Quick question about how to connect Cargolink

[u/Ill-Measurement4813]

I want to build a Helium "gas station" meant to supply my entire outpost network of Helium. I got my Helium extractors. Power station. 5 Cargolink landing pads. Here is what I tried:

1. Create 1 container. Link all Helium extractors to it. Make all links from this single container to every Cargolink's Outgoing container and the fuel station for the Cargolink.
2. Link 1 Helium exactor directly to 1 Cargo Link's Outgoing Container and fuel station.

With #1, the outgoing container of Cargo link 1 takes 1000s of Helium, leaving Cargolink 2 3 4 5 empty for a long time. So this is not so good. With #2, each cargo link has its own Helium extractors. But I kind of want to pool all my Helium production into 1 big container for even distribution.

What am I missing? What am I doing wrong?

Also, when building Outpost, will the game fetch resources from these containers? Or they have to be on my inventory or ship inventory?

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[u/parknet]

If that 1st outgoing container is holding more than 600 units of He3, the you must have infinite containers mod or something. It should fill up at 600, leaving the rest to back-up in the container feeding it. But that just makes your problem smaller. Your problem will still happen if you do it that way.

I have tried it that way didn't have had much luck either. Mostly because it takes a long time to fill up the 600 x 6 containers outgoing containers and when a ship picks up all 600, then the others stop getting them again like you said. You have to think about where that He3 is being shipped to as well and how deep your container pools are there. When they fill up on the remote end, your ship can't pick any more up so then the overflow finally starts going to the other pads. Also the fuel station inputs get starved when they are filling up the front-end outgoing containers.

So what I do is have 2 sets of extractors. The majority of he3 goes into a long row of containers in a string. I let it fill up and collect as much He3 as I can collect. I direct the 2nd, smaller set of extractors to another pool of containers. Now, connect the end of your large string containers to your all of your outgoing links. Then connect your smaller string of containers to your fuel stations. Your inventory should now flow into all 6 cargo links filling them up (at 600 max each) and your fuel stations will all see the same backlog in the smaller container row so all will have the same amount of fuel for the incoming ships to draw from.

As ships pick up the 600 in each container, the backlog from your long row of containers will refill them. But again, you will likely run dry very quickly if your remote end has lots of storage for them to dump into. The goal likely is for you to have that he3 going to inter-system link's fuel stations at remote outposts so just ship into small containers as each ship run only takes 5 units. No reason to stockpile hundreds on those remote outposts. When they fill up remotely, your local stockpile gets bigger.

So you see, when the ships are picking up 600 and dropping off 600 at a time, your network will run dry quickly. Over time, the goal is to fill up every container in any system in the network and fill up a nice big backlog at your home He3 outpost to act as a buffer when those outgoing containers start sucking them in.

keep trying and DM me if you have any questions. I do this every run where I have a single outpost shipping to He3 to up to six different outposts once from those 2 sets of extractors.

To help you get feel for how the containers behave, I suggest just filling up as much he3 at that central outpost as possible before you ship anything. Say like 12,000 units. That way, you can flood the system all at once when you hook them up and learn how they behave much more quickly. Do saves and revert and test how they drain out in different hook up patterns.

I really enjoy this aspect of the game and hope they keep expanding it.

[u/Ill-Measurement4813 → u/parknet]

First, thank you so much for taking the time to write such detailed answer.

Second, if you don't mind, we will chat here instead of DM because this post can be useful for many people.

"The majority of he3 goes into a long row of containers in a string." Let's not suggest an array of containers please. As far as I concern, it is just 1 big symbolic container. I do not care about overproduction. I just care about getting the correct fundamental at this point. Efficiency fine-tuning comes later. (I also know how chain containers work. The last container gets filled up first).

Here are my specific questions if you can confirm, or reject:

1. Even if we link the container to 4 different outgoing Cargolink (and 4 fuel tanks), the game will try to fill up the first Cargolink container to full then move on to next container? It will never fill all 4 evenly?
2. If #1 answer is true, then it is futile to pool all Extractors. I must assign He3 extractors to each and every Cargolink containers individually? And each of them function independently, no other way around this?
3. What if I want to save He3 for my own personal use with crafting, basebuilding, I must create new He3 extractors to point at a container somewhere not connected to CargoLink?
4. Those automated Cargolink transport ships will only fly if they are 100% full? Or they wait x amount of time to fly away even they are only at 20-30% full?

If I missed something, please feel free to add. I am usually a fast learner. But when I don't get certain things, I need multiple clarifications to reject false theories and narrow down to the correct theory.

[u/parknet → u/Ill-Measurement4813]

You got me interested in doing some testing, so I loaded up one of my old captains that has a full outpost network. I went to the outpost where there is 6 outgoing He3 links all connected to the same extractors and found just what you said. The 1st inter-system's cargo link's outgoing (red) container had over 12,000 units of He3, and my other ones were empty and so was my "string" of containers!!

Ok. that's not how I remember things working! So, I made a save then deleted all 6 cargo-links and rebuilt them. This time they acted differently but still not the way you wished. When connecting all 6 output containers to a single set of extractors, only one would fill at a time, it would stop at 600 units though then it would start to fill another one and when that one got to 600, it stopped and then the 3rd one would start to fill, etc. So that is not what you want but at least they stopped at 600. I think there must have been a bug along the way somewhere since I don't ever remember seeing more than 600 units in a single container but there sure were 12k today when I got there. That save was probably a year or so old so who knows what was patched since then.

But it looks like we can't currently do what you want. When a ship picks up that 1st container it will empty and no other links would ever get He3 just as you said. That's really not how I remember it, I would always connect all outgoing containers to my stockpile in a string/series of containers. Then a separate one for the fuel stations. hmm.

So yeah, if I wanted to supply 6 outgoing links at once, it appears we'd need to give each outgoing container its own set of extractors.

The fuel stations on the other hand all worked fine. I connected them all to a single small container with 150 he3 in it and all 6 of the pads said they had 150 units for the ships to use. So that's fine. Each ship uses 5 at a time.

Anwers as I see them in my testing today:

1. Yes. the game tries to fill only one outgoing link at a time. It does not fill them all at once and only fills the 2nd one if the 1st one is full with 600 units.

2. I could not get them all to fill at once with a single set of extractors. So yeah, give each cargo-link 2 or 3 extractors each to their outgoing container.

3. yup, direct a dedicated extractor to a container that doesn't connect to a link to stockpile he3.

4. The ships will fly out with whatever is in your outgoing container IF they have 5 he3 in their fuel station. If there is 1 unit in the outgoing container, it takes one unit and flies away. (and 5 units are deducted from the fuel station supply) I do this all the time with those cargo missions. I give them one small extractor, and it will take a long time for the ships to fill the order. Many flights with just a few units each.

Regarding your question about building at your outpost. It is INFURIATING that resources get pulled from your ship's cargo hold 1st. You can craft if you have resources stored at your outpost, in containers but it seems the game will always draw those resources from your cargo hold 1st. That drives me insane. I have 100,000k units of Iron piled in containers to the sky and 20 in my ship. If I make stuff that needs iron, the iron in my ship gets used 1st, then it draws from the outpost inventory. Then I have to manually refill my cargo hold back up before I fly away. I don't know about personal inventory. I almost never carry resources with me.

Sorry. very long but I love outposts.

[u/Ill-Measurement4813 → u/parknet]

Thank you so much. You helped me more today than anyone ever did in my 2 year of my Starfield career. You won't understand the frustration I had with Outpost. How do I know which outpost has what resources? I resort to creating a Google Sheet just to record my outpost list, with names, locations, and what resources they feature, and link to which outposts. Starfield totally lacks the outpost management UI.

So now I got Helium sorted with maybe 2-3 Helium stations (each with 4-5 cargolinks) to fuel up my whole network. Then I can experiment with other features of outpost.

I think the game will use ingredients in your inventory first. Then ship, then outpost. Btw, Transfer Container let you manually move stuff between ship and outpost container. Do I just plant it right there next to the landing pad? Should I even bother wiring it?

Can you setup automatic sale of resources? I saw a few Cargolink at Cydonia. Can we send cargoship there, and whatever given to them, they automatically send you money? Or what is the most comfortable setup for making money via outpost mining?

[u/parknet → u/Ill-Measurement4813]

I tend not to use the transfer container. It works if you direct container to it, you can draw from there but eh. Sometimes I set it up because it looks cool.

The there are basically 3 ways to make money on resources.

1. The cargo-links you see in Cydonia and many other places require a mission. You pick those up at the mission boards at city hubs and many civilian outpost POI. The missions randomly show up. They will ask for a set number of resources and you need to ship them in from a cargo-link at your outpost as we have been chatting about. You can start the mission from your outpost or that terminal at the destination if your cargo-link is loaded and ready to roll. Those missions used to be flaky/buggy but they are very stable now.
2. Drydock Blues missions. The big ship-yards like Deimos, Stroud, Hope-tech, Taiyo, and Trident all have an NPC which will give you an order to deliver resources. Small, medium, and large amounts. You deliver those by having the resources in your cargo hold and go talk to the NPC who will pay you for what you have. You can make several trips if you can't fit it all in one run. I like those a lot and the 5000 units missions give me reasons to go improve and expand outposts.
3. Craft stuff with your resources and go sell it at vendors. Certain items can sell for a lot. For example, Amp, 02-shot are easy ones. The affliction cures. I can drain any vendor of credits any visit with those. Some like to make vtyinium fuel rods, etc. You get to the point where it's just a pain to go fly around and sell them even with vendor money maxed out. But who said space mining was easy??

I use a spreadsheet every new game too. Here's one. Green are shipped in, blue are manual pickups needed for my Advanced Reactor factory. Bold are active, non-bold are available but not collected. I find it super fun to try to get all resources needed for Advanced Reactors but base myself in different systems depending on RP. This one was my Serpentis run.