[0.18.25] Peculiar Logistics Behaviour

[Bobins]

Hi Devs,

I've tried as best I can to follow your Bug Reporting guidelines; I've searched and not found any topics on this issue - It may not be a bug but just unintended behavior, causing the issues. I've re-created the situation as best I can, on a small scale for you within "Sandbox Mode" and attached the save file.

• Ive noticed some peculiar logistics behaviour recently within my factory... with the root cause appearing to be the way Buffer chests & Logistical availability work...
  
  The situation that prompted my limited investigation within my factory was that my “Defence Line Construction/Ammo Resupply” train wasn't being fed with any Lamps... the home station for this train is fed by a 'Blue Requester' chest... and I had a logistic request of 100 lamps to this chest, however the chest wasn't being supplied.
  
  Whilst trying to query why no lamps where being supplied I checked the chest, the item was highlighted Yellow (showing the request was being sent to the logistic network), it also showed 444 lamps being available in the logistic network, but none en-route, and satisfaction of Zero...
  
  I went back to the area of my factory creating the lamps to check the limits I had set; the inserters had been set to only empty the assemblers when lamps in the Logistic network were below 200... which was the reason production had stopped. But where were the 444 lamps hiding?
  
  I increased the limit on the inserters at my assemblers to see where the lamps where going, to try and find the 444 that were showing as available in the network, as I had already checked all my normal 'Yellow Storage chests' and none of them had any lamps stored.
  
  After increasing the limits on the assemblers inserters to 1.5k, production began again & sure enough logistic bots started taking lamps to the Train mentioned above, but this still left me wondering where the 444 lamps already in the logistic network happened to be...
  
  I followed the logistics bots that went in a different direction to my Train resupply request... They were all headed in the same direction and happened to be feeding 'Green Buffer chests' that I had used a long time prior, whilst creating an early defence line.
  
  From my limited investigation it appears that Buffer chest content counts towards total logistic network content, so affects limits set on inserters at assemblers using the Logistics network, but the Buffer chests seem to only be accessible to Construction Bots & Personal Logistics requests... Ultimately resulting in this stall in supply that I've experienced.

[Bobins]

My apologies, I've just noticed the work-around you've implemented at some stage to this issue...

That being the 'check-box' to allow requesting from Buffer chests... I've not deleted though as this issue still seems to impact upon the circuit network limits at the assemblers. Potentially a settable option at this point to either count or ignore the buffers would prevent this kind of issue?

Please delete if inappropriate, I definitely don't mean to waste your precious time, keep up the Awesome work

Much Love Bobs

[Impatient]

Hm, ... thinking about this, what you are suggesting is an option (eg checkbox) on a buffer chest, that sets if its contents should count towards the contents of the log net, but still be accessible to construction- (and logi-bots?).

I think you should make this a feature request, so we can discuss it there. Because this might have some interesting applications. But it needs time and place to think it through and discuss it.

[Impatient]

Or start discussing it in the general discussions, before filing a well thought out feature request.

[Bobins]

Hi Impatient

You're quite rite; once I noticed that the issue I was feeding back - I.e the requester chests not having their request fulfilled - had already been resolved in the past with a small 'check box' workaround on the 'Blue Requester chests'... I've apologized in case I've inadvertently wasted Devs time, but only left this post in-place as it still causes issues on the input side of the logistics logic.

It's no doubt an issue that, with any changes, will have an impact on the game and deserves some thought... Not really from a players perspective but the Devs, in my mind...

My personal opinion is that the logistics logic used at the assemblers should result in inserters outputting crafted items to be available by the complete network and requester chests by default, otherwise situations like I've experienced where production stops can occur. But I've a feeling this is a much bigger "kettle of fish" than it appears...

Bobs

[Impatient]

My posts were no criticism but on the contrary. I think this might be an interesting idea to explore.

[robot256]

I don't think you can exclude buffer chests from network contents altogether, because half the users of network still have access to request them. What you really want is two numbers on every network contents list: quantity in storage+providers, and quantity in those plus buffers. Then you would have to select which number to use when setting logistic connection conditions and when connecting roboports to a circuit network.

This would lead to some interesting abilities, like being able to display total available for construction while making assembly continue automatically until buffer requests are met. But it might be more complexity than the devs want to add, because it can be solved simply by adding up your buffer requests and setting the production target higher.

Something like an "Include contents of buffer chests" checkbox, mirroring the "request from buffer chests" option on chests, so that the default behavior only shows what is available for every requester.

[Rseding91]

Thanks for the report. As you've found; that's all working as intended and if you want requester chests to pull from buffer chests there's a checkbox for that.