GHOSTau's Station Planner Designer and Optimiser

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GHOSTau's Station Planner, Designer & Optimiser

A production-chain planner that sits inside the station build menu. You tell it what you want a station to produce; it works out the intermediate wares, the modules, the workforce and housing to run them, the storage, and the build cost. The result is a list inside the build menu, and each row places its module when you click it.

There is a second mode for stations you already own: it reads the design on the holomap, reports what is short and what is surplus, and converts each shortfall into modules to build.

MASSIVE RELEASE - V2. 6 added SHIP BUILDING support.

What it does

• []Plans a chain from your end products. Pick what the station should make and how many modules of each. The planner walks the dependency graph backwards and lists the intermediates as well as the end products.[/]

  []Offers wares you have blueprints for. The ware list is built from the blueprints you own and the modules they unlock, so it does not suggest a chain you cannot construct.[/]

  []Places modules from the results list. Each outstanding row is a button. Clicking it attaches the module to your cursor, the same as clicking its tile in the module browser. The counts fall as you place them.[/]

  []Audits an existing station. Optimise mode reports input shortfalls in wares per hour, surpluses, workforce coverage and whether the station has a dock, then turns each shortfall into modules. Those rows are clickable too.[/]

  []Accounts for workforce and its food. Staffed production raises output, but only if the workers are housed and fed. The planner books the habitats and the food chain, shows the worker count, and lists the habitat options that would cover it, grouped by how many modules each takes.[/]

  []Builds the design for you. Press Build This Design and the planner puts the whole bill on the station as a build task, connectors and all. Nothing is built and nothing is paid until you assign a builder, and you can still move or remove modules first. A large station takes up to three minutes and the game keeps running while it works.[/]

  []Tells you what it could not fit. A few modules usually will not fit, which is normal on a large design. They are listed at the top of the panel with counts, attachments first, so the missing pier is the first thing you see rather than the last.[/]

  []Tidies up what you placed by hand. "Tidy Up Placed Modules" runs the game's own layout routine over modules already on the map. That routine declines fairly often, so the button retries before giving up. It is not the auto-designer: it rearranges what is there and deletes hand-placed connectors, so it asks twice.[/]

  []Filters by race, and handles scrap recycling. Restrict the plan to one race, or leave it open. With scrap on, recyclers are used where they lower the whole design's build cost and skipped where their energy draw costs more than they save.[/]

  []Shows the conversion. Set a ware to three modules and its tooltip reads "3 modules x 1176/h = 3528/h", so the module-count-to-output conversion is checkable. The settings that are not self-explanatory carry an explanation on their own tooltips.[/]

Getting to it

The planner draws in the station build menu, on the left, in the space the module browser uses. It is open by default, so it is there when you open a build menu on a station or a plot. Open a module category and the planner steps aside for the browser; close the category and it returns.

If you have SirNukes Mod Support APIs installed, you also get a Station Planner entry in the right-click menu on a station or plot you own.

Without it, right-click your station or pl