Factorio Forums

Hey guys, I have been bashing my head against combinators for a little while and this thing has me stumped. I am not even sure if it is possible, but I wanted to ask for some help with it anyway.

What I want to achieve is to have a requester chest to request 200.. Let's say iron plates, 200 iron plates. When it is topped up it stops requesting and doesn't request again until the chest has less than 50 iron plates in it. Resulting in one big stream of logistic robots coming in and filling it up.

Is this possible to do, and if so, how?

This is something thats not possible in the current game with bots, the game doenst allow switching off and on demand or changing the amount demanded.

Best I can suggest is to make a train stacker and keep some trains for manual use.

Build a rail along your iron plates belt and create a seven chests long loading area. Set up assembly machines along another part of rail and unload resources directly into them.
Works great on products that need a limited amount like boilers, steam engines, refineries, chemical plants and the like.

Train needs four stations: start with the stacker "rest" station with parking time of maximum. Next station should be "refill fuel". I use two or three miners stashing coal into a single chest and train stops for about 10 to 15 seconds to load fuel. Third and fourth are "load resources", "drop off resources".

twepy wrote:This is something thats not possible in the current game with bots, the game doenst allow switching off and on demand or changing the amount demanded.

Alright, got me thinking... requester chests need power to function right? I am thinking that when we get power switches in the game it would be possible to do it.. Hook up a power switch and a couple of combinators. 200 iron plates in the chest switches power off, 50 in the chest switches power on.

axelsword wrote:Best I can suggest is to make a train stacker and keep some trains for manual use.

Build a rail along your iron plates belt and create a seven chests long loading area. Set up assembly machines along another part of rail and unload resources directly into them.
Works great on products that need a limited amount like boilers, steam engines, refineries, chemical plants and the like.

Train needs four stations: start with the stacker "rest" station with parking time of maximum. Next station should be "refill fuel". I use two or three miners stashing coal into a single chest and train stops for about 10 to 15 seconds to load fuel. Third and fourth are "load resources", "drop off resources".

Good idea, I will probably do that for something later on, but it is way more space consuming than just a combinator or 2 hooked up to a chest