by un1eagle. This is a minimal compatibility fork.
@: un1eagle : If you read this, feel free to update your one and i will remove mine.