Guide: Rocket Circuitry

by Wiwiweb#7381 as of 0.5.103

The first few rockets you will launch will be manual. But eventually, you're going to want rockets to be sent without your help at all. Depending on what setup you want, this can range from very simple circuitry requiring no combinators, to very complex ones.

This guide assumes you are a circuit beginner, and will guide you through the steps by explaining how they work. The goal is to show you various rocket setups, but also to teach you a little more about Factorio circuitry.

Preparing the rocket


Regardless of what items you want in your rocket and what kind of logistic setup you want to design, at first, you will always need your rocket to be made.

Each rocket needs 1 Capsule, 100 Cargo rocket parts, and some rocket fuel (amount depends on destination). The rocket fuel can be filled with a pipe attached to any of the 8 connections of the rocket pad, and doesn't need any circuitry, so this guide will mostly ignore it. The Capsule and Cargo rocket parts are inserted in the rocket like any assembler.

However, you can't simply put a requester chest and an inserter without any circuitry, because inserters will continue inserting even once the rocket is ready! Once the rocket is built, the inserters will continue inserting capsules and rocket parts as part of your cargo!

To prevent this, you can use the 2 signals sent by the rocket pad, indicating how many Capsules and Cargo rocket parts are in the rocket, including the ones used to prepare the rocket itself, and the ones in cargo.

You can use 2 inserters. One to insert capsules, and one to insert parts. Then wire them to the rocket so that they stop inserting after 1 capsule and 100 parts. See the picture on the right for an example.

Packed or unpacked rocket parts
Note that instead of requesting cargo rocket parts directly, the setup on the right requests packed cargo rocket parts, and has an assembler to unpack them. This allows you to have 5 times fewer bot trips, which will save you bots from dying to attrition in the long run. If you prefer dealing in rocket parts directly, you can simply have 2 requester chests.

Capsules and Cargo rocket parts are well suited for bot transport, since they are required in very few quantities. If you use Packed cargo rocket parts, you can build an entire rocket with only 21 bot trips (1 for the capsule, 20 for the parts).

Single-item rockets


Single-item rockets are very simple and barely need any more circuitry than what we did to prepare the rocket.

Preventing the rocket pad from being blocked by too much cargo
If you simply use inserters to insert your cargo, you may run into an unexpected problem: Your rocket setup will work perfectly fine at first, but if you ever run out of capsules or rocket parts at some point, your cargo inserters will completely fill the rocket with cargo before the rocket is built, which will prevent your capsule/rocket part inserters from building the rocket once the materials are available again! You would need manual intervention to remove some cargo and get the rocket pad unblocked.

To prevent this, you can wire your inserters to only insert cargo when the rocket is fully built. Conveniently, the rocket pad has a signal that does exactly that. If the "rocket" signal is 1, the rocket is fully built, and you can let your inserters bring in the cargo.

Setting up your destination


A very convenient thing you can do with rockets is to target "Any landing pad with name X". This can be used for multiple-launch-pads to multiple-landing-pads delivery systems with no hassle.

By naming all your landing pads the same name and targeting that name, your launch pad will launch to any empty landing pad. If there isn't any, it will wait. This is similar to how you can name multiple train stations the same name to have a train go to "any free station".

For example, by making a rocket full of iron ore that targets any landing pad named "Iron Ore", you will be able to place a landing pad anywhere you need iron ore, without worrying about which rocket needs to go where. This is very powerful.

Taking care of the capsule and rocket parts at the destination
Your cargo will arrive at the destination mixed with any Cargo rocket parts that have survived (based on your re-usability tech) as well as the Capsule.

Make sure not to mix those with your cargo, by using filter inserters.

Multi-item rockets
WIP