Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Entities with logistic requests, trash slots & auto-trash logic should satisfy their request by moving items from their trash slots to their inventory.

What?

Currently, the logic is (extremely simplified version, i know there're important details not described here):

1. Should the item be trashed?
   • Yes: Move it to the trash slots. If possible, ask a robot to pick it up.
   • No: Keep in the inventory
2. Are requests satisfied?
   • Yes: Ask a robot for delivery from the nearest legal provider
   • No: Live with it

I suggest updating 2nd logic to be as follows:

• Are requests satisfied?
  • Yes: Is the missing item present in the trash slots?
    • Yes: Move it from the trash slots to the inventory. (Optionally) Cancel the pick up task
    • No: Ask a robot for delivery from the nearest legal provider
  • No: Live with it

Why?

1. This would significantly reduce delivery time for things like automated mall after automatically-created requests are canceled and re-issued with overlapping items
2. This would allow player picking up entity with configured max items limit and placing it down be not trash-slotted and re-delivered
3. See video attached

More on the topic:
Assemblers should satisfy themselves from the trash slots too.

I suggest the following changes:

1. If an item is in a trash slot (in characters inventory, requestee/buffer chest, vehicles etc.) but, is also being requested, it instantly teleports as many items from the trash slots as necessary to satisfy the request, without any need for waiting for bots
2. the same should apply to trash slots in assemblers
3. and when using ghost items in remote view to request bots move them

The above will satisfy the follow feature requests/not-a-bugs: 122575, 119825, and 56430.

A related suggestion to also use trash slots for crafting and constructing ghosts has unfortunately been rejected by developers as they don't want people to use trash slots as extra inventory space: 85255, 118702, and 99928.
Personally though, I often accidentally move something to trasy (especially when checking "trash unrequested") so this really annoys me. One way to avoid the "extra inventory" problem would be to automatically disable an inventory slot for each trash slot that is in use (i.e. number of normal inventory slots in use + used trash slots must always be less than or equal to the inventory capacity)

IsaacOscar wrote: ↑Sat Nov 23, 2024 2:38 am One way to avoid the "extra inventory" problem would be to automatically disable an inventory slot for each trash slot that is in use (i.e. number of normal inventory slots in use + used trash slots must always be less than or equal to the inventory capacity)

Strongly against this part because of how much space in my trash slots random stone & wood is occupied by. The rest of the message lines together with my original suggestion.

This might also break tank/spidertron logistics – if a builder has one empty slot, and used half a stack each of rails, signals, and power poles while also collecting 120 wood, 60 stone, and 20 coal – that would result in a negative number of free slots, effectively stopping any further construction despite the fact there's still both materials in the inventory and free space in the rtash slots.