Centralising Logistic Storage using Active Providers

[pf_moore]

Most of the playthroughs I have seen use logistic robots to ferry resources from passive providers at factories producing materials, to requesters feeding into the factories that need those materials. Generally, this seems to work pretty well with a swarm of robots ferrying stuff between the factories. (I've only just got to logistics for the first time, and I'm setting up a system like this).

But I wondered - for resources produced a long way from the main factory (usually batteries and plastics, often also copper, iron and steel) that results in pretty long transit times for the robots. Would it be worth putting those into active provider chests and have an area of storage chests near the factories? That way the raw materials could be ferried closer in when there's a spare moment. I've seen people with storage chest areas, but never active providers. Is this a viable idea? (I'll probably try it at some stage, but I've not used robots enough to be sure I'd be able to tell if it improved things or not...)

One downside of this approach would be that you couldn't limit the providers - you'd need to use smart inserters to limit transfer when there's more than X of the resource in the network, instead. But you don't typically want to limit these resources much anyway (except for batteries/plastics maybe).

Paul

Edit: Looking at it again, this probably wouldn't work because Active -> Requester takes priority over Storage -> Requester. Ah well. Is there any good use for active providers, other than having one to dump your junk into for transfer to storage?

[ssilk]

I use them for train stations and smelting, or more general: Areas, which are quite limited. I think the maximum is 500x500 tiles. More doesn't make sense, as long as you don't can control the possible destinations for the storage chests.

[arl85]

Well, I'm not expert on logistic, so mine are just speculation but...

it seems active providers works like passive one except when no one is currently requesting its content: in this case item contained will be dumped in storage chests.

So I suppose they can be useful is request is not constant, and/or you are creating more items than currently needed, and you want to store them.

For example, if you create 10 items/s and you're using only 5 items/s passive providers will became full after some time but active providers will not, if you have enough storage.
Further, if suddenly you need 7 items/s active providers will fulfill your request without forcing bots to go taking them from storage.

[Rahjital]

Honestly, I have never seen any good use for passive provider chests. Active providers are always emptied first, which means that as long as you have enough storage and logistic bots, the active provider chests will never get full. This ensures that your factory will always run at full capacity and makes them very useful for things produced in great quantities, such as ores, iron/copper plates, plastics, batteries, etc.

Passive providers are pretty much equivalent to storage chests minus the fact that robots cannot store materials from active providers in them. If there is no demand for the item they store, they will eventually get full and stop accepting. However, it's better to use a smart inserter for that anyway, because if there is so little demand for an item, you don't want to be producing entire stacks of it.

[ssilk]

For example, if you create 10 items/s and you're using only 5 items/s passive providers will became full after some time but active providers will not, if you have enough storage.
Further, if suddenly you need 7 items/s active providers will fulfill your request without forcing bots to go taking them from storage.

See this post: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 023#p36023