Linking cargo to transporters

[Pacific_Jim]

Something that may make handling moving cargo about is the ability to link cargo storage to transporters, allowing players to beam cargo from point to point. The main advantage to this would be for AI controlled cargo ships, since they wouldn't have to worry about docking etc. A balancing factor could be that beaming cargo wouldn't be instantaneous.

 

[Edymnion]

I could get behind this. Shields have to go down to transport anyway.

 

[splatthecat]

I think this might be a nice idea. If a transporter was going to be used for this maybe some cargo space could be linked to it and the cargo transported between the two.

Another idea would be to enable transportation to planet surfaces or other ships. Maybe an additional computer could be added that could enable this. The range could be limited to a few hundred metres. This would allow an orbiting ship to transport an astronaut to a planet surface or to another ship. A caveat would be that you cannot transport through shields and that an operator has to remain at the transporter to recall astronauts back.

If this was implemented homebases would have to fit with intruder alarms or other defensive measures.

 

[PoisonedBiscuit_]

The transporters could be linked to the scanner system and you could limit range by amount of antenna blocks

 

[Lone_Puppy]

A balance mechanism could be to have the number of transport pads change the speed of transport, the same way factory enhancers speed up factories.

 

[StormWing0]

Could make it work just like rails do but when moving cargo it causes the shields to go down. This would help for trade fleets so they don't have to dock to offload their stuff or pick it up. That said the devs should implement a way to allow the ships to dock to stations if they have to as well alongside this.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

For docking to stations you could just use a pickup point, though they would need plenty of tweaks to use since the AI can only use them to a limited extent.

 

[TheGeek007]

I like this idea! Transporting cargo should happen over time, and should scale with the amount of transporter modules connected to the computer. Bonus if this could be triggered via logic to make automatically unloading drone miners.

 

[NeonSturm]

You actually can teleport cargo NOW.
It has about 300 range and happens when you buy from a shop.

But I agree.
Linking Cargos to TPs and these to Scanners … sounds good enough to me.

But how is it balanced when you stop (0 speed), undock an internal fuel supply-teleporter (to protect your carriers shields) which supplies your drones which fight?

 

[Pacific_Jim]

Irrelevant since drones don't need fuel?

 

[NeonSturm]

Irrelevant since drones don't need fuel?

Depends on the size of your drones and your carrier

And the server settings​

 

[AndyP]

To transfer large amounts of cargo, you may want to use the "use as personal cargo" feature.

Have your transporter in the sector (docked or not does not matter), and give it a large cargo space and make it your personal cargo.
Now switch your astronaut to have the "personal cargo".
You have now the full carry capacity of the transporter, for moving blocks, building with them or trading with them.

If you own both cargo spaces, you can even use "one" as personal cargo and unload directly into the other one.

As cargo-transfer would have the bottleneck on the player carry capacity, we implemented this, and the ability to pull cargo through raildocker-rail connections. (However, those are fragile and may cause security problems in the cargo, if you do not want to pull out of the docker.

- Andy

 

[Nickizzy]

You actually can teleport cargo NOW.
It has about 300 range and happens when you buy from a shop.

But I agree.
Linking Cargos to TPs and these to Scanners … sounds good enough to me.

But how is it balanced when you stop (0 speed), undock an internal fuel supply-teleporter (to protect your carriers shields) which supplies your drones which fight?

Then it's like that one homeworld mission where you destroy the fuel pods to make their drone swarm fall.