Factorio Forums

1. What did you do?
I placed a ghost of a yellow belt next to a Passive Provider Chest. The passive provider chest has yellow belts. There are storage chests with yellow belts as well but they are further away from the placed ghost.

2. What happened?
A construction bot flew to the passive provider chest, grabbed a yellow belt, and built the yellow belt ghost.

3. What did you expect to happen instead? It might be obvious to you, but do it anyway!
I expected the construction bot to fly to the storage chest, which is further away, to pick up a yellow belt, then fly back and build the yellow belt ghost.

Steps to reconstruct:
1. Build the Test Setup. Ignore modded accumulator, it's a stand-in for the appropriate power provider.
2. Place 1 belt in the passive provider chest, 1 belt in the storage chest, and 1 construction bot in the roboport.
3. Place yellow belt ghost closer to passive provider chest than storage chest.
4. Observe construction bot flies to passive provider chest to fetch yellow belt when storage chest still has a yellow belt.

This feels like "Not a bug".

Storage chests and provider chests have same priority in providing stuff, so if passive provider is more convinient for construction, it will be used.

Why should storage chest have higher priority? In builds (for example) for red circuits you would place assembler for wires near center of 6 assemblers for red circuits. Copper wires should be inserted into passive provider (buffer chest could be used for other stuff making copper wire assembler output-blocked). Why should robots travel to storage chests far far away in base for wires if they are available on site?
On the other side, if you are standing next to storage chest full of stuff you are requesting, why should robots gather stuff from around factory if items are next to you? Same priority of passive providers and storage chests is the best solution - if items are available in two places, robots will choose closest until it is empty.

boskid wrote:This feels like "Not a bug".

Storage chests and provider chests have same priority in providing stuff, so if passive provider is more convinient for construction, it will be used..

This was definitely not the case in 0.15.
If both had the same priority, my waste disposal systems would not work, how they work.

Also it would not make any sense to have passive privider chests at all.

That works the same in 0.15.40. NaB.

There is at least one reason to have passive provider chests - if you are producing a lot of stuff (by deconstruction or using active provider), bots will try to fill storage chests trying to fill them without mixing different items in one chest. If there is no empty storage chest and no storage chest partualy-full for that type of item, robots will (as last resort) use any buffer chest that is not empty. You can use buffer chest directly for output from assembler, but you risk it will be used for other stuff effectivly blocking your output chest. Passive provider chest ensures robot wont put here any stuff (will only pickup items provided here) so your system will not self-block.

Loewchen wrote:That works the same in 0.15.40. NaB.

With respect, I disagree about this being not a bug. Per the Factorio-hosted wiki:

A requested item is first looked up in the active provider chests, then in the storage chests, then the passive provider chests. So, the active provider chests are emptied first, then the storage chests, then the passive provider chests.

Source: Logistic network - Factorio Wiki

This is the basis for my decision to file this as a bug. If the wiki is indeed incorrect, then it should be updated appropriately I'll stop regarding this as a bug. Otherwise I think this should be regarded as a bug, regardless of how it worked in previous versions.

Oh i see what you are about and where i made a mistake in my previous post.

This wiki page says about logistic bots, they behave as is said in wiki - they will first try to empty storage chest, then passive providers (tested right now in 0.16.12).
You are placing yellow belt. It is served by construction bots that behave differently.

psychogears wrote:
With respect, I disagree about this being not a bug. Per the Factorio-hosted wiki:

A requested item is first looked up in the active provider chests, then in the storage chests, then the passive provider chests. So, the active provider chests are emptied first, then the storage chests, then the passive provider chests.

This is the basis for my decision to file this as a bug. If the wiki is indeed incorrect, then it should be updated appropriately I'll stop regarding this as a bug. Otherwise I think this should be regarded as a bug, regardless of how it worked in previous versions.

The wiki is not incorrect as this regards only logistic operations, a construction job will be performed with the closest available item.

Solid copy. Thanks for the clarification, then.

Sorry to nitpick, but I just want to make sure this is not a bug. I looked at the wiki again and it doesn't specifically say this is the behavior of just the logistic bot, but it just says "bots" on the network. In fact, it says it's the logistic network that fulfills the orders--the kind of bot is not specified. Frankly, I don't see why the construction bots should prioritize differently than logistic bots.

I was wondering if this could be clarified, then. I was about to edit the wiki to reflect the current behavior but figured I should ask here first if this is indeed working as intended.

Yes, I checked the 0.15 just to be sure, but this logic of selecting storages over providers always applied only to logistic robots not construction robots.

I know the reason why it behaves as it behaves in logistics, but I'm not sure I remember the reason to make it work differently for construction robots. It might be because they should be as fast as possible when building turrets etc.

Looks like I got my answer in Discord. Case closed.

kovarex wrote:Yes, I checked the 0.15 just to be sure, but this logic of selecting storages over providers always applied only to logistic robots not construction robots.

I know the reason why it behaves as it behaves in logistics, but I'm not sure I remember the reason to make it work differently for construction robots. It might be because they should be as fast as possible when building turrets etc.

And the man himself speaks. Thanks for the clarification.

I edited the wiki for construction robots. https://wiki.factorio.com/Construction_robot#Mechanics