I've been quite enjoying the assembly machines and furnaces, my friend is making great use of your nuclear entities, and we were wondering... could a rocket silo be done? like... a 9 chunk large BFS (big f**** silo)?

Thanks for liking my mod. Hope you have productive time using this.

Yes, I could consider that. Actually I have considered rocket silo too during the phase of "mod feasibility analysis".

Below is my archive, if you want to hear an old story.
It is doable for rocket silo, but there were several factors that I decided not to implement it at that time:
A) Rocket silo is handled differently in game. So it would take much more effort and time to modify it. (In contrast, the other machines are quite similar to each other, so easy for me to do.)
B) Rocket launch animation takes significant time. Factorio Wiki says 41.25 seconds, but I have not confirmed that. So even if 100 rocket parts are finished in one second, the overall production rate of space science pack (abbreviated as SSP in the following context) would still be far from expected. So not as much use to "scale" rocket silo?
C) Rocket silo have the animation part. If I enlarge the sprite of rocket silo for the larger size, what should I do with the animation of the launched rocket? A larger rocket?
C1) If keeping the same size on rocket silo, it saves the effort to handle all those sprites and animations... But, it would just mean the same "small" rocket silo works at extremely speed, somehow violating the spirit of other machines of this mod.
C2) If enlarging all the sprites and animations, it would take some effort but still doable. Assume it can be done. The true problem(s) follow: So the larger rocket should return more output (SSP) proportional to the size. (Say, vanilla 9×9 rocket silo gives 1000 SSP per launch. A 18×18 rocket silo +1 gives 4000 SSP per launch.) The output count is limited by the item stack size. So to adapt to the output, it needs adjustment to the stack size of SSP item with potentially very high numbers. This may affect players' storage system or other unknown places... Not the end of story yet, this involve different recipe(s) for each scaled satellite to make it giving the corresponding amount of SSP...
In overall, scaling rocket silo gives much more problem than I have thought or handled. Therefore, I will not actually try to implement, before the above concerns are at least solvable in theory.

for sure, we were mostly wanting it to be very large while maintaining the same outputs. but i should try and answer your points, at least, for fun;

c) a larger rocket, yes

c1) this does seem to violate some intent of the other modpacks

c2) have you tried to programmatically enlarge sprites using command line tools on Linux? I do this for other things but have never tried for a mod. I know how to change the actual /files/ using the automated tools, but you would have to do the pixel work by hand, still.

I was wondering if you could put an additional output for the rocket silo to hold onto the space science packs if the output were to increase at all.

and for the satellite recipe, we have Satellite 1, 2, and so on in your Alien Technology mod. of course, you could also require us to launch more than one at a time - I accidentally sent 2400+ radar into space yesterday so I know it's possible to put a pretty substantial payload into a single normal rocket. BobWarfare changes the stack depth of artillery shells, so it's not unprecidented to modify the stack size of an item at least a little bit.

that said, space science pack stack depth is probably a bit more meaningful to some people than artillery shells, so perhaps an option for the mod to enable scaled SSP output would be helpful.

there is a chance i suppose that the default game's mechanics for the rocket silo might require you to become clever and make a new entity based on assembly machine with the silo sprites to allow for more flexible output management if you wanted more than one slot.

Okay, let say picking larger size for rocket silo, rocket and everything.

Thanks for your info. I will see how it may help implementing.
Scaling graphics (sprites, animations) is not too difficult, just a bit complicated. I guess I can handle it.

Biggest problem comes from reflecting the scaled output from the scaled rocket (and scaled satellite). Honestly, I have not played with "rocket launch products" property too much. As you mentioned, I did that to modded satellites in Schall Alien Tech. I found that limits to only 1 stack of output. But what you suggested is something I should and will test: if the game can produce the correct amount of SSP, if I allow multiple satellites are launched in one go, and multiple result slots?
If the game can handle that, then next problem comes: How to prevent a lower tier silo to launch more satellites than it is capable of? For example, vanilla rocket silo (+0) can only launch one satellite per launch. Rocket silo +1 can launch two satellites. Rocket silo +n can launch 2^n satellites. I do not know any event in game API or other ways to restrict this.

The game has a dedicated Prototype/RocketSilo definition in order to support the launch animations and special properties like rocket_result_inventory_size for rocket silos. So it may not look/work well if using the more generic Prototype/AssemblingMachine definition.
OR if you actually do not care about animations at all, maybe there is a much easier solution. I remember there was a mod (forgot the name though) allowing SSP to be crafted in assembling machine. I ignored that mod at that time (because it was not much different from launching rockets), but now maybe it becomes valuable when used in the scaled AM3 of this mod?

those are all good points and i think you should aim for a scaled/animated version and if that is not possible, then merely a scaled version that shows a rocket to launch when it's ready. I dunno if they can fade into existence, but that'd be neat.

you know, another idea could be a virtual entity that combines an invisible assembler and a large silo.

then you could give the assembler whatever command you like as the rocket launches?

I was just thinking about this today and hope you're able to make something like this Schall. I'm impressed seeing the quality of your mods, variety and your commitment to engaging with comments and ideas on your mod pages. Keep up the great work :)

The rocket launch animation time has always been a killer for good optimised space science output so as a bit of an extreme example:

In my modded game with several of your mods my space science stacks to 200,000 and most recipes in the big machines are 10,000x bigger/longer than vanilla.

That would make the 40 second animation for a huge rocket suddenly be a tiny % of overall craft time which would be ideal!

Thanks for your compliment. This kind of kind comment is the reason why I have published the mods, instead of keeping them as private. ;-)

The recipe multiplting trick by Schall Recipe Scaling does NOT work for rocket silo rocket launch, as the game limits how satellites are launched (1 at a time). That means rocket launch products CANNOT be multiplied the same way.
As you have already noticed, the animation is limiting the SSP production rate. A rocket silo overtier reducing the production cycle from 60s to 40s is not that attractive or meaningful.

This factor is too limiting, so I have no hope in the rocket silo... As mentioned in previous reply, a better way for the SSP production would be to create a similar-but-new recipe. A recipe that have the sum of 100 rocket parts plus satellite as ingredients, and using recipe category of assembling machine. This way the animation can be avoided. But it has downsides: not having the cool launch animations, no achievements, no satellites count.

Hi, still loving your mods. Using only the machine scaling mod (along with mods to boost bots, trains and stack sizes) I am up to around 250k SPM at 60ups.

Rocket silos are becoming a bottle neck, I'm up to 218 and I really need to double that to keep up. Overtier rocket silo would be so helpful. Pretty please?

B) Keep rocket launch animation to 41.25 second or whatever it is now, just have silo output more SSPs for each launch. Number of 'rocket parts' doesn't really matter, as long as the resources (rocket fuel, low density, RCU, satellites) that go in are still in proportion to the SSPs produced (accounting for prod modules in the silo) that's all that matters.
C Yes larger rocket.
C2 Use the same size-to-output ratio factors you used for the assembling machines. E.g. vanilla AM3 is 3x3, overtier AM3 +5 is 18x18, which is 6 times the length on each side, 36 times the area, but 1024 times the output. Vanilla rocket silo is 9x9, so using the same factors overtier rocket silo +5 would be 54x54 and output 1,024,000 SSPs per launch.

I don't care at all about achievements or satellites/rockets launched count. I care a little about the launch animation but I could do without it if that's necessary to making it work.

If you don't care about achievement, launch stats, and also launch animation, then providing an equivalent AM recipe could be the closest thing, like in DellAquila's mod Space Science in Assembling Machine. However, it was not updated since 0.17.

If insisting to do in a (modded) rocket silo (RS), then the relationship between amount/tier of launched satellites and RS is still the major problem. As mentioned above:

How to prevent a lower tier silo to launch more satellites than it is capable of? For example, vanilla rocket silo (+0) can only launch one satellite per launch. Rocket silo +1 can launch two satellites. Rocket silo +n can launch 2^n satellites. I do not know any event in game API or other ways to restrict this.

I can introduced some "overtier satellites". But then the problem morphs to "How to prevent a lower tier RS to launch high tier satellites, and vice versa?".

BTW, the game engine has problem with entity of too large sizes, from my experience in Schall Endgame Evolution. Game performance quickly degrades when entity size becomes too large. A overtier RS +5 with size 54x54 is going to break the game. RS +4 (size 45x45) is already testing the limit.

There are some good news though. Such as the RS launch products inventory can be more than one slot. This has already been applied to Schall Alien Tech, so it can output like 20 stacks of Alien science packs per launch. Same thing could be done to any overtier RS for SSP.

Could you create separate recipe for each overtier rocket silo to prevent lower tier silos doing things they shouldn't? So Rocket silo +1 only allows recipe+1 which can only use satellite+1 and makes 4000SSP per launch, rocket silo +2 only allows recipe+2 which can only use satellite+2 and makes 16000 SSP per launch and so on. Would that work?

If the game doesn't like large objects, how about limiting rocket silos to +3 at 36x36? Even limited to +2 it will be much better for UPS than 500 vanilla silos.

I've just discovered how much improvement to speed the scaled recipes can make (I wasn't using it before). I'm now rebuilding everything haha.

This is NOT how this game works.
Rocket Silo is assigned with a single recipe of rocket parts, which is independent from satellites.
Satellites can be used in the launch slot of every rocket silo. No way to distinguish them.
If you read in-game file data\base\prototypes\entity\entities.lua on "rocket-silo"' anddata\base\prototypes\recipe\recipe.luaon"satellite"`, and the technical documents in Prototype definitions Wiki, you will know why your suggestion does not work. It is tiresome to explain such thing.

RS +2 or +3 should be fine. I will not worry too much about that.
I will see how large it can permit, IF the ultimate bottleneck (the satellite and products problem) can be solved.

Yeah, one more person finding out this mod + Schall Recipe Scaling combo can improve megabases drastically!
Actually I wonder why the download figures of Schall Recipe Scaling is so low (at least when compared to my other mods)... It is one of the most helpful & powerful mod that it is in top ten list (among my own 48 mods) of what I am proud of. Yet my military mods got much more attention from the community...

Ok I see thanks for explaining. I also just started using your 1.9TW nuclear blueprint, working very well thanks. I hope to be in the millions of SPM within a week.