[Req] Trash Requester Chest. (Put trash back in prod. line)

[Bushdoctor]

Good day,

Inspired by other people's discussions, I would like to request a Trash Requester Chest.
This is a chest similar to the Requester Chest, but it can only receive items from the player's Logistic Trash Slots.
I'm not sure if this can be modded, but it would solve the issue that everybody seems to have, that of bringing trashed items
back into the production line. (The issue being that regular requester chests create a loop with provider-type chests).

Thank you.

[Bushdoctor]

I'm a bit amazed about the lack of reactions to my request. Perhaps I was mistaking when saying that many people need this option.

I'm pretty sure most of you will recognize the problem though... You've set up a provider chest to make sure you always have 200 copper and iron plates. While messing around with belts, you end up with thousands of each, so you want them to return to the production line. You set up a requester chest for that purpose that will take your trash items. The problem now, is that that setup forms a loop, where the provider chest supplies the requester chest. Hence my request for a specific Trash-Requester-Chest that ONLY takes items from the player's Logistic Trash Slots. (Again, not sure if that's even possible with mods).

I assume you guys solve this 'return-to-production-problem' in a different way. Can somebody explain how they do that please?

[hoosh]

If you have buffer chests to start you can get around this by regulating the production based on the logistic network levels. for example....

you are making red belts.

you set a requester chest before the red belt factor that requests 100 yellow belts. This pulls them from the logistic network. it first pulls from storage which is where your trash slot items end up so this meets your requirement of prioritizing reusing items.

On the yellow belt factory you set it to make sure there are 50 yellow belts on in the network.

by doing this if you keep picking up yellow belts and your trash slots take them to storage, then your yellow factory will never produce since the requester is much higher. but if you do run out of trash belts it will start producing them to meet demand.

Obviously you can adjust the numbers as needed.

Hope that helps.

[Bushdoctor]

Thank you for that description Hoosh. I think I understand what you mean, but I'm afraid that method won't work for me because ALL the moving of the involved items is done by bots, not by belts. (If I understand you correctly). Also, your method seems to depend on linked items, like yellow and red belts, which makes it almost impossible to apply to metal plates or.. coal for example..

it first pulls from storage which is where your trash slot items end up

Do you mean that Storage Chests get prioritized over Provider Chests? That might help somehow....

[Boogieman14]

Whenever I find myself with too much junk to stuff into thrash slots, I just drop an active provider and dump everything in. Eventually, everything finds its way into the network. You could also drop any other kind of chest and instantly put a deconstruction order on it so contents and chest get shuffled into the network. I don't really see your described chest as having any real advantage over these options (unless I misunderstand it completely)

[hoosh]

Robots pull from chests in a certain order.

1. Active Provider Chests
2. Storage Chests
3. Passive Provider chests

So even if it is for something in a large quantity like Iron plates it would still pull from the storage first. (yellow chests where trash is emptied to)

The issue here would arise if you have Active providers on your furnaces. This would take the plates and put them into Requester chests if needed then into storage. This would then overlap with your trash and possibly fill your storage depending on if you have a limit set.

You can stop this by putting a logistics network limit on your iron or by just putting it into passive provider chests instead of active straight out of the furnaces.

[cpeosphoros]

I also don't see the need for a modded chest for this.

Let's say I want to always have 500, and no more than 500, iron plates on my personal inventory. I want those 500 to always be filled as fast as possible, and I want the extra ones I pick up when desconstructing belts, etc, put back in the system also as fast as possible. So I set my logistic request and trash slots both for 500 plates.

I have a passive chest just out my furnace area, with an inserter pulling items into it from the belt. Let's say I'll not setup any limits on this chest, so it will hold 4.8k plates.

Then, just down that same belt, I have a requester chest, set to pull 200 iron plates from the network. This chest have an inserter pulling items from it into the belt. The trick is, this second inserter is connected to the logistics network and set to only work if "iron plates > 5k" - which is exactly the sum between the two previously mentioned chest values.

When the setup is complete, things will work like this:

If I'm personally using too many plates, the bots will get items from the passive provider and bring them to me, very quickly. The requester part will remain idle, while the passive is replenished from the belt.

If I have a surplus of plates on me, though, the bots will trash them into storage chests around the network. The requester will pull them, while the passive is still being replenished. But, if the sum of plates in passive + requester + storage is over 5k, the requester inserter will start working, until a balance is struck.

In my experience, that balance is struck very quickly, with no overburden on the network.

[Anson]

Robots pull from chests in a certain order.

• 1. Active Provider Chests
• 2. Storage Chests
• 3. Passive Provider chests

i couldn't remember this order until i read about the purpose of the different chests and how it is related to the priorities. maybe this longer version of the above helps to remember (or "reconstruct" when forgotten) ...

priorities for emptying chests :

• 1. active providers are meant to be actively emptied almost unconditionally, thus highest priority.
• 2. storage chests are for temporary storage, only meant to hold items that get into the system somehow until they are needed somewhere, and should be emptied as soon as possible (after the "clear immediately" active providers) to make space available for other/more items, thus have medium priority.
• 3. passive provider chests are meant to be filled with inserters, to provide requester chests and the player with "fresh items" (just made in an assembler, miner, etc) if those items are available nowhere else, thus lowest priority.
• (4. requester chests never let go of what they have (except by inserters) and thus have no priority at all)

similar logic applies to filling chests:

• 1. requester chests are explicitly requesting items, and thus highest priority
• 2. storage chests take whatever finds no other place, thus lower priority
  • 2a. storage chests which already have some item type in them get more of those items before other chests get them, thus have higher priority among storage chests
  • 2b. storage chests that are empty have next priority if there are no other chests of type 2a, to not mix up items if not necessary
  • 2c. storage chests with other item types in them have lowest priority to try and not mix too many types in one chest.
• (3. both variants of provider chests are meant to only deliver items and thus never accept items)

btw: the "network contents" (which is displayed in the gui, and also can be extracted by wire from roboports) consists of all those items which are available in the logistics network to robots (for requester chests and player inventory requests), thus it adds up active and passive provider chests and storage chests, but not requester chests.

my own setup

using the above priorities, i always have used a setup like this, which is far from optimum, but easy to build :

• assembler -> inserter -> storage chest -> inserter -> assember

the assemblers produce items, eg yellow belts in the first one, and red belts in the second one.
the storage chest acts as buffer, to provide me with those items (eg yellow belts), and also to accept such items from active providers and trash slots
the storage chest and the two inserters are connected by wire and the inserters have circuit conditions set for the desired item type: on the first inserter the threshold limits the amount of items below which more items are inserted into the chest (activate if items < N), and on the second inserter the threshold takes care of leaving items in the chest (activate if items < M, for rule 2a above).

with normal usage, this setup works well, but there are lots of cases when something needs to be corrected and adjusted, eg when too many items are requested at the same time the chest might become empty and rule 2b can cause other item types to be inserted. when there are no empty storage chests, other items can be added to this chest (rule 2c). when the chest gets full (by emptying too much in trash slots) items can go to other storage chests. and many more problems.

in this case (and maybe for a few other purposes) i would like to have a storage chest with a filter slot, to guarantee what is currently only achieved most of the time by the above priorities.

although the setup by cpeosphoros might look a bit more complicated at first, it probably is much more stable, much safer, and a lot more universally usable (eg for inserting ore back onto belts) than my setup. I'll immediately go and check it out when I start factorio the next time :-)
btw: since requester chests are not included in the count of "network items", his description has to be modified a bit, but i think it will only become a bit simpler when subtracting the requester contents from everything: setup with a provider of eg 4800 capacity, have a requester with any capacity, and compare the amount of items in the network (without requester chest) with this same number 4800 (instead of 4800+requester chest).