Factorio Forums

"Active provider" is not a common english phrase. Just do a google search for it - the top results are all related to Factorio. No one understands what an "active provider chest" does until they read documentation or test it. It should be renamed.

As a bonus, we can rename "passive provider chest" to just "provider chest".

But what should the new name be? I have some ideas, but I don't think any of them are perfect. Does anyone with experience in logistics know what to call a place where items are removed but never received or stored?

My ideas:

Remover chest
Disposal chest
Transfer chest

Current name tells me exactly what it does.

None of your suggestions do the same, and having passive provider called provider is confusing as well (since it provides after all storage chests are empty)

I think the first two sentences you say are not necessary, because the same can be said about requester and provider chest.

I think once tooltip/description is provided for all items/research things will be easier to understand and names won't matter so much.

The terms ‘active provider’ and ‘passive provider’ are certainly not ideal, since chests can't actually do anything and are thereby always passive.
But it'll be quite hard to come up with a better name. The ones above aren't so great:

‘Disposal chest’ and ‘Remover chest’ both sound more like a Trash chest, i.e. one that deletes whatever you put in there. Which might be quite useful btw. considering the only way to get rid of any items is currently to put them in a regular chest and destroy it.

‘Transfer chest’ isn't much clearer, since basically any chest that is part of the logistics network can have items transfered to or from it.

I'd suggest ‘Distribution chest’, which I think implies best what the current ‘Active provider chest’ does. The ‘Passive provider chest’ could then be renamed to just ‘Provider chest’, which still sound a little more ‘passive’.

And while I agree with FishSandwich, it certainly doesn't hurt to try and name things concisely as possible.

"Distribution chest" sounds pretty good. And looking up synonyms for that, I find...

Dispenser chest

Why not merge the two provider chests in to one item and offer the old functionality via a checkbox setting on the chest interface? Then the more generic term "provider chest" can be used and concurrently it becomes apparent exactly what the chest does.

As a bonus, that approach could support more complex chest options going forward without the need to add new types of chest. It also seems reasonable in the sense that these chests are even more technically advanced than "smart" chests.

The only downside I can think of is that you would need to open the chest to view its settings, rather than being able to tell at a glance what it does.

Personally, I still haven't found a situation where I want to use an active provider chest.

When I think really deep into that, Khyron, it is possible to have only one chest for everything about logistics, it just has several "configurations". A switch between passive and active, switch between storage, provider and requester... Such things. Or a requester chest becomes suddenly a provider chest, if more than x items inside.
The problem is then a) how to see, what is this chest doing? b) how to make that setup simple and fast?
I'm sure the devs thought into that. And decided for the current.

I think distribution chest sounds really good.

ps: active providers are useful for unloading at train stations. You want to unload always as fast as possible, so your unload chests should be always empty. The other setup is, when you want to have everything in one "storage", some storage chests in the center of your factory, and not in several providers.

Okay, they might not be the perfect names for the chest, but "Active provider" and "Passive provider" make sense logically. Both types of chest can be described as Provider, they can both accurately also be described as Distribution, or Dispenser. To the network, they always provide/Distribute/Dispense items, all 3 works in this context mean the same thing. Transfer doesn't make a lot of sense(Transfering from where to where?), and Disposal would make me think that anything you put in it disapeared.

The key words here that make it make sense are "Active" and "Passive". in the realm of Logic "Active" means it does something automatically, an Active provider chest calls drones to empty it automatically, therefore it is active, and makes sense. Passive means, well, "not automatic" really, which is what it does, things arn't atomatically removed from a passive provider chest, therefore it is passive, and makes sense.

Just to note: Requester is also "Active" in that it will make robots do something, just like the Active Provider chest does. and the Storage chest is "Passive" in that it will NOT make robots do anything, just like the Passive Provider chest, both of which wait for an "Active" chest (Requester or Active provider) to give a command for things to be moved.


Having said this, I am not against renaming the names, just make sure the names also make sense. Having 2 chests, one named Provider and one named Dispenser/Distribution doesn't mean anything to me, it doesn't tell me what they do like the names Active and Passive currently do, because as I said earlier, within the realm of logic, they both mean the same thing.


If I were to name them things that would also be logical, I'd problem name them thus
Requester = Input chest (Requester is actually a pretty good name)
Storage = Storage chest (because it's perfect the way it is.)
Passive Provider = Output chest (Oposite of input)
Active provider = you know what, without using the word "Active" as a prefix, Transfer chest and Removal chest seem to be the most apropriate here.... but I still wouldn't recomend them. Input, Storage, Output and Provider are the names I'd use.

I haven't yet come to an opinion on the subject but as far as identifying what the chest does at a glance it could be done with overlays. If you switch it to storage, chest becomes yellow, switch it to requester and it turns blue . just like the car changes to the player's color when you get in.

Now that I think of it if you combine all those chests into a single "Super-Smart" Chest and then you make it so the cc and logistic networks can change the type of the chest I think that would enable some really interesting designs.

I think its better to have the chests as 4 seperate.

I dont know abiut the name change, but I will say this. It took me a long time to remember what the active and proovider chests did. I got them confused until I just remembered by color, then i remembered which was which by name.