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Understanding How to Use High Altitude Shipping Pads
By jztemple
High altitude shipping pads are more efficient that ones on the surface.
   
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jztemple
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Category: Gameplay Basics
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
24 Jul @ 2:54pm
10 Aug @ 9:39pm
133 Unique Visitors
2 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
Introduction 
Time is Money 
A Pad In The Sky 
That Would Be A Lot of Conveyors, Wouldn't It? 
You Want Me to Run Power Up THERE? 
Conclusion and a Caution 
Comments
Introduction
With Update 2 to FOUNDRY, the game now has a purpose for your factory... to make money!! You make money by selling your products (bots, robots, etc) to other planets, but optimizing your shipping is important. So you need to look to the skies.


A castle, err, landing pad in the sky

Update: I did another Steam guide after this one where I went into the actual numbers of the savings from using a high altitude shipping pad, see the following guide for more details

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3535343381
Time is Money
Every extra second that a product take to reach the space station is costing you money. So how to make it quicker? The answer is in altitude.

If you notice, your space ships coming down from the space station and going back up travel at a fixed speed. Since you can't make the ships come to you faster, you need to shorten the time they take to reach a Shipping Pad. And you do that by building a pad really, really high in the sky.


These guys sure do move slow
A Pad In The Sky
Yup, turns out that the maximum build-able altitude in the game is 255. That's the top of anything you build up there. You'll find that when you try to build, the game will not let you place an object if the top of it would exceed that 255 height. No big problem.

Oh, and be sure to enable Build Mode: Free!


My ship in the sky
That Would Be A Lot of Conveyors, Wouldn't It?
Yes, a whole lot of conveyors would be needed to bring your products to the Shipping Pad, very messy. So instead I built a freight elevator instead.


Don't forget to provide power to the elevator loaders

The easiest way I found to do it is to put down the elevator base first, then using your jet back go up and place the top. Remember that while you can top off your elevator at 255, you need to make some allowance for the height of the Shipping Pad.


One small ride for a bot, one giant...
You Want Me to Run Power Up THERE?
No, that would be silly. Instead I use my handy-dandy solar powered low voltage grid. One small transformer, small battery and small solar panel, plus a power pole.


Power to the loaders!
Conclusion and a Caution
First the caution. Sometimes you might find you are being prevented from placing a Shipping Pad at that height for something not obvious, this happened to me. Turns out I was trying to place my Shipping Pad in the landing approach of another Shipping Pad, this one on the ground. You can't do that.

So, in conclusion, this method is a bit more trouble, but in the long run it ought to provide an advantage in getting products to the station. It also has the advantage of giving you more clear space on the ground for building. And me, I always seem to be running out of free space.

Update: I did another Steam guide where I went into the actual numbers of the savings from using a high altitude shipping pad, see the following:

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3535343381
4 Comments
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jztemple  [author] 12 Sep @ 10:18am 
The platform is indeed about 240. The game will stop you from building a landing platform if the top of it would exceed the 255 limit for structures. Just turn off snapping (have build mode: free) and move the ghost structure till the game says you're too high, then move down a bit.

And of course since you're only saving a few seconds for being at around 240 versus about 130 for the surface, if you build your platform a bit lower than the upper limit height it will still be giving you the benefit.
Manji 12 Sep @ 9:07am 
hi! what would be a general good target height for the platform if we have to calculate the height of the building toward 255? would 240 be suitable? in one screenshot i see you flying at 245 so the platform is like 240?
jztemple  [author] 2 Aug @ 8:44pm 
Surface to surface shuttles apparently don't benefit as I've noticed that they seem to climb up the same number of meters, regardless of the altitude of the pad they fly from.

Regarding the actual savings, I did another Steam guide where I did a lot of testing to establish the actual numbers. If you go to the "Conclusions" section of the guide below you'll see the actual benefit.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3535343381
Zolfried 2 Aug @ 8:21pm 
Does shuttles take benefit from this aswell.. and how much time are you talking about saving.