How do bots decide which storage chest to use?

[trqwe]

So I have two train inputs for my base, one in the North and one in the South.

When my trains containing stone come in from the South, it feeds to an active provider chest. I have several storage chests a few tiles from the active provider chests.

However instead of using those storage chests nearby, the bots decide to use the storage chests way up to the north 100% of the time.

So clearly it's not even random how bots decide on storage chests, but they're not selected in any rational way.

Is this working as intended? As is, storage chests feel completely useless.

[vanatteveldt]

One thing I know is that bots prefer to use a chest that already contains the material. So to increase Tha chance of using the nearby chests, remove the stone from the other chests and put some stone in the chest you want them to use.

I hardly use storage chests for anything other than junk. Why not just unload into a passive provider and let the bots bring it directly to the final destination when needed?

[Nexela]

Bots will try and put the items into the closest chest that already contains said item. But I can never figure out closest to what

[British_Petroleum]

you can setup a requester chest next to a storage chest with a circuit wire between the inserter and the storage chest, to make sure the storage chest always has at least 1 of a particular item in the storage chest, so bots will favour storing that item here

[trqwe]

One thing I know is that bots prefer to use a chest that already contains the material. So to increase Tha chance of using the nearby chests, remove the stone from the other chests and put some stone in the chest you want them to use.

I hardly use storage chests for anything other than junk. Why not just unload into a passive provider and let the bots bring it directly to the final destination when needed?

Since stone bricks only came from the South entrance, there were no Stone bricks originally in the North. So that still doesn't explain what happened.

[vanatteveldt]

Is it possible that you had bricks in your inventory and trashed them earlier? Or bots deconstructed a belt or building with bricks on it?

[apoptosis]

If only once a brick is sent to the north (other areas are full or some other reason) then bots will continue transporting bricks there. If now the demand is mainly in the south (which makes sense as the demand is then close to the supply) mainly the bricks from the south are used. Over time this causes all bricks to be used up in the south with bricks only remaining in the north.

This is why I only make one big storage area per logistics network. So either scrap the additional storage area or split the networks.

I hope that this gets fixed in some future version.

[vanatteveldt]

It would be nice to be able to specify filters for storage chests... (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=747)

[mrvn]

If a chest has an item present then other bots will use the same chest. This I guess is to avoid the problem of having all chest containing some stone bricks and using many times the requires number of stacks because they are all half full. You might have to remove all the chests in the north with bricks in them and place new chests to get bots to stop moving bricks there.

If you want to set up a stone storage area in the south I recommend using normal chests, inserters and one / a few passive provider chests. Unload the stone to a belt, transport it to the storage area and dump it into chests there. Don't use bots for that part as they have their own ideas of what is best for you.

[vanatteveldt]

Personally I would recommend just not having the storage area. Is there any scenario in which it is really a good idea to have a big storage area (as in, bigger than the default buffers provided by the provider chests (12*N_wagons) and requester chests)?

If the answer is: to keep miners working / deplete outposts as soon as possible, I would argue either that (1) ore on the ground is a perfectly valid storage area, or (2) setup a designated storage train stop away from the rest of the factory

[MeduSalem]

When storing items they will go for the closest one that contains the same item type already and which has free space.

If there is no such chest, then they will go for a free storage chest in order in which the storage chests were first built. Yeah, ugly... especially when considering that things placed by construction robots always end up being built in random order.

That said the bots at first try to avoid mixing different items in the storage chests, but if you leave them no choice they will start to mix as well to fill up the empty slots.


When drawing from storage chests they will always go for the closest one containing the item.

[mrvn]

When storing items they will go for the closest one that contains the same item type already and which has free space.

Are you sure they don't go for the first build or first filled chest containing the same item type?

Placing a new storage chest and manually putting an item in them doesn't make bots suddenly prefer that chest, even if it is way way closer than the old chest.

[lee1026]

The main reason why I use massive storage arrays is ore in the way of key mainlines. Slap down multiple train stations, cart it off to a special area full of 1000+ storage chests, and have all of the trains empty into active chests until it is empty.

[featherwinglove]

Why not just unload into a passive provider and let the bots bring it directly to the final destination when needed?

It's a train station. See, if you unload a train into anything other than active provider chests, the unload might still be in the chests when the next train arrives, and your whole train system jams. I thought this was a no brainer since I haven't automated trains myself since- ...have I ever automated trains?

There is a way to de facto filter a chest: grab a stack of the items you want to filter into the chest and then right click on the slots you want more of those items to land, putting one slot in each square. It isn't a true filter, but it sure beats nuthin'. It should work okay if you're not demanding too much of the item you're filtering in, otherwise the bots will probably remove the singles, thus unsetting the ersatz filters.

[vanatteveldt]

Why not just unload into a passive provider and let the bots bring it directly to the final destination when needed?

It's a train station. See, if you unload a train into anything other than active provider chests, the unload might still be in the chests when the next train arrives, and your whole train system jams

Well each to his/her own of course, but in my view it is important to think of it as a process chain: your factory consumes an amount of resources per second, and your trains supply an amount of resources per second (albeit not smoothly, sometimes a lot, sometimes your waiting for a train). On aggregate, if you consume less than what you supply, the storage will eventually fill up and the system will "jam" [aka apply backpressure to whatever supplies the input]

If you consume at least what you supply, the storage on aggregate will not fill up. Of course, since trains aren't unloading all the time, you need some buffer storage to smooth the supply. But for this the provider chest provides ample buffer: since each wagon (of 40 stacks) unloads into 6 (or 12) chests, this buffer can contain 7 (or 14) full wagon-loads. So, if your trains arrive at least somewhat regularly, that should never be a problem (if your system consumes more than 14 train-loads of goods in between two trains I think the solution is probably increased supply or throughput, not increased storage...)

[featherwinglove]

Maybe it's I'm used to Bob's mods, Versepelle's Hard Storage, and Hard Crafting. So I'd wind up needing, you know, amount of iron per second for example, like say, twenty or thirty thousand ...and iron ore laden trains on a multi-ore drop off depot trying to unload iron ore into passive provider chests full of, well, everything except iron. (I've had pretty much every kind of "where the

%^&*(#^$@

is my iron?" problem you can imagine. Now, why don't I have any- ...never mind, I just had a new one.)

[vanatteveldt]

Maybe it's I'm used to Bob's mods, Versepelle's Hard Storage, and Hard Crafting. So I'd wind up needing, you know, amount of iron per second for example, like say, twenty or thirty thousand ...and iron ore laden trains on a multi-ore drop off depot trying to unload iron ore into passive provider chests full of, well, everything except iron. (I've had pretty much every kind of "where the

%^&*(#^$@

is my iron?" problem you can imagine. Now, why don't I have any- ...never mind, I just had a new one.)

A right, you use the bots for sorting out the multi-ore dropoff. That does make sense . I guess for that scenario your best bet might be to have the dropoff station be it's own logistic network, have requester chests requesting iron, copper, etc at the edge, and stack insert into passive providers in the main/smelter logistic network?

But that might be a good use case for filtered storage chests, and Kovarex apparently thought it was a good idea back in 2013 (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=747), so maybe there's hope

[mrvn]

Maybe it's I'm used to Bob's mods, Versepelle's Hard Storage, and Hard Crafting. So I'd wind up needing, you know, amount of iron per second for example, like say, twenty or thirty thousand ...and iron ore laden trains on a multi-ore drop off depot trying to unload iron ore into passive provider chests full of, well, everything except iron. (I've had pretty much every kind of "where the

%^&*(#^$@

is my iron?" problem you can imagine. Now, why don't I have any- ...never mind, I just had a new one.)

I simply used 2 (number of ores in train) train stops for unloading and filter inserters. So the Coal/Diamond train stops a "Unload Coal" and all the coal gets taken off, then it stops at "Unload Diamond" and the rest is taken care of. Problem is when you don't consume enough of e.g. diamonds they backlog and no more coal comes in. Better set an alarm for when the buffer chests are full so you can add more.

[featherwinglove]

Maybe it's I'm used to Bob's mods, Versepelle's Hard Storage, and Hard Crafting. So I'd wind up needing, you know, amount of iron per second for example, like say, twenty or thirty thousand ...and iron ore laden trains on a multi-ore drop off depot trying to unload iron ore into passive provider chests full of, well, everything except iron. (I've had pretty much every kind of "where the

%^&*(#^$@

is my iron?" problem you can imagine. Now, why don't I have any- ...never mind, I just had a new one.)

I simply used 2 (number of ores in train) train stops for unloading and filter inserters. So the Coal/Diamond train stops a "Unload Coal" and all the coal gets taken off, then it stops at "Unload Diamond" and the rest is taken care of. Problem is when you don't consume enough of e.g. diamonds they backlog and no more coal comes in. Better set an alarm for when the buffer chests are full so you can add more.

Getting diamond from yer coal patches is cheating Actually, even with coal patch diamonds enabled, I do find myself thinking that it would take a row of passive provider chests a rather long time to fill completely up with diamonds, unless you're using a hard storage mod. Once they are approaching full, probably the best way to deal with them would be to filter them at the mining outpost. If you're using that much more coal than diamonds, you'll wind up with chests of diamonds in the middle of nowhere sitting around waiting for Team Avolition to log in.

[mrvn]

Maybe it's I'm used to Bob's mods, Versepelle's Hard Storage, and Hard Crafting. So I'd wind up needing, you know, amount of iron per second for example, like say, twenty or thirty thousand ...and iron ore laden trains on a multi-ore drop off depot trying to unload iron ore into passive provider chests full of, well, everything except iron. (I've had pretty much every kind of "where the

%^&*(#^$@

is my iron?" problem you can imagine. Now, why don't I have any- ...never mind, I just had a new one.)

I simply used 2 (number of ores in train) train stops for unloading and filter inserters. So the Coal/Diamond train stops a "Unload Coal" and all the coal gets taken off, then it stops at "Unload Diamond" and the rest is taken care of. Problem is when you don't consume enough of e.g. diamonds they backlog and no more coal comes in. Better set an alarm for when the buffer chests are full so you can add more.

Getting diamond from yer coal patches is cheating Actually, even with coal patch diamonds enabled, I do find myself thinking that it would take a row of passive provider chests a rather long time to fill completely up with diamonds, unless you're using a hard storage mod. Once they are approaching full, probably the best way to deal with them would be to filter them at the mining outpost. If you're using that much more coal than diamonds, you'll wind up with chests of diamonds in the middle of nowhere sitting around waiting for Team Avolition to log in.

Problem is at the start there is no use for diamonds. Research for diamonds is a long way down. And you place one or two chests to store diamonds and everything is fine. Then some hours later the chests are full, coal stops flowing, steam engines stop and you are in a black out. Oh the fun you will have.