Factorio Forums

In the current system, when drawing from active providers and outputting to storage chests, the input is balanced. When drawing from anything and outputting to a request/buffer, output is balanced.

I suggest that when requesting from an active provider, both input and output can balance. (it is not this way now)

Can you please specify what you mean with "input balance" and "output balance"?

valneq wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 13, 2020 7:36 pm

Can you please specify what you mean with "input balance" and "output balance"?

The items are distributed evenly to the output (Eg: each gets 10) or taken from the inputs evenly (Eg: 10 taken from each)

You mean between different chests?
Active provider chests just push their stuff out into the network, actively trying to stay empty. If you don't have enough storage space to store all that stuff, you have a problem anyways. Why would you need that stuff balanced?

valneq wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 13, 2020 10:01 pm

Why would you need that stuff balanced?

Active providers are useful for balancing train loading: the items are given to each wagon evenly, removing imbalance. It is also nice to draw from ore patched evenly, so that throughput stays relatively even across lifespan of the patch. Currently, the only way is to have active>storage>passive>requester if one wants to balance both sides, which can get pretty big.

Sorry, but I still don’t understand which problem you try to solve and what this should increase in gameplay.

I point also to the sticky posts in this board, that explains how to write good suggestions, especially the tip that a picture explains thousand words and the suggestion template.

TL;DR

When logistics request target active provider chests, both input and output should be balanced, similarly to how active provider>storage is output balanced and storage>requester is balanced.

What ?

when a requested chest takes items from the network, if it takes from active providers, it should take an equal number of items from each chest. (The items are already distributed evenly among requested chests). The end goal can be achieved by having two networks, one with active providers and storage chests, the other with storage and requesters. (Inserter transfer items from storage in the active network to storage in the requester network)

Why ?

Would remove an extra step(unnecessary complication) in the game, and add consistency to the way the logistics network works.

Thanks

I think this is not possible, because requester chest tasks are priorized to pick up nearest provider/storage/supply chest first. To avoid waiting time.

That makes some sense. If you change that, the requester needs to search for items with two algorithms: first if there is anything in a active provider, and then the current nearest first algorithm. You see that takes extra CPU.

I think if you need that you do IMHO something, that was not thought for that.

But I understand the need. What if you can switch the algorithm of requester chests with a button in the requester? Or is it possible to replace the requester with a supply?

So if you could disable provider chests with circuit...