A mass driver or electromagnetic catapult is a method of non-rocket spacelaunch which uses a linear motor to accelerate and catapult payloads up to high speeds. This mod adds an artillery turret that can be used to fire chests full of items across the map.
Instructions
- Place the mass driver turret.
- Place a payload chest within one space of the turret. Payloads are special logistics chests that behave like requester chests when placed and behave like active provider chests after being launched (behavior can be configured). See the attached image (also included in the mod files) for valid positions.
- Place an armature into the mass driver turret. There are currently two types of armatures:
- Electromagnetic armature, which is cheaper but requires electricity to fire (10 MJ per km)
- Booster armature, which is more expensive but does not require electricity to fire
- Provide electricity to the turret, if required
- Using the targeting computer, enter the (X, Y) coordinates for the turret to deliver the chest to.
- The Nauvis Positioning System item can be used to configure this automatically. Click on the map (or an entity) to save those coordinates, then click on a turret to paste those coordinates into a targeting computer. Newly-placed turrets will load these coordinates automatically.
- Using the circuit network, provide a check-signal to the targeting computer to tell the turret to fire. If all the above conditions are met, then the turret will deliver the chest to its destination. The existing chest will be replaced with ghost, allowing construction bots to rebuild it automatically, restoring item requests and circuit connections.
- Optionally, provide the targeting computer a dot-signal to enable blocking mode. In blocking mode, the turret won't fire if the destination already has an building there, so as to prevent it from destroying it or the payload.
Limitations
- Only one turret can fire per tick. This is to ensure that the correct turret fires at the correct position
- The payload that is loaded is arbitrarily selected by the base game. To make sure it selects the chest you want, make sure one payload chest is in the loading zone.
Future Plans
- Adding a method to transfer chests between surfaces