Cross-Dimension Shipping

The Rocket Cargo Port ships cargo between dimensions. How a shipment travels depends on whether Nerospace is installed:

A server can keep the standalone behaviour even with Nerospace installed: set nerospaceRouting = false (see Configuration).

Controls#

The status line says where the port is shipping, which lane it uses, and — when it is not launching — why, plus when it will try again.

Every launch#

A port holds a 10-slot cargo buffer and an energy buffer. When it launches depends on its launch schedule:

The schedule mirrors the one on Nerospace's own Cargo Pad, but it belongs to the port: the pad's own schedule is for cargo loaded into the pad, the port's for cargo in the port.

Every launch:

• A launch is charged energy per stack (shipEnergyPerStack) — deliberately expensive, so shipping complements crewed rocket travel rather than replacing it.
• If the launch is refused (no destination, no rocket, not enough fuel, …) the cargo stays in the port, the reason is shown in its status, and the port backs off: each consecutive refusal doubles the wait, up to shipDenialBackoffMaxTicks. Right-clicking the port resets the wait. Shortages that fix themselves (energy, the server-wide in-transit cap) are retried every interval instead.
• On servers running NeroEconomy with a freightFee set, the port's dispatcher also pays that fee per launch; if they cannot, the launch is held with the reason cannot pay the freight fee.

Standalone: stub routes#

Without Nerospace every loaded dimension is a destination, so shipping works on its own (for example Overworld ↔ Nether):

• The port burns rocket fuel by tag (nerologistics:rocket_fuel — blaze powder and rods by default; any mod can add to the tag), shipFuelPerLaunch items per launch.
• The shipment becomes a manifest held for shipTransitTicks. On arrival the destination chunk is force-loaded only momentarily to deposit the cargo into a same-channel port there (overflow is dropped), then released — two dimensions are never kept loaded for the transit.
• Manifests are durably persisted (payload, dimensions, positions, ticks — never player identity), so a shipment in flight survives a restart. maxPendingShipments bounds the store.

With Nerospace: real cargo flights#

With Nerospace 1.3.0 or newer, a launch is a real Nerospace cargo flight requested through Nerospace's route API:

1. Build a Cargo Pad into a 3×3 launch pad and dock a fuelled Cargo Rocket on it (see the Nerospace wiki's Freight chapter).
2. Place the Rocket Cargo Port touching the Cargo Pad block — beside it, diagonal to it, or directly under it. Its status names the pad it found, or says "place this port next to a Cargo Pad".
3. Right-click the port to pick a destination. The list holds the Cargo Pads and stations you may ship to — your own, pads shared with you, public pads and stations you manage. Stations show as "Station: …". Right-clicking makes you the port's dispatcher: the port launches on your behalf.
4. Feed the port cargo (ducts, hoppers or a Logistics Processor Ship above rule). Each interval the port asks Nerospace for a flight; when Nerospace accepts, the cargo leaves the port.

What changes compared to standalone:

• Fuel is the rocket's. The port does not consume rocket-fuel items — the docked rocket pays, exactly as for a manual launch. Travel time and fuel come from Nerospace's route quote.
• Refusals are Nerospace's and show verbatim in the port status: no rocket docked, the pad is smaller than 3×3, not enough fuel, the dispatcher may not use a pad, too many flights, …
• Nothing is lost. Nerospace persists the flight across restarts; an unavailable destination makes it wait (unloaded) or hold (occupied / missing pad) and, after Nerospace's hold timeout, drops the cargo as a Cargo Crate at the destination. The dashboard names the pad and — if you may use that pad — where the crate is.
• Return empty. Off (the default, shipReturnEmpty): the rocket stays at the destination, so a receiving base gains a rocket to send back. On: the rocket flies home empty after unloading, and the return leg's fuel is charged at launch.
• Channels do not apply — the destination is a pad, so the sneak-click toggles return-empty instead.
• Who the port ships as. A port with no dispatcher (never configured, or its dispatcher asked for their data to be erased) lists public pads only and does not launch until someone right-clicks it. See Dashboard & Privacy.

Shipping classes (QoS lanes)#

Each port has a shipping class, cycled with the Configurator.

Standalone, the class trades transit time against fuel items:

A fuel-free setup (shipFuelPerLaunch = 0) stays free in every class.

With Nerospace, flight time and fuel belong to Nerospace and cannot be bought faster, so the class becomes an energy and priority trade-off instead:

Priority matters when several ports share one pad: one rocket means one launch, and the Express port asks first. With a single port per pad the lanes differ only in energy and Bulk's full-buffer wait — honestly a thin difference; the lanes mostly matter for standalone shipping.

The class is saved on the port. With enableShippingQos = false every port ships Standard regardless of its configured class (the setting is kept for when the toggle returns).

Upgrading worlds from before 0.4#

Ports used to save their destination as a position in a list (DestIndex), which pointed somewhere else whenever the list changed. They now save the destination itself. Old ports are converted the first time they are used: the old index is read against the standalone dimension list and replaced. With Nerospace routing on, an old dimension destination does not name a pad, so the port asks you to pick a destination once.

See also#

• Dashboard & Privacy · Logistics Programming · Terminals · Configuration