"Orbital Trade Beacon plus Stockpile" button

[frosty840]

Either that or give the trade beacon a square area of influence. Having to shape my main outdoor storage area into the trade beacon's awkward shape every game is a bit of a pain in the backside. At its most "convenient", I can draw the shape in two sweeps and just give up on 32 squares of storage.


Most of the time, though, I find myself needing to draw this shape, fill it in, then cancel the extra beacons I've used to create the area. I'm really not great with visually judging distances in the game.
I'm probably missing something obvious, though.

[Pulaskimask]

You're not missing something obvious, this is a pain. It also doesn't help that while your drawing a zone you cannot see the orbital trade beacon area. If an automatic zone is made for the orbital trade beacon then you could also make automatic zones for other things, such as tables creating automatic zones for food. Although tables are easy to make zones for.

[Mattaru]

You're not missing something obvious, this is a pain. It also doesn't help that while your drawing a zone you cannot see the orbital trade beacon area. If an automatic zone is made for the orbital trade beacon then you could also make automatic zones for other things, such as tables creating automatic zones for food. Although tables are easy to make zones for.

Agreed on this and with OP. The drop zone for the trade beacons are awkward and not being able to see the area when you're constructing it doesn't help.

It would be a nice fix for the next alpha

[Bilxx1]

I like to click the beaken to pull its area up then use the plans feature to draw its outline.. very helpful.

[Benny the Icepick]

Might it also help to have the beacon operate over a *square* area instead of a round one?  The old "launchpad" buildings were square, which made laying out or expanding stockpiles easier.  I had to manually remove the corners of a stockpile under an orbital beacon because my colonists kept piling the silver there, just out of reach of trade.

[lude]

If you're going for a bigger stockpile anyway you could build 5 beacons since only the first one will receive drops (i hope, or it's the southwestern one) and then safely make a rectangular stockpile, tho i agree

but i personally would like it to be like in dwarf fortress where the whole inventory was scanned and what you wanted to sell was brought to the tradedepot (using the tradedepo around the beacon, ignoring all set filters (like if you only want the most expensive stuff to be hauled there but want to sell crap, crap gets hauled there or vice versa) i'd also find it awesome if there'd be extra jobs (accountant, doctor (so that medical job would be nursing/first aid/triage and a dedicated doctor would do other work) perhaps a mayor or commander when there's enough people

[FridayBiology]

just built an extra beacon in that awkward colder-sack close to your base. set an area as silver and gold/durasteel...etc

until raiders actually loot rather then kill and burn random stuff, external stockpiles are the way to go.

[Drahkon]

For now, I create the beacon and an over-sized storage zone. Later select the beacon to pull up it's area covered and delete the excess storage zone.

[windruf]

that is exactly what most of us do. at last one time per colony. and that is too much work for such a trivial task.