Help understanding Logistic System

[MithrandirBooga]

Ok so I'm at an "end game" state, where I'm basically just expanding my sphere of influence with remote "outposts". I've created a blueprint of an outpost, with 20 laser turrets, walls, a substation, and a roboport, and I use my construction robots to build these outposts. Only now, since I've expanded so far, the latency between building these outposts has become unbearably long because I've expanded so far away from my main base.

I decided to try to optimize this by placing requester chest "caches" near the edges of my influence, which would request a bunch of lasers/walls/etc. My thinking was that the items would be placed in the requester chests, then I'd move them to passive provider chests (using a red wire network), and then when I would build a new outpost, my constructors would take the items from the closest PP chest and build the outpost.

Not so. I build an outpost, and I see 50 constructor bots fly out of the nearest roboport, fly *OVER* my cache, and then waste the next 5 minutes flying all the way back to my storage chests at my home base, grab the items, then fly back. This takes forever.

Ok, so I decided to change the PP chests to yellow Storage Chests. This worked a *little* better, but not by much. First off, now whenever I destruct something, the bots seem to *randomly* decide to place it in the furthest chest possible. I have no idea why, but I'll destruct something in my base, then they'll fly to one of my caches way out in the middle of nowhere and deposit the items there. What the heck? Then, when I try to build a new outpost, half of the constructor bots will fly to the nearest storage chest and grab items (there's more than twice as many in the chest as I requested to be built, so it's not like they ran out), but the other half will still fly back home and take forever again.

Am I missing something? Is there any way to force your constructor bots to grab items from the nearest chest instead of wasting their time flying all the way back home? Am I on the right track here or am I missing something obvious?

Thanks!

[FishSandwich]

I've noticed this as well, I think the logistic pathfinding system still needs some work.

For me it's most frustrating when I'm requesting items and a logistic bot is like half a second away and decides to fly off to a roboport to recharge instead of giving me the item first.

[SHiRKiT]

I've noticed this as well, I think the logistic pathfinding system still needs some work.

For me it's most frustrating when I'm requesting items and a logistic bot is like half a second away and decides to fly off to a roboport to recharge instead of giving me the item first.

I still maintain my speech that this is a bug, although technically it isn't.

[Martc]

Factorio is still of early stages of development, so developers are glad that drones are working somehow . And now are focusing on something else, I am pretty sure that drone behavior will be overhauled in future.
So its quite hard optimize logistic network now. But you can split logistic network and use requester/provider chest to transfer items between networks or using supply train is also possible.

[DaveMcW]

I've noticed this as well, I think the logistic pathfinding system still needs some work.

For me it's most frustrating when I'm requesting items and a logistic bot is like half a second away and decides to fly off to a roboport to recharge instead of giving me the item first.

I still maintain my speech that this is a bug, although technically it isn't.

They used to die half a second away. So, progress!

Of course it can be better.

[arl85]

my constructors would take the items from the closest PP chest and build the outpost.

if you're playing in > 0.10, remember that chest priority has changed (have a look here)

First off, now whenever I destruct something, the bots seem to *randomly* decide to place it in the furthest chest possible. I have no idea why, but I'll destruct something in my base, then they'll fly to one of my caches way out in the middle of nowhere and deposit the items there. What the heck?

from the same link as above

For the storage chests, the bots search for one storage, which has the same item already filled. Only if that can't be found, they "open up" a new storage chest. This should avoid having storage chests with different items inside.

In other words: the storage chests are filled, when all requests are fulfilled, emptied before using the passive provider chests and try to store only the items they already have inside.

hope this helps!