have requesters check to make sure all cargo can be unloaded

[gerrg]

First off, I love this mod! so fun and so helpful! before using this mod, i would setup my "requesters" to read the contents of each set of chests for their respective wagons, and make sure there was enough room to empty 1 full wagon into those chests. For examples, i had a LCCCC train, and 12 chests for each wagon (6 on each side). I would connect each set of 12 chests to an arithmetic combinator, and have it check that all the items added up to "total chests capacity - 1 wagon capacity), so something like 26800 for requester chests loading ore (max space of 28800 using 12 chests). if it was less that 1 wagon, i would output a blue square or something, and then do the same for each of the other sets of 3 chests. if the total output from all the combinators was 4 blue squares, i would enable the station.

I'm wanting to do something similar, as i ran into a problem last night using bots and provider chests. The first 2 sets of chests would become completely empty, while the back 2 sets were full. A new train would come in, but would only empty half way before returning to the station.

My idea to fix this (which i haven't tried yet) is to use some combinators to find the set of chests that has the largest quantity in it, in my example one of the last two sets of chests). Then when i have this max value, i'll multiply it by 4 (or however many wagons I have) and then use that as my input to the station.

The station will look like it has more product then it actually has, but i would never have a wagon return to the depot with stuff still in it.

Is there an easier/better way to do this? I've tried to do some searching, but have had no luck. Also, so far the only time i'm having any issues is when using provider chests for bot-based stuff and them not pulling evenly from the chests. everywhere i have the chests unloading onto belts there are no issues. Thanks for your help!

[Optera]

That's a question about general station design, not really specific to LTN.

Bots are terrible at balancing. I know no way to directly get bots balancing either unloading or loading stations reliable.
Unloading only works well if unloading directly into active provider chests and having enough bots to clean them fully between trains.
Loading from requester or buffer chests will always have a high possibility of imbalance. It's better to cascade requester > inserter > steel chest > inserter > wagon and control the inserter between chests with the logic from zuri's smart loading. https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ion_guide/

[gerrg]

ahh, I see. So that would balance the chests that feed into the LTN station by controlling what goes out of them (and into the provider chests). So if i understand it correctly, i would connect all of my chests together( even between the wagons, so 12*4=48 chests totat) to be the input to my combinator, and then divide that by -48, thereby making the inserters pull the same amount out from each chest. So if on of my provider chests that i'm trying to put stuff into is full, then all of the inserters will stop... Does that sound correct?

Also, i thought this might be a LTN question, since i'm trying to tell the network whether or not i have space for another train to come, but I see now that it's more of a general station question. Thanks for your input and time!