How to make logistic robots evenly grab from chests?

[Azsorlex26]

What I've noticed happens when you have numerous passive providers in a logistic system is that the robots tend to grab from the closest chest and barely bother about the one that is a few tiles away. I have a requester to the top-left of some original chests, and these images just come to show the robots' priority:

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What I want to do is to create some sort of a system that interacts with the logistic system to tell robots to evenly prioritise chests. I had an attempt already using circuitry, but this is what I've been able to do so far:

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The contents of chest 1 (upper chest) are scanned and multiplied by 1, and turned into variable X, and vice-versa chest 2 (lower chest), except it's variable Y (both chests have the same contents, so I need the system to tell which is which):

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After that I took the signals to two deciders, which had these basic conditions:

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(If X < Y, then send the red signal, otherwise if Y < X, then send blue (was using this to identify which chest contained less)

After that I was thinking I could send the signals of the output to somewhere else (maybe another decider or a roboport (idk...)) and then the robots would prioritise the chests. This is the stage where I got lost, and decided I needed help. If anyone knows how to do this (or if it's even possible), please tell. I'm not the best with Factoio circuitry, so help on this topic would be much appreciated . I would also possibly like examples of this on a greater scale (such as 5, 10, 20 etc).

[Frightning]

afaik, it's not, and is honestly slightly annoying. They however, automatically fill requestors uniformly, which is nice as it helps ensure that your materials are spread evenly to the things demanding them in case of material shortage.

[Azsorlex26]

afaik, it's not, and is honestly slightly annoying. They however, automatically fill requestors uniformly, which is nice as it helps ensure that your materials are spread evenly to the things demanding them in case of material shortage.

Damn. Shame to hear that. I suppose I could work with this somehow. Thanks.

[Mauslag PIngman]

I had a problem where I was making lots of conveyor but almost no inserters because all the gears were going into the conveyor box.

Another problem is that even though the robots can carry four items, they often pick up just one at a time and fly back and forth wasting time. Is there no way to tell them to take full loads only? If they concentrated on full loads, they'd wouldn't be spending all their time going back and forth and maybe they'd actually hit some of the other boxes.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Bots are designed to work efficiently with their own travel time, not balance of chests. The only time I can think this would be an issue is if say you had a train unloading into passive providers but because they prioritise the closest chest the other five don't contribute to train unloading time. If all the chests are being loaded from the same source you shouldn't care which chest the bots use because then that one will be filled up again. But this is easily worked around.

Other situation might be if one chest is full and the other has 1 item in it. Rather than a full stack, a bot picks up the 1 item. However other bots would be dispatched to pick up the rest so this is fringe case, would only happen infrequently and doesn't have a big impact as it only ties up one bot.

Otherwise it's best just to let the robots do their thing. Similar to the "control items going into inserter so it doesn't keep stopping" thing, it is already running efficiently, trying to mess with it in this sense isn't going to solve anything.

[Frightning]

I had a problem where I was making lots of conveyor but almost no inserters because all the gears were going into the conveyor box.

Another problem is that even though the robots can carry four items, they often pick up just one at a time and fly back and forth wasting time. Is there no way to tell them to take full loads only? If they concentrated on full loads, they'd wouldn't be spending all their time going back and forth and maybe they'd actually hit some of the other boxes.

What you described should not be happening if both assembly machines are being fed from separate Requestor chests requesting gears. Bots load requestor chests within their network uniformly, so you should be seeing 1-to-1 2xTransport belt to Inserter ratio (since both recipes use 1 Iron gear wheel).

[Deadly-Bagel]

He won't be seeing that behaviour if one chest consumes more than the total supply.

eg iron gear wheels being fed to assemblers, belts, etc that use a lot, the moment a gear is inserted the chest will be empty again = bots give it same priority as other empty chests.

When the supply is slower than the travel time of the robots, it's likely one chest will see way more than any others.

Pretty sure this is how it works anyway.

[Frightning]

He won't be seeing that behaviour if one chest consumes more than the total supply.

eg iron gear wheels being fed to assemblers, belts, etc that use a lot, the moment a gear is inserted the chest will be empty again = bots give it same priority as other empty chests.

When the supply is slower than the travel time of the robots, it's likely one chest will see way more than any others.

Pretty sure this is how it works anyway.

No actually, the bots fill all Requestor chests that are requesting the same item uniformly, now of both assemblers are drawing from the same chest, then that's a matter of inserter priority, which I suspect may be what's going on here.