Right now, the problem
Right now, here is what happens when deconstructing besides a buffer chest that contains 50 belts out of its (Min 50)(Max 100) request. The main problem with this is that the storage chest might be far! Buffer chests are meant to act as buffer to make things go smoother. But think of when you move a big chunk of your base.
- your 1k belts go to the storage chest that is super far (because it already contains belts or because it has a filter)
- robots grab belts from the closer buffer chest which only has 200 because you don't want each buffer chest to contain 4k
- once it's empty, it grabs from whatever buffer/storage is closest, which may be far again.
The conclusion? It feels mostly useless to try to spread items around the base for easier access since when it matters most (when doing big constructions), they barely make things faster.
Suggestion
I believe buffer chests, when their content is between their minimum and maximum requests, should be treated as storage chests that only accept those requested content. This way, deconstructing or other activities near a buffer chest would still use it if it's not full.
Priority wise, I think it should be the same as a Storage chest with a filter. However, to be of any use, the robots must pick the closest buffer chest when there are multiple for the same item, which different from the often used strategy of "the first chest that was built is higher priority".
So in my base example, lets say the buffer chest is setup to 200/infinite. The 1k belts would be placed in the nearby buffer chest. And when rebuilding they would likely all be grabbed from the buffer chest since it's so close.
This would encourage trying to optimize the storage with some buffer chests for common things spread around the base, which right now, feels mostly pointless to do. (Altho I haven't made a megabase yet, I would assume they are more affected by this, but the scale of things might balance it out)
Past suggestion
There was an identical proposal in the past, but it was rejected. I'm reviving this because buffer chest now have a minimum and maximum, as the proposal asked, but what happens when the chest is between the minimum and maximum doesn't match and feels lacking.
viewtopic.php?f=71&t=98780&p=547864&hil ... um#p547864
Modding
Can such a thing be modded? I haven't made mods, but I did look into it a little. It felt that logistic stuff isn't easily tweakable from mods, but I may be wrong.