Please have more logistics slots

[Zaflis]

I think this is a very justified topic to have, and old thread from 2015 contains outdated opinions of the game it was back then: viewtopic.php?t=9212

We must have a point of reference to discuss so i'll show an example of my inventory for vanilla megabase (QoL mods only or changed visuals):

inventory.png (265.67 KiB) Viewed 3205 times

1. Even at the very end game you can't fully get away from carrying intermediates. Sometimes you need to craft a fluid wagon, fluid tank, an extra power pole when 100 wasn't enough and you needed that 102'nd, artillery train, wall gates, filter inserters of 2 types etc. Handcrafting is always a thing, unavoidable.

2. There's just not enough slots. The way i have it, i'd also like to request rail- & chain- signals, requester and passive provider chests, construction bots, chemical plants, lamps, circuit wires, nukes, destroyer bots... But i can't have any of that, handcrafting them all. Sometimes i visit a chest because my base does produce some of them, but it's awkward.

[GrumpyJoe]

I´d clean up a little first.
Batteries? request more turrets, as thats the only thing i can think of needing batteries. If you are handcrafting roboframes on site, you are doing something wrong
Normal inserters? so rarely used in engame, they could be crafted with your requested intermediates.

Some requests are not even at the stack limit, like medium poles and assembling machines, which contradicts your point of needing to handcraft on site.

A personal train, filled by requester chests at a special station, can be a very powerful extension of the characters inventory (and therefor logistic slots)

Also, I don´t get why people ask for rebalance stuff (as this is no new item or entity), when there are mods for it.
Logistic slots are QoL in my opinion.
Your are not even one of those purists that want it vanilla and vanilla only, because reasons...

[Zaflis]

I did see there are couple things i can clean, such as red belts, flame ammo is not as vital as nukes, but that's about it. The list of needs would still be very long. I removed batteries from requests in 2 occasions but i always needed them again. I forgot why that is. Also yellow inserters keep up well with beaconed productivity-3 furnaces (and many other situations, some products take even a minute to make) still, at least on the outputting side. 3 items per swing remember.

I may not be purist, but mod that adds more logistics slots is slightly more than QoL. The intent is to improve vanilla experience.

[GrumpyJoe]

https://wiki.factorio.com/Battery
goes into
-laser turret
-personal battery
-personal roboport
-flying robot frame
-accumulator
and i cant think of any reason why you would need to handcraft any of these away from the base, except turrets

I understand that its not about single items, fitting everything needed into that logistic box is quite a challenge and thats what i like about it.
What i usually do, when playing without mods that give more slots is, i keep at least one slot free, and setup the rest with my MUST ABSOLUTELY NEED THESE AT ALL TIMES. And then I keep switching items in and out at the last slot.
But there cant be enough room to get everything, so where to draw the line?
"Improving vanilla experience" is QoL to me, but thats opinions, we might disagree.

One thing i forgot:
setup trash slots in a way that you just run over iron/gear/copper/circuit belts holding F, and autotrash the rest.
As much as it could help carrying around intermediates, ive never seen anyone request them, at least not for the purpose of handcrafting things on site in late game.
For that reason, i doubt its going to make it into vanilla

[Zavian]

https://wiki.factorio.com/Battery
goes into
-laser turret
-personal battery
-personal roboport
-flying robot frame
-accumulator
and i cant think of any reason why you would need to handcraft any of these away from the base, except turrets

I understand that its not about single items, fitting everything needed into that logistic box is quite a challenge and thats what i like about it.
What i usually do, when playing without mods that give more slots is, i keep at least one slot free, and setup the rest with my MUST ABSOLUTELY NEED THESE AT ALL TIMES. And then I keep switching items in and out at the last slot.
But there cant be enough room to get everything, so where to draw the line?
"Improving vanilla experience" is QoL to me, but thats opinions, we might disagree.

One thing i forgot:
setup trash slots in a way that you just run over iron/gear/copper/circuit belts holding F, and autotrash the rest.
As much as it could help carrying around intermediates, ive never seen anyone request them, at least not for the purpose of handcrafting things on site in late game.
For that reason, i doubt its going to make it into vanilla

I agree he could drop the batteries. But I would replace that request with robot frames instead. (Ideally I would want to request construction + logistics bots, but that would require 2 slots, and we have a shortage of request slots. Hence request bot frames, and handcraft the actual bots. Also if you are power switching outposts based on accumulator levels, then you might want to be able to handcraft the occasional accumulator).

As for not carrying intermediates. He isn't requesting rail signals or chain signals, nor stations, nor any combinators or circuit wires. Personally I always end up requesting both signal types, and handcrafting stations plus the few circuit wires and combinators I use. I also typically hand craft tanks + underground pipes + yellow belts + yellow undergrounds + yellow splitters + logistics chests + substations simply because I often or occasionally use such things away from the base even in endgame, and there aren't enough logistics request slots for all of them. (Yes I could add some of them to the construction train, but for most of those things it is faster and easier to handcraft the few I need, than to run back to the train. The same goes if I run short of a few fast/stack inserters or power poles. More convenient to handcraft a few where I am, than to go to the train, and collect some). So I also endup requesting iron + copper + steel + green circuits + red circuits even in endgame.

Sure this is purely QOL, but then lots of suggestions are QOL. (Also lots of new players will start with vanilla. So whilst this can be fixed with mods, I think vanilla would benefit from more logistics request slots, even if it is just another couple of researches adding another 12 slots.).

[Zaflis]

But there cant be enough room to get everything, so where to draw the line?
"Improving vanilla experience" is QoL to me, but thats opinions, we might disagree.

One thing i forgot:
setup trash slots in a way that you just run over iron/gear/copper/circuit belts holding F, and autotrash the rest.
As much as it could help carrying around intermediates, ive never seen anyone request them, at least not for the purpose of handcrafting things on site in late game.
For that reason, i doubt its going to make it into vanilla

What if you need to handcraft something when you're at an outpost and then run out of something? No belts to run over or chests to loot. The point of logistics bots is to automate mundane tasks. So you don't need to always check your inventory and fill the missing stuff, that is needless micromanagement.

QoL mod to me means one that i can disable on a whim and keep on playing without any difficulty. Having slots removed would cause redoing my priorities and perhaps other logistics differences, maybe even losing some researches if i choose to re-enable it. Changing collision sizes or longer reach are invisible changes. Should i call it "pure" QoL mods, i don't know Either way i don't currently have such mod. I used to see it only in Bob's, but it overhauls too much for just that. I'd be satisfied with just 1 additional row.

[GrumpyJoe]

I´m not saying im against it. Here, i brought the everything is relative argument, i win

On a serious note, i think one additional row wont hurt the vanilla experience.

I was just making suggestions, as even experienced players with lots of forum time might overlook some possibilities, like a personal building train with locked slots etc
And newcomers might also read here and request that, without knowing what can already be done

To be honest, i was always struggling with these things too, but if anything, i´d like more inventory slots. But then again, my last pure vanilla game was just the speedrun for the 2nd to last steam achievment. I doubt i´ll get 20M green circuits, ever ...

[Serenity]

Yeah, one more row wouldn't hurt

[TheBloke]

I would really like this for later in the game. I don't like starting new games too often, rather I keep building on the same map for a long time, like right now I'm building a whole second base a long way from my first.

As a result I regularly find that 36 logistic slots just isn't enough. I have to remove items to add other ones, then later do the opposite, and this takes time every time I do it. It feels like I've spent a lot of time just adjusting things in that UI over the course of my many-hundreds-of-hours map. We can already set unlimited Auto Trash types, and ideally I'd eventually like the same for Logistic Request - or at least a lot more.

I looked for mods and found AutoTrash which adds presets, and this helps a bit, but still the preset is limited to 36 items at once.

If there's a question of game balance I would suggest locking additional slots behind late game research that add just a couple of slots at a time. I wouldn't mind spending 10s or 100s of thousands of science over time to eventually get a lot more logistic slots. Ideally with a final level of research that just makes them infinite. This would give me something more to spend my infinite research on beyond just extra mining productivity and bot speed, and it would give a very welcome and appreciated quality of life improvement.

[noob_hoarder]

I have to remove items to add other ones, then later do the opposite, and this takes time every time I do it.

I've been there too. Maybe even request "pages" (like how the hotbars are now) could help, so that we can save requested configurations, and change between them much more easily than one slot at a time...

locking additional slots behind late game research that add just a couple of slots at a time. [...] Ideally with a final level of research that just makes them infinite. This would give me something more to spend my infinite research on beyond just extra mining productivity and bot speed, and it would give a very welcome and appreciated quality of life improvement.

That's a good suggestion. Hope it gets considered and accepted.

[bobucles]

Anything short of a logistic slot for every single item in the game will be inadequate.

[Zavian]

Anything short of a logistic slot for every single item in the game will be inadequate.

I don't think we need a slot for every item in the game. When was the last time you wanted an ongoing player logistic request for copper ore, or petroleum barrels, or burner drills?

But we can now have 40 different items in our quickbar, plus 3 different ammunition types, and potentially want a few more items only occasionally, and some intermediate ingredients to handcraft other rarely used items, so having 48 or more slots would be good.

[noob_hoarder]

we can now have 40 different items in our quickbar

Only 40? Don't you mean 100?

[Zavian]

Only 40? Don't you mean 100?

In practice I only use 40 (or actually 37 + two deconstruction planners + one upgrade planner), and place blueprints in the other slots. The few items I want that don't fit in those 40 slots, I just grab from my inventory. (eg things like water pumps. Items I want occasionally but not often enough to warrant a quickbar slot). Saving the other 60 slots for blueprints is working well for me, because I can open the quickbar chooser (which displays all 100 rows), then grab the blueprint I want and place it, then just drop it when I'm finished.

So in practice for me personally, I only need requests for around 40 items for the quickbar. Obviously other people can and will use different setups, but it doesn't change the main point of my argument that since we can have 40 items displayed on screen at once in the quickbar, and might want requests for some intermediates so we can occasionally hand-craft some other items (eg iron + circuits so we can hand-craft water pumps), we should be able to setup requests for 48 or more different items.

[TheBloke]

From today's FFF (289) regarding the new Logistic/Auto Trash UI:

• "The amount of [logistic and auto trash] slots is infinite"
• and, "Every slot can specify minimum (the request), maximum or any combination. "

Superb! Merged into a single UI as we hoped, and with no limits on logistic request slots any more.

Only thing missing from my personal wishlist is logistic presets. However now the slots are infinite it will be easy for a mod to provide this. In fact I imagine Choumiko's Auto Trash mod will be expanded to support profiles with infinite slots once the new UI is released.

Really great news, and another awesome UI design from the devs.