Planetary Logistics Station

The Planetary Logistics Station is a logistics building used for bulk transport within a single planet. It provides local item distribution with Logistics Drones, and it cannot handle interplanetary transport. As a building item, it can be crafted in an Assembler or directly from the Icarus replicator, and it is also used as the crafting material for the Interstellar Logistics Station.

The station has four item slots, and each slot can be assigned one item and one mode: Supply, Demand, or Storage. Supply makes the station export that item to other stations on the same planet that are requesting it. Demand makes it import that item from other stations on the same planet that are supplying it. Storage removes the slot from the logistics network entirely, so the station neither sends nor receives that item through logistics, though the item can still be inserted or removed by belt or manually. If you only need somewhere to hold items, Storage is usually less space-efficient than a dedicated container, so it is mainly useful when you want to temporarily pause logistics for that resource.

The station has 12 conveyor belt ports on its bottom side, so belts can connect directly for item input and output. Because of this, it is one of the machines that does not require Sorters for belt transfer. It can also be used for more complex local distribution layouts, since it can keep up to four item types separated while still exposing many belt connections. Each resource slot has a maximum capacity of 5000 items, though the per-slot cap can be set lower if desired.

For logistics operation, the station must have power and Logistics Drones. It can host up to 50 Logistics Drones. When a slot is set to Demand, the station requests the resource from local supply stations; when set to Supply, it offers the resource to local demand stations. Local supply and demand are handled by drones, while the analogous remote modes belong to the Interstellar Logistics Station and use vessels instead.

The station’s power usage depends on its charge level. The maximum charging power can be adjusted with a slider, but the actual draw decreases as the station fills with energy: it draws the most power when nearly empty, and much less when nearly full. This means a newly placed station can place a noticeable load on a weak power grid, but once charged, its draw becomes relatively low.

A few practical points make the station easier to use:

• Items can be added or removed manually by right-clicking the item icon, or by dropping the correct item onto it.
• Drones cannot be inserted through a conveyor belt.
• The station cannot be upgraded in place into an Interstellar Logistics Station. If you will need interstellar logistics soon, it is often simpler to place the Interstellar Logistics Station directly once unlocked.
• Station settings and logistics requests can be copied with a hotkey.

Although the Planetary Logistics Station is strictly limited to planetary transport, it remains useful throughout the game because it is cheaper than the Interstellar Logistics Station and can be placed more densely. It is especially effective for mining outposts, localized production lines, and any layout that needs simple, high-capacity item routing inside a single world.