More granular logistic chests

[sinsiliux]

Hello,
Seeing the announcement in friday facts about new logistic chest got me thinking: isn't it making some chests obsolete? While I do understand why in current system we would need that chest, I'm suggesting a completely different system for chests. Instead of having 4 (5) different logistic chests we would simply have configurable one. Each chest can be configured with 2 properties:

• Items that this chest requests
• Priority level of this chest

Items that this chests requests would be similar to what we currently have with requester chests. You can choose items that you want in this chest and add a number how much of them should be in there. One addition to this would be "anything" item (similar to circuit network) which would allow this chest to request any items (and emulate storage chest behavior, more on that later). This item limit would be respected by logistic robots only.
Priority level however would be a new thing. All logistic robots would try to satisfy highest priority level chests before then trying to satisfy lower priority chests. Moreover any logistic chest would only supply chests of higher priority level (that way we would avoid loops).

So how would this emulate current logistic chest system?

• Active provider chests would be priority 1 chests with "anything" item enabled. They accept anything you throw at them and distributed items among priority 2+ chests.
• Storage chests would be priority 2 chests with "anything" item enabled. They accept anything from priority 1 chests and distribute items among priority 3+ chests.
• Passive provider chests would not be emulated exactly. If you thing about it though passive provider chests act like storage chests except they don't accept items from logistic robots. Their main use is to store buffers of single item, so instead of what we have now I think better alternative would be priority 2 chests with only 1 item enabled. This gives a few benefits: 1. you still have ą items chests that act as a storage for that single item, so you can make sure you don't run out of those items. 2. This chest accepts any overflow of some item you want to get rid of appealing to OCDs (e.g. you have a lot of yellow belts after upgrading your iron factory to use red belts).
• Requester chests would be priority 3 chests with specific items enabled. Basically same as before.

Pros of this system:
Very OCD friendly
Allows more complicated setups than current system
Priority & item filters don't have to be limited to chests. In fact more entities could use it: cars, trains, even the player itself, etc.
Brings some challenges to using logistic robots as currently they don't provide any logistic challenge.
Less overall items.
Allow even more complicated setups by combining priorities with circuit network.

Cons of this system:
More complicated to do simple setups, however this could be at least partially solved by providing shortcuts in logistics menu with commonly used chests (e.g. those that we currently have).

Variations:
Instead of having priorities that you set for each chest, each color would represent priority, so e.g.:
Purple chests - priority 1
Red chests - priority 2
Yellow chests - priority 3
Green chests - priority 4
Blue chests - priority 5
That way the priorities would be clearer without opening chests, but we would have limited number of priorities we can assign.

[Koub]

More complex doesn't mean better. In games like Factorio, less is more.
You want a system that allows you to do the maximum things with the minimum elements.
Your system is adds too much complexity for no real benefit.

At least, that's my opinion .

[sinsiliux]

I agree that less is more, this is exactly why I'm suggesting this. It replaces active provider chest, passive provider chest, storage chest and requester chest with new generic logistic chest and one additional option that we currently don't have (chest priorities). It reduces the amount of elements we have and introduces the system which has more depth. It's similar to how smart chest/smart inserter were replaced with more robust circuit network.

[Zool]

While your idea has some interesting aspects, its probably hard to use on public multiplayer maps. To use a system of numeric prioritys, you need to have a certain plan behind it. On a public multiplayer map, people will end up making most chests maximum priority because they find their part of the factory more important then others work.

On singleplayer or when playing together with friends, it would work, but also there, it might be harder for entering players to find errors in the setup, and take longer to really understand a factory, as you basically have to click most chests to see whats going on.

[Koub]

I see your point, but :
1) This would be even more the death of colourblind people than it actually is the case with 4 chests identical in shapes, differing only by the colour
2) Even for non colourblind people, there is no need for more than the 4 types of chests presented in this FFF to achieve any goal.

[sinsiliux]

I don't think it wouldn't work public in multiplayer. While it's true that players would just use highest priority for their chests, they can essentially do the same now by simply using requester chests or even logistic slots. They currently have highest priority of all logistic items. And while it's true that this makes this system more limited in public multiplayer, I don't think it can be abused any more than the current one.

Differing by color is just one suggestion for presentation. Simple solution to this could be adding a small number in top left corner of the chest. Or maybe us/factorio developers can come up with even better solutions.

I have 2 goals which can't be achieved with current system:
I want my production chests to contain whole stock of that item. E.g. my yellow belt factory should contain all yellow belts and there shouldn't be any yellow belts in any other chests. What I currently do is use storage chests everywhere and then limit my inserters that insert yellow belts into the chest to only work if I have less than X yellow belts in my logistics network. This means those storage chests never fill up completely and since robots prefer putting yellow belts to chests that already contain yellow belts, when I put yellow belts in my logistic trash slots they're moved to yellow belts storage chest. This works fine 99.9% of time, but there's that 0.1% where it doesn't. Basically if I run out of materials to make yellow belts and use up all yellow belts, that storage chest becomes empty. Now any item could be put in that chest by logistic robots. Moreover if I use inserters to take items out of that chest onto belts, through belts those items could appear anywhere in my factory and halt my production chain.
Buffer chest solves it somewhat since I can now limit the items that appear in these chests. However if I use buffer chests for that, it means I cannot use buffer chests to create storage buffer areas for quick supply of items. Which of course wasn't possible until now, but I really like the idea.
One more thing that is not possible now is supplying car with items. For building big outposts I sometimes run out of materials and I don't have enough inventory slots, that means I have to go back to base and resupply myself which just wastes my time.