New logitic chest type: construction requester chest

[ukezi]

I would like a chest type where one can set what should be in there like a requester, but only provides to the player and construction. the reason is we have the very powerful transporting of the logistic bots and we have construction bots that only transport one item. when we do high volume construction, like laying concrete it takes for ever, while you could put a chest near the construction side that gets filled by the logistic system and the construction robots work from there.
Also for 0.14 one could make module that turns the inventory of your car/tank/train car into this chest type. so you put your construction material in the car and don't have to refill your inventory while building with robots.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Actually instead of this I would like to see construction bots carrying more than one of an item. If there is more than one of an item waiting for a construction bot and there is enough of that item in the pickup chest, the construction bot should be able to collect up to its maximum capacity then go and lay it all. This should also help to alleviate how useless construction bots feel early, especially in the personal roboport, because of their slow travel time.

Could limit it so something like it only does this for Logistic items (belts, pipes, flooring, anything on the Logistics tab) as these are typically small, light and numerous, which would also help give some "weight" to production machines because it seems a bit odd a construction bot doesn't notice any difference between placing a belt and a refinery.

[ssilk]

Yes, this has been already discussed, the solution is indeed that construction bots pick up more items.

More detailed:
A construction bot should see
- There are more items of this type to construct, than free robots plus robots that already took this item.
- There are enough items available of this type ( current stack size * free robots > items of this type / 2 ; for example)

Then it should take a full stack of this items instead only one.

[bobucles]

Honestly, just let construction bots pull directly out of requester chests and everything gets solved.

Want dedicated repair stations? Set a chest to collect 20+ repair packs.

Want construction materials? Call them in.

If it doesn't already happen, it should DEFINITELY be a vanilla thing.

[Deadly-Bagel]

All -current- problems get solved but I can guarantee you'll run into a slew of new ones.

[bobucles]

Problems

Such as.....?
Construction bots only operate at the player's behest. They can not pull out anything you don't ask them to, and if you are dumping construction materials in chests for them NOT to use, WHY is it even there?

Any intermediate structure can be simply run directly down belts or from one assembler to the next, and no bot can touch it. This is almost always the case when stepping up the inserter or belt chain and will never cause a player any realistic problems.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Construction bots also replace any destroyed entities. If you've got a requester chest for buildling an outpost or a base or something that you expect to be full because it contains exact quantities or something, but construction bots keep stealing it? Idk but I guarantee someone will have issue with it.

Actually a solution I just thought of, put storage chests down where you want to distribute your repair packs and place at least one repair pack in each one and limit the size of the chest to 2 slots. Ensure the production of repair packs is limited to just under (maybe 20) the total repair packs that would fit in those storage chests.

You must ensure two things, first of all that you have plenty of spare storage chests in general so that there is no overflow of other items, particularly while the storage chests are being filled. Secondly you would need to ensure that production of repair packs is greater than consumption (this shouldn't be hard). Also you should ensure that you don't personally request equal or more repair packs than is in any one chest in case you accidentally empty one out as then it is likely to be moved to your general storage.

What will happen is because logistics bots prefer storage chests that already contain that item, they will be delivered to your distribution chests which already contain at least one. When a chest reaches the max you have allowed, it will move on to filling other chests. Limit production to just under the max to ensure that you don't end up with overflow that would be placed in a general storage chest, which would of course then be included in the "distribution network" and mess the whole thing up. Because bots only carry 4 packs at a time, and no roboport should ever really need to repair 18,000 damage before the packs can be replenished, they will be restocked well before they're all used.

[bobucles]

Idk but I guarantee someone will have issue with it.

This is a RARE case hypothetical for a problem that isn't really a problem and it can already be solved with in game tools. Use smart inserters to do exact counts, and use normal chests if something absolutely positively MUST be outside the bot network. There is yet to be a serious answer for "who is actually going to be bothered by this?" because in every single case the bots are doing something the player has ASKED them to do!

There still isn't any real reason why expanding the construction bot network is a bad thing. If it's worth it 9 times out of 10 and only a minor inconvenience for some obscure weird scenario, then it's still a good idea.

All these half solutions and manual setups which are prone to failure can be 100% solved every time by improving requester chests.