Active provider (purple) chests redundant in 2.0?

[shopt]

Am I missing something, or is a purple chest now just a requester chests with "trash unrequested" and no requests? Sure there's a visual difference which could contribute to understandability, but everything else in factorio seems to trend toward single items with multiple modes, and purple chests seem to be a legacy item that defies that trend.

[FruityPop]

I use them on Fulgora. It takes steel, light space material and other important stuff from the belts and pushes them to the yellow storage chests. I have multiple yellow chests set on different filters so that I can stockpile for example steel.

[Ranec1]

I think the general answer is yes. It may even have slightly higher capacity to boot.

Only downside I can think of is that the limited trash slots with mixed inputs might lead to never getting certain items out.

[BlueTemplar]

«slightly higher capacity» ?

[shopt]

I didn't even think of the higher capacity. You get regular storage slots + trash slots.

However as Ranec1 points out, there is a corner case where the trash slots fill with something that can't be stored, while something that could be stored is sitting in the regular slots.

[shopt]

I use them on Fulgora. It takes steel, light space material and other important stuff from the belts and pushes them to the yellow storage chests. I have multiple yellow chests set on different filters so that I can stockpile for example steel.

I wasn't saying the function was redundant, just that the function that used to be exclusive to the purple chest can now also be performed by the blue chest, ie. there's nothing a purple chest can do that a blue chest can't.

[FruityPop]

I use them on Fulgora. It takes steel, light space material and other important stuff from the belts and pushes them to the yellow storage chests. I have multiple yellow chests set on different filters so that I can stockpile for example steel.

I wasn't saying the function was redundant, just that the function that used to be exclusive to the purple chest can now also be performed by the blue chest, ie. there's nothing a purple chest can do that a blue chest can't.

Also just started using the purple chest to push out seeds into storage. In general, you use a purple chest when you desire the chest to remain empty. You cannot do this with a blue chest or any other chest.

[Mango]

I use them on Fulgora. It takes steel, light space material and other important stuff from the belts and pushes them to the yellow storage chests. I have multiple yellow chests set on different filters so that I can stockpile for example steel.

I wasn't saying the function was redundant, just that the function that used to be exclusive to the purple chest can now also be performed by the blue chest, ie. there's nothing a purple chest can do that a blue chest can't.

Also just started using the purple chest to push out seeds into storage. In general, you use a purple chest when you desire the chest to remain empty. You cannot do this with a blue chest or any other chest.

What shopt is referring to is a fact that you can do exactly this with the requester chest (blue) by requesting nothing and simultaneously selecting "trash unrequested".

[Kalanndok]

Active provider might have a higher priority than requester chest trash slots.

[lividlipid]

Active provider chests are visually distinct, allowing you understand their function at a glance.
(Edit: Nevermind, this was already addressed in the OP and I missed it.)

[shopt]

That's also a good point. Though I would have thought that in general trash slots would be higher priority than active providers. That will need some testing.

[jamiechi1]

Am I missing something, or is a purple chest now just a requester chests with "trash unrequested" and no requests? Sure there's a visual difference which could contribute to understandability, but everything else in factorio seems to trend toward single items with multiple modes, and purple chests seem to be a legacy item that defies that trend.

I don't use the Active Provider chests that much. I still think they are useful. On the other hand, I do not see the point of the new 'trash unrequested' thing.

[Tertius]

On the other hand, I do not see the point of the new 'trash unrequested' thing.

Two use cases:
You might have noticed logistics robots round up requests to 4. If you request 1 item, and the stack size of that item is bigger than 1, robots will deliver 4 items if they're able to carry up to 4 item due to the corresponding research. In case you need exactly the requested amount of items in the chest, no a single piece more, you can make the robots carry the surplus items away immediately, so it's always a 100% exact amount.

The other use case is if you change the set of requested items more often and it could happen the chest overflows with unrequested items and thus doesn't have enough space for the currently requested items any more. Trashing unrequested items ensures only the requested items with their corresponding amount are contained in the chest, nothing else.

[jamiechi1]

Thanks Tertius.
As for delivering to my Inventory:
I guess I have not noticed the robots delivering too much, is because for many items I just set the lower request value but don't set the max value. I do pay a lot of attention on many items and set the upper limit so have no issue with those. Also I have modded the stack sizes for most things so that might change things a bit. And I have increased my starting Inventory size to start at 140.

As for the blue requester chests, I have never seen them filling up too much so that becomes an issue.

I probably would see a bigger difference if I played 'Vanilla'. Have not done that in years.

I also never have played with what some call 'Megabases' so I don't use many Logistic bots and I don't use Construction bots at all on the main base. I usually have between 100 and 200 Logistic bots initially. The max number of bots I have used are around 666 Logistic bots. (I limit them explicitly.)

[LCStark]

On the other hand, I do not see the point of the new 'trash unrequested' thing.

One thing made me find a use for that in my playthrough. When I first landed on Gleba, I didn't really know how to build a working base with all the new recipes and mechanics, so to quickly kickstart some production I've built a small bot-based factory. Requester chests delivering nutrients to machines that needed them would either overflow with spoilage or require me to add filtered inserters with active providers to get rid of the spoiled nutrients. Trashing unrequested items made that automatic.

Another case I can think of is when you are setting the requests with circuits, which I think is the intention behind adding that feature. Now that we can set recipes with circuits, you can build small circuit-controlled factories, and if you had a supplying requester chest constantly changing what it requests, it could easily overflow like Tertius mentioned.

[Khagan]

As for delivering to my Inventory:
I guess I have not noticed the robots delivering too much, is because for many items I just set the lower request value but don't set the max value.

Only deliveries to requester chests are rounded up. Deliveries to player inventory are exact.