Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Allow logistic chests to have separate minimum and maximum fulfillment levels, so bots refill a chest to the maximum only after its contents fall to the minimum.

What?

I would like logistic chests, particularly requester chests, to support a minimum and maximum quantity for requested items instead of always trying to maintain a single target quantity.

For example, suppose a requester chest is configured with:

Minimum: 100
Maximum: 500

Logistic bots would deliver enough items to bring the chest up to 500. After that, no additional deliveries would be made as the contents are consumed. Once the quantity falls to 100 or below, the logistic network would generate a new request and bots would refill the chest back to 500.

So instead of the current behavior effectively being:
you could configure:
This could be implemented as an optional "minimum" value alongside the existing request amount, with the current request amount effectively becoming the maximum. If no minimum is specified, the chest could behave exactly as it does today.

It would essentially add hysteresis to logistic requests.

Why?

The current system encourages logistic bots to continuously make small deliveries as items are consumed. For high-throughput production, this can result in bots repeatedly carrying relatively small quantities to keep requester chests near their requested amount.

A minimum/maximum system would allow players to intentionally batch those deliveries. Bots could wait until a meaningful amount of material has been consumed, then make a larger replenishment run.

This would give players another way to optimize logistic networks, reduce unnecessary bot trips, and control how frequently particular production areas generate logistic requests.

It would also be useful anywhere you want a local buffer of materials but don't need the logistic network constantly topping that buffer off one item at a time.

Most importantly, it could be entirely optional. Existing logistic chest behavior would remain unchanged unless the player sets a minimum fulfillment value.

This behavior is already achievable with circuits.
Making all the bot trips occur at once will put extra strain on the roboports recharging them, which can cause cascading effects on the throughput of other items and construction/deconstruction. I think most players are not going to be interested in it, which makes it appropriate for a behavior that is possible, but requires a combinator to work.

this would be so much easier.

especially since it gets much more complicated when you have multiple target inputs (e.g. 1000 copper plates, 100 steel plates, 100 pipe)