In my Steam guide A Better Way to get those Products to the Space Station I presented the idea of using a landing pad placed at the highest possible altitude in the game to shorten the travel time from and to the space station, thereby speeding up the process of sending your bots, drones and robots up there.

However, I thought about it some more and wondered, "How much better?". That is what his guide is all about, presenting some research into quantifying the advantages of using the high altitude pads and also measuring the differences between using small and medium ships.

For this project I decided on using the Heavy Duty Transport Bot for my example product.


Heavy Duty Transport Bot stats

I did so because for this item I have both a Shipping Pad (Small) and a Shipping Pad (Medium) attached to the Heavy Duty Transport Bot production line.


A look from up near the high Shipping Pad (Medium)

Since I've been using R&D Lab points to reduce the weight of my Bot, they now weigh 30kg apiece.

Also for this project, I'm using the T2 version of the Small and Medium Cargo Ships, as they are the most efficient for their size class.


I'm using the T2 version.

One more caveat, I should note that I restrict my Shipping Pads (Medium) to only Medium ships, not allowing small ships to tie them up.

In this first test, I set up a situation where there was just one Bot at the low Shipping Pad; the test wouldn't work if I had no cargo there at all. At the Pad panel, I set the "min. amount to move" to 1. I did this to assure that the ship would spend the minimum time at the pad.


Only one bot to move

The low pad is at a height of 133. The ships coming from the space station and going back appear and then disappear at a height of 400. You can see this on the panel as the ship approaches and departs.

To establish the times needed for the ship to arrive, load and depart, i made a video for each test. I haven't uploaded those videos to YouTube but I might if asked.

To start the test, I used the "Manage Inventory" button on the pad panel and dropped one Bot into the inventory. Since I had the minimum set to "1" a ship immediately started down. This being a small pad i knew that only a Small Cargo Ship would arrive and I only have T2 ships in my fleet now.

The ship arrived, grabbed the one bot and left back for the station. I reviewed the video and noted these times. Times are rounded off to the nearest second and may be +/- a second or two.

Departed Station at 0 sec
Landed at 14 sec
Take off at 15 sec
Arrived Station at 30 sec

The time between landing and takeoff, to load that one bot, was probably under a second.

The transit time from a height of 400 to a landing at a height of 133, including deceleration time, was roughly 15 seconds. The ascent time was the same. The rate of descent dropped significantly as the ship was about to land, and when the ship took off it also took a bit of time before it reached full velocity. From reviewing the video it appears that the velocity changes occur as the ship is within ten meters of the pad.

The second test used the same setup as the first test, except that I was going to upload the max capacity of a Small Cargo Ship T2, which for the 30kg weight of the Heavy Duty Transport Bot is 66 units. Otherwise conditions were the same, height of pad, etc.

Departed Station at 0 sec
Landed at 14 sec
Take off at 49 sec
Arrived Station at 64 sec

The descent and ascent times were the same as the min cargo situation. The ship took 35 seconds to load the full cargo. Since cargo load is based on weight and not the count of units, I use weight for my calculations

Weight uploaded, 30kg x 66 units = 1,980kg.
Time to load cargo, 49 sec - 14 sec = 35 sec
Rate of loading, 1,980 / 35 = 56.5 kg/sec.

For the third test I moved to the high Shipping Pad (Medium), which is at a height of 237, about 100 meters higher than the low pad. This was again a test of the times for the Medium Cargo Ship T2 to come down from the station, load the cargo and return to the station.

Departed Station at 0 sec
Landed at 10 sec
Take off at 10 sec
Arrived Station at 19 sec

The time between landing and takeoff, to load that one bot, was almost instantaneous.

The transit time from a height of 400 to a landing at a height of 237, including deceleration time, was roughly 10 seconds. The ascent time was the same. Again, the rate of descent dropped significantly as the ship was about to land, and when the ship took off it also took a bit of time before it reached full velocity. And again, from reviewing the video it appears that the velocity changes occur as the ship is within ten meters of the pad.

The fourth test used the same setup as the third test, except that I was going to upload the max capacity of a Medium Cargo Ship T2, which for the 30kg weight of the Heavy Duty Transport Bot is 333 units. Otherwise conditions were the same, height of pad, etc.

I did have to create a kluge loading configuration so I could put only the 333 units in the stowage of the Shipping Pad (Medium). In hindsight it occurred to me that since the ship could only carry 333 units it wouldn't make any difference if there were more, but I was more concerned that those 333 bots where loaded into the pad stowage as quickly as possible.


Not my normal loading setup

Having established the test setup, I once again started video recording of the landing, loading and departing, and noted the following.

Departed Station at 0 sec
Landed at 11 sec
Take off at 59 sec
Arrived Station at 69 sec

The descent and ascent times were withing the one second of third test, the difference probably being due to limitations of the video. The ship took 48 seconds to load the full cargo. Again, since cargo load is based on weight and not the count of units, I use weight for my calculations

Weight uploaded, 30kg x 333 units = 9,990kg.
Time to load cargo, 59 sec - 11 sec = 48 sec
Rate of loading, 9,990 / 48 = 208 kg/sec.

When the shipping pad was at a height of 237, it took a ship about 10 seconds to leave the station, approach and land. It took about the same 10 seconds to depart and reach the station.

When the shipping pad was at a height of 133, it took a ship about 15 seconds to leave the station, approach and land. It took about the same 15 seconds to depart and reach the station.

So each round trip took an extra ten seconds when flying down to the surface versus flying down to a "high" pad.

By the way, interesting fact. If you have a pad with a demand that is exceeding the throughput of the cargo ship route, in other words the conveyors are taking away cargo faster than the ships can deliver it, then something curious happens. If you watch the ship ascend towards the space station, it will continue going up, up and then just stop, then start coming down again, but refilled will a new load of cargo!

As I previously noted, I used the T2 models exclusively in my factory. The Small Cargo Ship T2 has twice the cargo capacity for the same hanger space. The Medium Cargo Ship T2 has twice the cargo capacity for only 50% more hanger space.



When comparing the T2 models of the two sizes of ships, there is a major difference in the speed in which cargo can be loaded.

Small Cargo Ship T2 Rate of loading = 56.5 kg/sec.

Medium Cargo Ship T2 Rate of loading = 208 kg/sec.

Therefore the Medium can be loaded about four times as fast as the Small. As previously noted, the Medium T2 also carries five times as much cargo as the Small T2.

Time to crunch some numbers to come up with a real (FOUNDRY) world situation.

Let's look at my current situations regarding sales of the Heavy Duty Transport Bot


From the space station finances screen

Right now the hourly demand for Heavy Duty Transport Bots is 10,994 on 35 planets. But how many Small/Medium Ships and Low/High Pads do I need to meet that demand?

To know how many, we need to identify what is the hourly upload rate of each combination of ship size and pad height. To do this we need to know the round trip time to the low and high pads. We are going to assume that the production rate on the ground and the belts and elevators used to refill the pads are sufficient to fill a ship fully when it stops.

Also, we will use a round trip time of 20 second for the high pad and 30 seconds for the low pad. There is some rounding there but should be sufficiently accurate for comparisons.

Small ship, low pad
64 seconds for a round trip, or 56.25 round trips an hour
Each round trip carries 66 bots, or 3,712 an hour

Small ship, high pad
54 seconds for a round trip, or 66.66 round trips an hour
Each round trip carries 66 bots, or 4,440 an hour

Medium ship, low pad
78 seconds for a round trip, or 46.2 round trips an hour
Each round trip carries 333 bots, or 15,384 an hour

Medium ship, high pad
68 seconds for a round trip, or 52.9 round trips an hour
Each round trip carries 333 bots, or 17,615 an hour

So in this FOUNDRY situation, needing to upload about eleven thousand Heavy Duty Transport Bots an hour, I'd need three small T2 ships operating from three small pads, where they are on the ground or at max height. But I'd only need one medium ship, whether it was on the ground or up high.

To allow an apples to apples comparison, we'll convert the numbers in the last section into weight uploaded.

In the list below, all ships are considered to be the T2 class of their size. The list also considers that only Medium Cargo ships are allowed on Shipping Pad (Medium). Cargo uploaded to the Space Station is by weight, not by item count. Round trip time includes time to load cargo. Unloading at the Space Station is instantaneous.

To understand how many of a product (bot, drone or robot) can be uploaded each hour, divide the listed weight below by the weight per item, as can be found in the Crafting screen. Note that the original weight of a product can be reduced by up to half by spending points in the R&D lab.

The two cases considered are pads located on the planet's surface, which is about height 130, and pads located at the maximum allowed height, which is about 237.

Small Cargo Ship, Shipping Pad (Small), on surface
64 seconds for a round trip, or 56.25 round trips an hour
Each round trip carries 2000kg, or 112,500kg an hour

Small Cargo ship, Shipping Pad (Small), at about height of 237
54 seconds for a round trip, or 66.66 round trips an hour
Each round trip carries 2000kg, or 133,320kg an hour

Medium Cargo ship, Shipping Pad (Medium), on surface
78 seconds for a round trip, or 46.2 round trips an hour
Each round trip carries 10,000kg, or 462,000 an hour

Medium Cargo ship, high pad Shipping Pad (Medium), at about height of 237
68 seconds for a round trip, or 52.9 round trips an hour
Each round trip carries 10,000kg, or 529,000kg an hour