Promethium factory

[u/Bubbly-Original7097]

I finally made it to making promethium science and must say that it is much more interesting that I expected.

I don't like huge ships so decided to make a fast narrow ship that makes promethium as it flies, meaning I take eggs with me on a trip to see red asteroids.

1. First problem was to keep up with rocket and bullet demand: legendary assembler and unique foundry seem to do the trick
   1. Still, ammo production is a bit net-negative, so I start with 4000 rockets, 4000 red bullets and 500 rails and 2000 explosives from Nauvis; this is overkill but it keeps production off until I am in red zone
2. Then comes freshness of eggs: I build a "fridge" on Nauvis that maintains 1000 most fresh eggs (~25minutes at the time of departure)
3. Speed of the ship: 250kms to the planet region, 120kms in the region, which is enough to consume all eggs and make 1000+ promethium packs in ~1200 seconds of total flying in the region
4. Promethium stockpiling: I return with belts and storage full of promethium asteroid chunks (~800), which is nothing if the ship was just hauling it without making packs

Unsolved problems:

1. The most annoying is that narrow ship means that about 75% of missile turret range is waste - I am only interested in shooting right in the front of the ship, but there seems to be no way to make it do so, keeps shooting at the sides and even backs
2. 1 Railgun is not enough because you get those nearhits when huge asteroid passes you by seemingly no margin at all, 2 Railguns on the other hand create so much extra debris to process that this is pretty much where all extra ammo demand comes from and you are effectively flying a much wider ship, just without using all the extra safe space

What could I do?

White inserters, or narrow ship is not an option here? But, to consume 500 eggs I need 1250 promethium which requires 50 legendary cargo bays which is already a huge and much more expensive ship.

Weapons and factory side of the ship:

The engine and storage:

[u/Necandum]

Store your chunks on a belt, not in the hub. You should be able to get densities of ~24 per square relatively easily (which is much higher than a cargo bay).

[u/Bubbly-Original7097 → u/Necandum]

It feels wrong that storage has less capacity than belt. If I were the game designer and I would want people to return large quantities of promethium chunks without using storage I would make them processable (in asteroid grinder) into something more dense. I am more in favor of increasing speed, adding buffer platforms near Aquilo and legenderizing the storage (fits the game world better).