Landing Pad

The Landing Pad is a mid-to-late game block that receives incoming supply pods and imports large quantities of items and liquids into your base. It appears as a dedicated import terminal that periodically spawns a pod which lands on the pad, deposits its contents, and then departs. In non-campaign modes the pad functions effectively as an item source that produces items from nothing up to its throughput limit; in campaign play it represents incoming logistical deliveries. The Landing Pad consumes large amounts of water to operate and has a fixed landing/cooldown rhythm that determines its maximum import rate.

Each Landing Pad has a pod landing animation and cooldown that together last 150 ticks each (300 ticks / 5 seconds total), so a single pad can accept 20 items per second (1200 items per minute) at maximum. That import rate equals the combined throughput of six fully optimized Launch Pads; multiple pads in the same sector will have their arrivals staggered if overall demand exceeds available import bandwidth. Pads cannot receive speed boosts from Overdrive Projectors or similar effects.

Operation requires water: every landing consumes 1500 units of Water, so sustaining continuous operation demands 300 Water/sec. Typical pump coverage to supply one pad continuously is:

• Mechanical Pumps: about 43 pumps (covers ~42.86 tiles).
• Rotary Pumps: about 6.25 pumps at full coverage (covers 25 tiles).
• Impulse Pumps: about 2.53 pumps (covers ~22.74 tiles).
• Shallow Water Extractors (neutral terrain affinity): about 45.45 extractors (covers ~181.82 tiles).

To fully unload a Landing Pad at its maximum rate, use high-throughput conveyors. Plastanium conveyors are recommended because two Titanium conveyors are space-inefficient; maximum throughput requires two separate plastanium conveyor starting points, since a single plastanium line cannot take items off the pad fast enough by itself.

Practical notes for deployment and base design:

• Expect a fixed cadence of arrivals; plan storage and sorter layouts to buffer bursts so nearby factories are not starved or clogged.
• When multiple pads are active in a sector, pods will alternate or be delayed to match the aggregate import demand; spacing and separate unloading lines help prevent internal contention.
• Because pads spawn items in non-campaign modes, they are a reliable way to obtain large quantities of materials without mining if you can supply the required water and logistics.
• Landing Pads were introduced in Build 147.