Centralising Logistic Storage using Active Providers
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 12:29 pm
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?
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?