Cleanly stopping delivery of items to a station

[TokMor]

This mod is amazing but I am having difficulty finding a way to disable deliveries to an area when an output condition is met.

For example, I turn copper plate into copper wire at a station, but I want it to stop requesting more copper when enough copper wire is already sitting in the output station.

I tried disabling the input station via circuit network, but that can cause problems if a delivery is already en route to the station because the train will have the copper plate stuck on it then.

It would be great if there was a signal that could be sent to the LTN input that prevented new deliveries to be scheduled to it, so that existing deliveries could still complete and not clog up the system.

Since something like that does not presently appear to exist, how are people currently limiting output of stations to less than completely filling up the output chests?

[Optera]

Stop feeding plates to assemblers allowing them to pile up in the buffer chests of the station requsting copper plates.
Once it holds more plates than Request Threshold it will no longer request plates.

[TokMor]

That works, but I wouldn't really call it clean. It just stacks up a bunch of inventory that could be used elsewhere.

[Optera]

What would you call clean?
Even very specialized designs where there's always a train queued behind the current un/loading one benefit from buffers to ensure production continues while one train leaves and the next enters the station.
The only valid reason to not buffer from/to trains I can think of is XTerminators UPS optimized multi server project.

[TokMor]

In my mind clean means there is only an input buffer when production needs to happen. Otherwise there is only an output buffer. If you have enough output stored then you don't need any input. If output drops below the threshold then input will be scheduled and production will resume.

I think the cleanest way to accomplish this would be to add a signal type of "disable deliveries" and LTN will only schedule deliveries to stations where this signal is not present or 0. Essentially it would be like turning off the station, except that it won't disrupt a delivery that is already in process.

[jodokus31]

If you want to achieve this, its possible to "calculate" the input request amounts based on the output.
F.e. copper -> copper wire

if you have 1000 copperwire in output station, but want 10000 total
then you can request -4500 copper.

if you have 5000 copperwire
you request -2500 copper.

if you have 9000 copperwire
you request -500 copper

so basically: (max amount - actual amount) / -2

This is of course not very easy to setup, esp. if you have multiple inputs. And you have to consider the thresholds (-> f.e. -500 doesnt request, if request threshold is 1000)

In my opinion, these kind of buffers are not worth to try to avoid them. Its a static amount per station which is usually nothing compared to overall production. It only gets dicey, if you request high value items like modules or satellites.

And be sure to limit the output station chests, that they only accept max amount. Either per wire or per chest limitation