Cargo Ship Start Pad

The Cargo Ship Start Pad is one of the two pad types used by cargo ships. It serves as the launch point for ship routes, while the Cargo Ship Target Pad acts as the destination. Together, the two pads define a cargo ship line, letting ships move items between distant parts of a factory without relying on long belt runs.

Cargo ships can now queue and take turns unloading their cargo, but only one cargo ship may offload its inventory at a time. This means multiple start pads can feed into the same target pad, and the ships will wait their turn rather than trying to unload simultaneously. The system is convenient for linking separated production areas, especially when a direct transport line would be awkward or expensive to build.

In practice, cargo ships are often used as an alternative to long belt highways, but their throughput depends heavily on the distance between the pads. Longer trips reduce practical output, so cargo ships may be a poor fit for very large bases unless you are willing to deploy several routes. A single target pad can be supplied by any number of start pads, but the receiving side still has a limit, so routing too much traffic into one destination will cause a bottleneck.

• The Cargo Ship Start Pad is the source side of a cargo ship route.
• Each route requires a matching Cargo Ship Target Pad to receive deliveries.
• Multiple start pads can share one target pad, with ships queueing to unload one at a time.
• The maximum output of a target pad is approximately 4800/min, assuming all 20 ports and MK3 belts are used.
• If you expect higher demand than that, set up a second target pad to handle overflow instead of overloading a single destination.
• Because throughput varies with travel distance, cargo ships work best when used to connect manageable production clusters rather than as a universal replacement for belts.