Factorio Forums

I hooked up 8 roboports in a linked column. The north end had four requester chests asking for iron plate and it had a number of active provider chests with lots of iron plate. At the south end I put a storage chest. Robots started drifting down to the south end storage chest and when there was a few hundred iron plate in this chest I dropped a requester in the left corner of the south end looking for iron plate. Robots were now moving in a steady line back and forth between the north end stuff and the south end storage chest. They all ignored the new requester chest in the south end until they finished their current mission and then they started moving towards the newest requester chest even if it meant they'd drift down from all the way up north. In fact the first robot to drop plates into the newest requester chest had come from all the way up north, a huge waste of time since they could have just picked up plates from the storage chests 70 feet away, they instead chose to bring them from a kilometer away.

The robots don't figure in the newest chests until they've finished all their assignments in progress. Assignments don't change or adapt to placement of new chests immediately. If you have robots working a large area and you drop new requesters, this is why it might be awhile before anything is deposited in them.

They preferred the longer way because they prioritize active providers over storage chests.

And if you had more robots they would have done both jobs simultaneously.