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Signal Tower 100% coverage - 56 ST
Hi all, this is a simple 100% coverage Signal Tower (ST) grid with redundant tesla tower connections. I made this as an exercise to see how few ST I can use and still get 100% coverage. Having said that, it's probably possible to reduce it further, I just found myself spending too much on it!
Details:
To explain the design, I will use the following short hands. "Pole" means the two poles of the planet, "Trop#" means the Tropic of a specific number, so Trop9 means the 9th Tropic counting from the pole. There's a North Tropic and South Tropic for every Tropic number. A Tropic is what I'm calling the thick yellow line that shows up blueprint mode. The 1st Tropic being right next to the respective Pole. "Eq" means equator (the line around the middle of the planet that can be hard to see but is right in the middle of the North and South 11th Tropic). The design I'm posting is as follows. Pole: 1; Trop9: 9; Trop 11: 12; Eq: 12. Meaning 1 ST at the pole, 9 ST at the 9th Tropic, etc. In case it's not clear, the reason Tropics are used for ST design is because many factory blueprints (except specialized ones like polar blue prints) only work if they don't cross a Tropic so the space in-between Tropic are prime real-estate for massive factories.
I've looked over all the planet-wide ST blueprints on this website that I could find and a majority of them uses Trop 11: 10; Eq: 10, that is 10 ST on the 11th Tropics and 10 on the equator. Something about a famous Youtuber showing it in a video. Hate to break it to you guys but that design leaves a periodically repeating gap between the equator and the Tropic (20 of them in total to be precise). I'm not sure this gap matters, it's not that big after all, but one could argue that it is not 100% coverage. Anyways, I did some test and found that Trop 11: 12; Eq: 12 provides full coverage over the same area with an overlap margin of ~5 grids (meaning you can move an individual ST by 5 grid if needed to avoid say a mineral patch and still get full coverage). I did see a design on the website with this pattern and I apologize I forgot whose design it was.
In the polar region, I found that if I wanted to stick to the Tropics and make it a relatively straightforward pattern to understand I had to stick 9 ST on Trop9. This leads to overlap margin of ~6 grids, which is also why I think it may be possible to further optimize the design. The single ST at the pole unfortunately only had an overlap margin of ~1.5 block meaning it has to stay there if you only want to use 1 ST for that pole. But as others have pointed out, you can fill the pole with stuff so Dark Fog doesn't want to go there (receiver array?). You can alternately replace the 1 ST at the pole with 3 STs 120 deg apart at around Trop6. Or you can free yourself of the constraint of the Tropic and try something even more optimized. I feel like I'm spending too much time optimizing this so I'm just going to leave it here and anyone free to develop further or combine it with other designs.
Side note, this design is fully compatible with the 22 Planetary Shield design that's popular.
Details:
To explain the design, I will use the following short hands. "Pole" means the two poles of the planet, "Trop#" means the Tropic of a specific number, so Trop9 means the 9th Tropic counting from the pole. There's a North Tropic and South Tropic for every Tropic number. A Tropic is what I'm calling the thick yellow line that shows up blueprint mode. The 1st Tropic being right next to the respective Pole. "Eq" means equator (the line around the middle of the planet that can be hard to see but is right in the middle of the North and South 11th Tropic). The design I'm posting is as follows. Pole: 1; Trop9: 9; Trop 11: 12; Eq: 12. Meaning 1 ST at the pole, 9 ST at the 9th Tropic, etc. In case it's not clear, the reason Tropics are used for ST design is because many factory blueprints (except specialized ones like polar blue prints) only work if they don't cross a Tropic so the space in-between Tropic are prime real-estate for massive factories.
I've looked over all the planet-wide ST blueprints on this website that I could find and a majority of them uses Trop 11: 10; Eq: 10, that is 10 ST on the 11th Tropics and 10 on the equator. Something about a famous Youtuber showing it in a video. Hate to break it to you guys but that design leaves a periodically repeating gap between the equator and the Tropic (20 of them in total to be precise). I'm not sure this gap matters, it's not that big after all, but one could argue that it is not 100% coverage. Anyways, I did some test and found that Trop 11: 12; Eq: 12 provides full coverage over the same area with an overlap margin of ~5 grids (meaning you can move an individual ST by 5 grid if needed to avoid say a mineral patch and still get full coverage). I did see a design on the website with this pattern and I apologize I forgot whose design it was.
In the polar region, I found that if I wanted to stick to the Tropics and make it a relatively straightforward pattern to understand I had to stick 9 ST on Trop9. This leads to overlap margin of ~6 grids, which is also why I think it may be possible to further optimize the design. The single ST at the pole unfortunately only had an overlap margin of ~1.5 block meaning it has to stay there if you only want to use 1 ST for that pole. But as others have pointed out, you can fill the pole with stuff so Dark Fog doesn't want to go there (receiver array?). You can alternately replace the 1 ST at the pole with 3 STs 120 deg apart at around Trop6. Or you can free yourself of the constraint of the Tropic and try something even more optimized. I feel like I'm spending too much time optimizing this so I'm just going to leave it here and anyone free to develop further or combine it with other designs.
Side note, this design is fully compatible with the 22 Planetary Shield design that's popular.
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