Options for passive and active provider chests

[DerGraue]

TL;DR

Settings for active and passive provider chests similar to requester chests.
Active provider chest: Behaves like the auto trash of the player
Passive provider chest: blocks items up to the set amount for the logistics network

What and Why?

Both chests get the same interface that is already used for requester chests for requesting items: you either pick an item and set number or you enable the option to read from the wires connected to the chest and read the info.


Active provider chest:
The active provider chest normally pushes out all items actively. But if you set a specific item with a number it will not actively push out that item to that amount and behave like a passive provider chest for those items.
Otherwise it will behave like it normally would and it will not break already existing builds of players. This is also exactly the same behavior as for the auto trash from the player.
For example you could set iron plates to 1000 and if you put iron plates into the chest the plates are only pushed out if their number exceeds 1000. But the 1000 plates are still available for the logistic network. All other items put in there are actively pushed out like always because there is no number set up for them.

There are many ways to use this but a good one would be for train unloading station with robots. If you put items from a train into passive provider chests and want robots to transport them it will result in uneven unloading for the train because robots always take from the chests with the smallest distance. So you end up with trains waiting at unloading stations and one or two of their cargo wagons are full and the other ones are already unloaded.
You can now use a active provider chest and set a certain amount of items, for example for an iron plate unloader you could set it to 4000 iron plates. If you have more than 4000 plates in one of those chests the plates are pushed out and the train can always unload completely. The 4000 plates that are not pushed out actively are still available for the requester chests in the system.


Passive provider chests:
For passive provider chests the setup is the same but the the amount is blocked for the logistics network.
So if you set 1000 iron plates in your passive provider the chest will only make iron plates available to the logistics network if there are more than 1000 plates in the chest. If no numbers are set the chest behaves like before.

This can be used for example if you want to put items from an assembly machine or smelter into the next one but you produce some excess materials.
Let's say, you want to put iron plates from a smelter directly into an assembly machine but the assembly machine isn't working all the time or you produce too many iron plates. You also want the assembly machine to have 1000 plates available. So you put the plates from the smelter into a passive provider chest and set it to 1000 plates. An inserter can grab the items all the time from the chest for the assembly machine if required but the excess plates are now available to other requester chests.

[Zavian]

The devs don't need to add these, since you can already build these using 2 chests, an inserter and a circuit connection.

Eg for your active provider have your assembler (or whatever) insert into a passive provider, then add an inserter grabbing from the passive provider and inserter into the active provider. Connect the inserter to the first chest, set it to enable if iron plates > 1000. Done. Similarly for your passive provider, use a regular chest and a passive provider in the same arrangement.

[DerGraue]

The devs don't need to add these, since you can already build these using 2 chests, an inserter and a circuit connection.

I understand and know that you can build it like that. That's how I am doing this right now.
This allows for more elegant solutions without having to use an additional inserter and chest each time. It's basically an enhancement of the function of those chests and it's done in the same way as you can do it already for the already existing auto trash and requester chest, so it's easy to use and understand.

With your argument you can remove 50% of the game:
- You don't need steel chests, use two iron chests.
- You don't need auto trash, just dump the stuff you don't want into a chest yourself.
- You don't need a modulo operator for combinators, you could already build that with 3 other combinators before 0.15 You can go on like this endlessly.

The small things make the game more fun.

The only valid argument against this idea that I see would be if the UPS impact would be too large, but I doubt that because if the options in the chests are not used it shouldn't do anything. Building this with additional inserters and chests is probably way more CPU inefficient and very annoying to build, especially in large train unloading stations.

[wpirobotbuilder]

It sounds like the problem you're trying to solve could be done by letting a player turn off a chest's ability to provide items to bots. I don't believe this is a feature at the moment -- chests can only act as signals to a circuit network.

I like the concept of being able to control whether a provider chest is available for robots to retrieve from. This would let players do new things with chests in a circuit network, including ensure even unloading.