[16.0] Logistic buffer chests not providing to requester chest

[cbhj1]

According to https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-203 the buffer should provide its contents to both bots and requester chests, however I am unable to get them to pass goods to the requester chests.
Testing ingame and sandbox mode, I was able to get player requests and construction bot requests fulfilled, but the requester chests only received goods directly from providers, even when there were plenty of supplies in buffers.

version was 0.16 without mods

[Rseding91]

Thanks for the report. We changed them so they currently only provide to the player requesting and construction robots to prevent silly situations where robots would flow from one side of the factory to the other to fill the buffer chest then from the buffer back to the other side when low on resources.

[cbhj1]

Thanks for the response, though I feel it detracts from their potential significantly.

[mewtwoEX]

I second this complaint. The way it was outlined in the FFF made it look really useful. But since they now only allow the player to pull from them, it's much less useful.

Use case: Load from trains into logistic buffer. Let those do load leveling. Logistic buffer then loads into requester chests in the factory.

[Engimage]

A very valid report.
It is really sad that buffer chest was limited in fuctionality.

However there is an easy solution to it - buffer chests should not request items from other buffer chests.

Everything else will work as expected. A situation with bots travelling over whole factory to get items from buffer chest is expected and is just a misdesign by a player.
Logistic loop between buffer chests however is a game misdesign and can be solved easily.

[cbhj1]

Rseding91, I would consider that 'silly situation' to be a supply issue in line with the game's core gameplay and the buffer chest living up to its name.

[Griggers]

I find it sad as well that they didn't implement this feature.
I had hoped to use this as a filtered storage chest to have excess items returned to the initial production output chest. And avoid having them spread over in storage chests.
It now works for things like undergrounds where the upgrade is close by, however pipes for example are used in many more recipes where this doesn't work anymore.
This also makes it impossible to make a loading station for building trains which pretty mush makes the buffer chest in my opinion almost completely useless.

I initially thought that they would work like this:
-If requester chests are satisfied then the buffer chest starts to accept items.
-Buffer chests only take from provider/storage and active provider chests.
-If a requester chest needs something it first looks for active and then storage chests and if this fails it looks for the closest buffer or provider chest.
-If it takes from the buffer it gets loaded back following the same rules as before.

[terror_gnom]

Id say its the players fault, if he places his buffer chests far away from production^^

[Koub]

Time for a suggestion in the Ideas and Suggestion subforum I guess

[cbhj1]

posting here for others to follow for the suggestion post viewtopic.php?f=6&t=54800

[mh_]

Sorry, but I think you don't get at all why this was implemented.
If you want to provide from the buffer just put a (passive) provider chest next to it and an inserter in between.
The devs wont change the chest.

[terror_gnom]

that wont work mh_ because the bots will always work against the inserter That was the reason for the chest in the first place...

[mh_]

this works with the buffer chest.

[WIZ4]

It's a pity:(

[mh_]

Perhaps it would be a good idea to rename the buffer chest to "passive requester, passive provider or something chest"

[mh_]

It's a pity:(

It's a pity, that everything works as intended?

[_alphaBeta_]

Just passing the word in a number of places: According to this post, which links to a Reddit post, this change is not necessarily permanent.

[BlakeMW]

So it sounds like they're just trying to work out a good strategy, something like:

• Bots take items from the nearest provider chest OR buffer chest, equal priority with distance as a tiebreaker.
• Buffer chests take from the nearest provider chest but not if that would deplete the provider chest, as such requester chests near the provider chest won't be forced to resort to the far away buffer chest - essentially buffer chests would only distribute the surplus.

I can see some scenarios where that logic wouldn't be what everyone wants, for example under resource starvation all the bots would tend to go directly to the provider chest and the buffer chest would be starved out of the loop, however that would result in reduced bot flying time because a delivery from provider->buffer->requester will always be longer than provider->requester, so the buffer should only rightfully be distributing a surplus (and a buffer is only meaningful if there is surplus production anyway - which could be achieved by throttling consumption with logistic conditions so it doesn't exceed production and allows the system to maintain a buffer).