Having it larger is actually a HUGE upgrade, here's why:

By having a 2x2 furnace, you're limited to 2 inserters per size. That means a single furnace can have up to 8 inserters controlling the furnace. By having a 3x3 furnace, however, you get 3 inserters per size, increasing the limit to 12 and ...

Still takes way more effort and logistics to set up than a laser system, which i'm glad to see.

If you think your powerful turrets are going to be carrying you, think again. The higher level enemies will quickly shrug off the bonus damage and without proper planning will end very poorly for your ...

Different strokes for different folks.

Either you can have a basic passive system where everything is requested when needed at the cost of sometimes efficiency. Or you could design a fully automated pseudo-belt system to allow complete control over the entire network and keep things moving very ...

Biters, as far as their health and damage output, are perfectly balanced.

The issue comes from the fact that their explosive resistance is WAY too high
explosive weapons hardly do any damage at all, meaning that you have no mid-game viable weapons to deal with them once the bullet resistance goes ...

301 spells loe backwards.

301

2) Due to the automation logic of inserters, there's no way to control an inserter to put more than 5 of a resource into a machine, or to pick up a items at a certain speed. AFAIK there's no way to change this.

use fast inserter to put the item on the ground and the smart inserter to put it in ...

this is already possible, by making some use of circuits.
With 0.12 much easier. With 0.13 no problem.

Sure it can be done but the issue arises from two small things:

1) It cannot be guaranteed that an item is processed without forcing the machine to only work with one type. At that point, the ...

I'm torn on this one.

On one hand, your first experience with module slots doesn't come until the mid game.

On the other hand it doesn't make sense that an electronic and advanced radar can't be modulized.

Having a Radar Mk2 would solve this but goes against the design of the game.
electric ...

Nevermind. This trick won't work at all. The AI for the bots will take a repair pack from their home, use it up, and then find the chest and return home rather than go back to work. You may as well just pump the repair pack straight into the port.

You would be surprised what you can do with the wire network.

That said, the problem boils down to what you mentioned; sooner or later you need to get resources from somewhere, and that somewhere tends to be the closest storage chest.

Although the solution may be a lot simpler than we have been ...

Well you're aware that if you transfer items from a requester back into a storage chest creat a loop?
Item gets transferd bot comes packs it back in the requester, item gets transfered, and so on and so forth.
Afaik items in a smart chest aren'T available for bots either. So the thing would be ...

Thing with storage chests is, they get only filled with one item as long as free storage chests avilable in the system. and they get filled somwhat randomly.
But yes Construction bots can take Items out of any of the tree providing chests, the activ the passiv and the storage chest.
They however ...

Thanks for joining this.

I didn't want to make two threads over a similar idea but felt it was more important to follow the rules.

I'm torn on this one.

On one hand, your first experience with module slots doesn't come until the mid game.

On the other hand it doesn't make sense that an electronic and advanced radar can't be modulized.

Having a Radar Mk2 would solve this but goes against the design of the game.

I think what the OP wants to do is a requester chest that can make an inventory of all entities built within a given range (20, or 50 tiles maybe), and request a few of each entity preventively. Like that, if an entity is damaged, the construction bots can rebuild faster (they don't have to fly ...

I hope it's included in the update!

Even if it isn't it would be nice to know if the idea would be considered.

Joined, cause very similar -- ssilk

Due to the way the game handles the circuit network, it is impossible to see items that are on a belt or being passed by an inserter. This can make it quite a hassle to do any advanced monitoring, since items are constantly being brought off the network when ...

Simply put, the ability to either make or set single-pulse mode for all machinery, allowing for manual logistical control over the circuit network. For example, I want to be able to insert a single item into a chest after crafting exactly as many items as I need beforehand. Right now, this is almost ...

It's a very slight upgrade. It gets new potential and new flaws to go with them.

Upsides include extremely low pollution, and upgradablity (can interface with beacons as well) which make it very powerful at the late game. You also don't need a coal/fuel line.

Size is both an upgrade and a ...

There is a way to disconnect powerpoles. Shift click them... and use copper cable like green/red wire to reconnect them.
I don't no for sure out of the top of my head if it's shift right or shift left click.

Very helpful, thank you.

That isn't going to bring back my setup but i'll probably do it ...