Logistic bots should take items from chest in reverse order

[Yinan]

This post is a follow up to this post here:

Currently, inserters will take items from top to bottom and from left to right.

This is problematic, because you set the limit from bottem to top and right to left and thus any extra item you place in them will not be taken unless items are taken out at a higher rate than they're put in.
This is bad, because when you add some stuff manually that you got by tearing some parts down or so won't get taken from the chest unless the input inserter doesn't have anything to put in any more while the output inserter still takes stuff out.

Example current behaviour:
Chest is limited to 1 slot. A standard inserters puts copper cables inside a chest, another inserter takes those out of the chest.
Now you manually add 5 Stacks of cable.
The out inserter will still take from the first stack, not the last. So new items will be inserted even so you have more than 1 slot filled.

Example Suggested behavious:
Chest is limited to 1 slot. A standard inserters puts copper cables inside a chest, another inserter takes those out of the chest.
Now you manually add 5 Stacks of cable.
The out inserter will still take from the last stack, not the first. No new items will be inserted unless all other slots except the first slot are completely empy again.

As it turns out, the problems were not the inserters, but the logistic bots!
THEY take out the items from top to bottom and left to right.

So currently, bots take out items in a different order than inserters to, but they should behave just like inserters in this way.

[bobingabout]

I thought inserters took from top left too.

but yes, I agree, adding an item to the chest should place it top left first, and removing should take from bottom right first.

I have some chests in my saves with items dotted all over the place caused by the mentioned effects

[daniel34]

+1

Link to the previous post mentioned: Inserters should take items from chest in reverse order [Implemented Suggestions]

I thought inserters took from top left too.

I thought that too until I tested it and sillyfly actually considered the way it works now to be a bug.

It was changed in 0.12.4 after this Bug report/Feature request:

I'd really like inserters to grab items from the end of a chest. I limit most chests and sometimes put stuff back in the red/limited area. But as it grabs the first item from the chest, it keeps filling the chest up:

The reason most of us aren't even aware of this inserter behavior is that while we are limiting chests, we mostly only do it with passive providers that need a limit to stop it from overproducing, and the only entities that would remove items from said chests would be logistic robots. As OP suggests the robots should behave the same way as the inserters do. If I have a passive provider chest limited to 1 stack containing engine units and I have some in my inventory, I would like to be able to place them in the "red zone" and have the robots take these out first. Right now the only solution is to put them in a storage chest or logistic trash slots.

[nightingale]

Right now the only solution is to put them in a storage chest or logistic trash slots.

Although I agree that the behaviour should be changed, why don't you just use the logistic trash slots in this instance? Putting it into the "red zone" of a passive provider seems like more work (seeking out chest, opening, manually moving stacks into the red zone).

Semi related - if a requester (player/construction/chest) asks for an item, do the robots have a preference on where they take it from (passive provider vs. logistics storage chest)? Or is it distance based? Or more complicated? I could see the answer to that changing what you ideally want to do, although I'd still probably be too lazy and still use the trash slots.

[daniel34]

Right now the only solution is to put them in a storage chest or logistic trash slots.

Although I agree that the behaviour should be changed, why don't you just use the logistic trash slots in this instance? Putting it into the "red zone" of a passive provider seems like more work (seeking out chest, opening, manually moving stacks into the red zone).

I was thinking more of cases where you don't have enough logistic trash slots or logistic robots yet to empty the slots quickly enough and without using too many robots from the system.

Semi related - if a requester (player/construction/chest) asks for an item, do the robots have a preference on where they take it from (passive provider vs. logistics storage chest)? Or is it distance based? Or more complicated? I could see the answer to that changing what you ideally want to do, although I'd still probably be too lazy and still use the trash slots.

Robots will take items from chests in the following order: Active provider chest --> Storage chest --> Passive provider chest.
Example: when requesting 20 power poles they will first take all they find in storage chests, and only then take them from passive provider chests.