What you learn today
- Receive signals
- Recognise traders
- What a chip can do there
At some point your own ore is no longer enough, or a part is missing that you cannot build. Then traders come into play. They circle in orbit and only land if you reach them – with a satellite dish.
The dishes
| Device | Prefab | Transmit power |
|---|---|---|
| Small satellite dish | StructureSmallSatelliteDish | 50–200 W |
| Medium satellite dish | StructureSatelliteDish | 500–7,500 W |
| Large satellite dish | StructureLargeSatelliteDish | 2,000–50,000 W |
Setting is the transmit power in watts. Horizontal and Vertical align the dish, Idle is 1 while it is not turning.
Receiving signals
The dish always reports the strongest contact:
| LogicType | Meaning |
|---|---|
SignalID | identifier of the contact, −1 without contact |
SignalStrength | angle deviation to the contact in degrees – smaller is better, −1 while unknown |
ContactTypeId | identifier of the trader type |
MinimumWattsToContact | how much power has to arrive at the contact |
WattsReachingContact | how much arrives right now – transmit power times alignment |
InterrogationProgress | progress of the interrogation from 0 to 1, −1 without contact |
SignalStrength is a trap: the name sounds like “the bigger, the better”, but the value is an angle. 0 means perfectly aligned.
Recognising traders
According to the game's trader data, small traders need 25 to 30 W at the contact and 20 to 30 seconds of interrogation, medium ones 180 to 200 W and one to two minutes, large ones 6,000 to 8,000 W and seven to ten minutes. So MinimumWattsToContact alone tells you what size is circling up there.
What a chip can do
- Adjust the power: if too little arrives, the chip turns
Settingup step by step until it is enough. - Start and hold the interrogation:
Activate1 starts the interrogation of the strongest contact. IfActivatedrops to 0 or the power is no longer enough, it is cancelled. - Report: progress in percent and a light as soon as the contact stands.
- Request landing: if the trader is contacted and a fitting landing pad is free, another
Activate1 calls it down.
slt tmp arriving needed
and tmp tmp contact
mul tmp tmp STEP
add power power tmpBuying and selling you have to do yourself once the trader has landed. The chip finds, connects and reports.
Better alignment saves power: the smaller the angle deviation, the more of the transmit power arrives. According to the game code it works fully up to 2° deviation, at 5° still at 90 %, at 22.5° only at 10 %. A well-aligned dish needs less Setting for the same trader.
The dish does not always draw power equal to Setting: while interrogating a contact it is exactly Setting watts, while it only evaluates contacts it has found, a tenth of that, otherwise just its base consumption.
Exercise
Task
The medium satellite dish is named “Schuessel”. There is a contact when SignalID is not −1 (and not NaN). While WattsReachingContact is below MinimumWattsToContact and a contact exists, the chip raises Setting by 100 W per tick, always within 500 to 7500. Activate is 1 while a contact exists. “Kontakt” shows InterrogationProgress in percent mode (never below 0, 0 without dish), the light “Haendler” is on at 1.
Hints
Hint 1
Contact: sne contact signal NONE, and exclude NaN with snan/seqz/and.
Hint 2
Power: add “too little” times STEP, then clamp.
Hint 3
Progress: max … 0, NaN to 0, percent mode, light at exactly 1.
Quiz
5 questions. You pass from 60 % – the server does the grading.
Complete the day
- Passed the simulator exercise
- Passed the quiz with at least 60 %
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