Passive Requester Chests

[ThePiachu]

TL;DR

Add an option / new chest that requests items from Storage Chests only.

What ?

It would be nice for us to either have an option on Requester Chests to only request items from Storage Chests, or have a new type of chest - Passive Requester Chest.

Why ?

I tend to build Storage Chests all over the place (usually tiled with a Roboport across my entire factory). This keeps the bots from having to fly too far to dump items they delete. However, that means I have random items all over the map!

I like keeping my factory tidy. Sometimes I delete an entire part of the factory, or a filled chest and so on and I suddenly have a lot of items floating around the network that generally won't be useful, be it stone, wire, chests, inserters, pipes or whatever.

Sure, statistically, over time, it you request such items with a Requester Chests they will *eventually* get cleaned and used up, but if you have Passive Provider Chests from your production line closer to your bot-powered mall, you won't request items from across the map ever.

Using an Active Requester Chest to put items back into some organised part of the factory also won't help if you are using Passive Provider Chests to store the same item.

Sure, being able to put a filter on a Storage Chest is very useful in mitigating this issue, BUT if you ever overfill that chest (say, due to a low demand of a given item, but a spike in the item count like deconstructing your entire starter base) you are back to having a mess in your factory!

So in order to keep our factory tidy for the time being, you can only use your Storage Chests in the heart of your mall / production area.

Ideally, we should be able to somehow request items from Storage Chests *ONLY* to be able to clean up our distributed Storage Chests.

EDIT:

I think the simplest implementation of this feature would be three toggles for the Requester Chest:

- Request items from Storage Chests (default ON)
- Request items from Passive Provider Chests (default ON)
- Request items from Buffer Chests (default OFF)

[jamiechi1]

I don't see the point of this. By default the game pulls from the Yellow chests first which basically takes care of any cleanup.

What I do that helps with this is to only place 1, or very rarely, 2 Yellow chests without limiting them to a specific item (no filters).
The ones with filters in them are placed near the source and fed to a splitter that is set to take from them first.

An example of this is to place a chest that is filtered for Coal at the beginning of the Coal belt or belts, and using a splitter to use their output first.

[ThePiachu]

If you place a requestor chest to grab items to filter them from the logistic network and put them back to passive provider chests, you will easily end up with an infinite request loop where the requester chest will request items from the passive provider if there isn't anything in the storage chests. Not an ideal situation.

If you only have 1-2 storage chests, then the bots will have to travel a far distance away when you mass deconstruct something on the periphery of a large base. Also not ideal.

With a passive requester chest you could have storage chests everywhere to make construction bots stay more distributed and not travel far after deconstructing 1 item (they can drop items off locally) and then you would have the logistic bots move 5 items at a time back to where they belong.

----

I guess one way you *could* accomplish the same is to provide items to the network via buffer chests rather than passive provider chests, and then request the excess with requester chests without enabling them to grab from buffer chests. But then you would run into the problem of other buffer chests not working elsewhere...

[FuryoftheStars]

By default the game pulls from the Yellow chests first which basically takes care of any cleanup.

This isn't exactly correct.

With logistics requests, it goes player trash and active providers (same priority, so closest first), then storage and buffer (same priority, so closest first), then finally passive.

But for construction, it's closest first regardless of chest type.

[morsk]

Buffer chests are supposed to solve this. It would be better to add missing features to buffer chests than to add a whole new chest.

[Tertius]

Yep. Distribute storage chests all around your explored area, and put buffer chests into your mall area, with filters what each chest should contain. Then items delivered as trash to all the storage chests are being sorted and consolidated back to the mall area in the buffer chests as second step. Intermediates like ore, plates or circuits could have a buffer chest or requester chest next to the facilities that are producing them, so you could inject these from the buffer chests into the output of the facility, bringing the items them back into the regular cycle of intermediate products.

In this setup, storage chests are just buffering the unsorted heap of trash items, and the real long term storage is in the buffer chests.

[FuryoftheStars]

In this setup, storage chests are just buffering the unsorted heap of trash items, and the real long term storage is in the buffer chests.

I'm not disputing anything you've said... I just wanted to comment on the irony of how the chests are named and (ideal) usages seem backwards.

[ThePiachu]

Yeah, it could be accomplished with existing chests with an option to request from Storage Chests only.

[morsk]

Yep. Distribute storage chests all around your explored area, and put buffer chests into your mall area, with filters what each chest should contain. Then items delivered as trash to all the storage chests are being sorted and consolidated back to the mall area in the buffer chests as second step. Intermediates like ore, plates or circuits could have a buffer chest or requester chest next to the facilities that are producing them, so you could inject these from the buffer chests into the output of the facility, bringing the items them back into the regular cycle of intermediate products.

In this setup, storage chests are just buffering the unsorted heap of trash items, and the real long term storage is in the buffer chests.

If you do this, you can't use buffer chests for anything else, because buffers can't draw from other buffer chests.

I like to use buffer chests at the construction areas before building, so the construction bots get their job done quickly, and don't spam me with yellow alerts for as long. It is a hassle to get the numbers into them, but mods can help with that. The real problem is they count against logistic totals. Players using the buffer as storage probably like that behavior, but I'm using it as an actual buffer and I hate it.

[Tertius]

The real problem is they count against logistic totals. Players using the buffer as storage probably like that behavior, but I'm using it as an actual buffer and I hate it.

I don't actually use the buffer chest sorting I described, because it's sorting without purpose. I just keep everything deconstructed or trash as unsorted heap in storage chests and use a few buffer chests to consolidate assorted items to places where they're expected to be picked up. Requester chests are used, if the items are to be processed with inserters and to bring deconstructed/picked up/trashed intermediate items back into the production loop, and for train fuel supply.
The loading station for my supply train requests its items with requester chests. The mall outputs its items into passive provider chests. Used up uranium fuel cells are put into active provider chests. And the currently unused and currently not needed stuff is waiting as unsorted heap in the storage chests, wherever they may be in the base.
That's probably the way how the chests were designed for in the first place. I don't care for a nice sorted warehouse - the only thing I care for are filled buffer chests, so refilling the player inventory is as fast as possible.

Material needed to expand the outskirts of the factory is brought by supply train and supplied to a local logistics network, local to the area that is about to be expanded.

If it comes to the topic of this thread, I really don't see a need for a new chest. The use case described is implemented by the buffer chest: consolidate items into a chest near to their pickup place, so access is faster. Also, items in a buffer chest are still being advertised and available for robots to pick up. They're not dead as in a requester chest, they don't need to be "put back", since they're always available. Just having a tidy storage area isn't a very strong reason to implement a new kind of chest, to be honest.

[ThePiachu]

I think the simplest implementation of this feature would be three toggles for the Requester Chest:

- Request items from Storage Chests (default ON)
- Request items from Passive Provider Chests (default ON)
- Request items from Buffer Chests (default OFF)

This way the basic behaviour remains unchanged, we don't need a new chest type and those that need the granular control can get it.

[AnimeDev]

TL;DR

A "Request only from storage chests" option for requester chests similar to the buffer chest option

What ?

Just an extra option that would make a request for the items but only if they are present in storage chests

Why ?

I think it would make cleaning up storage chests that start filling on larger networks way easier.

Lets say you have a passive provider to supply some stone if you need a bit. But at the same time when you clean some rocks you have a huge surplus, you can't clean those from the entire network with a requester chest because it would keep asking amounts from the passive provider as well. (ofc you can solve this with circuits, but it does make it alot harder, especially if you have multiple chests spread out over a large base, plus if you forgot you have it set up and would add another provider somewhere the circuit would break and you'd have infinite loop problems all over again). Especially on modded saves with 100s of items at the same time this would make it so much easier!

Thanks for the time and the great game!

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged two different ideas trying to address the same issue.

[ThePiachu]

Another problem with the current setup - Storage Chests with at least 1 of any given item have a higher priority than Storage Chests with a filter. So if you want to, say, have a Storage Chest where you return deconstructed items like Assemblers, if any other Storage Chest in the network has that item that Storage Chest would have to be filled first, wherever it is. You could mitigate it by "seeding" the Chest with the item, but then you'd have to make sure your Inserters don't take away that one last item just in case it's somewhere else in the Storage Chest network.

Not an ideal solution!

[Cerberus]

Another problem with the current setup - Storage Chests with at least 1 of any given item have a higher priority than Storage Chests with a filter. So if you want to, say, have a Storage Chest where you return deconstructed items like Assemblers, if any other Storage Chest in the network has that item that Storage Chest would have to be filled first, wherever it is. You could mitigate it by "seeding" the Chest with the item, but then you'd have to make sure your Inserters don't take away that one last item just in case it's somewhere else in the Storage Chest network.

Not an ideal solution!

I second this. I also use storage chests with filter to accomplish the feature being asked in this topic. But storage chests already containing the item are ruining it. Making storage chests with filter having greater priority over storage chests without filter but already containing the item would solve this problem a little, but not completely because it does not automatically clean up storage chests already in existance, before the storage chest with filter was added.

TL;DR

A "Request only from storage chests" option for requester chests similar to the buffer chest option

This is also not ideal. If your player character is auto-trashing stone or coal, you also want it to go straight to your requester chest instead of first storage chest and then get picked up immediately again.
What you actually want is disabling "request from passive provider chests" on your requester chest.

[Zaflis]

This will not be an issue in 2.0 when we can make robot requests to roboports. It's fine that they will carry items all the way to the central storage, but the important bit is that they arrive to the pickup location fast every time they are needed.

[ThePiachu]

This will not be an issue in 2.0 when we can make robot requests to roboports. It's fine that they will carry items all the way to the central storage, but the important bit is that they arrive to the pickup location fast every time they are needed.

Fast / smart robots won't fix the issue. You will still have random items appearing in the Storage Chests and you won't be able to put them back where they belong without messing with your logistic network.

[Zaflis]

Fast / smart robots won't fix the issue. You will still have random items appearing in the Storage Chests and you won't be able to put them back where they belong without messing with your logistic network.

What do you mean random items? Generally a central storage means something like a 10x10 grid of storage chests, couple roboports around it for faster management. If you want certain chest to contain only 1 type of item you can set filter to it.