Chests with slot filters?

[markw]

Hey guys, I'm seeing the need for having filters on each slot of a requester or buffer chest. The reason is I want to be able to transfer multiple products from chest to chest without having a free for all at the receiving end. Is this a reasonable thing to want to have? Has this idea been considered before somewhere?

[VenomousFire]

I'm pretty sure you can already do this for pretty much any inventory slot in the game by middle clicking an item in a slot. This locks that slot to only that item. This works for pretty much any inventory in the game, including your own, trains, fuel slots, and, of course, chests.

[DaveMcW]

This is bad for performance, so the game disables it for chests.

If you really want it, you can use a cargo wagon or car.

[Adamo]

I can think of cases where I have items coming into a chest through dumb inserters where I have had to use circuit conditions to limit input, but are you sure there are any cases where a logistics request/buffer chest would need this? You can't simply control the inflow using the requested number? When I've had to mix dumb and logistics input into a single chest where I needed to limit the dumb input levels, then, yes, a circuit condition is the only way I know to solve the problem.

[Koub]

[Koub] Moving this to Gameplay Help

[astroshak]

I could see this being somewhat useful if your buffer chests are holding multiple item types, simply lock in the slots that a “fully stocked” buffer chest would be using, to ensure that you get exactly only as much as you want and no more. I’ve had, and I’m sure that everyone else has had, chests requesting X items but actually had more than that X delivered.

I could really see this for Storage Chests. I tend to use Storage Chests for my mall, with the one desired item (say, Blue Inserters) locked in, and using either Network or Circuit conditions to control the Blue Inserters maker. This allows me to draw a bunch, use some, and return the rest logistically. But, when bots run out of storage space, they will be delighted to put other stuff into those Storage Chests. Locking the slots to the Blue Inserters (or whatever other item that Storage Chest is in use for) would prevent this, just as much as having extra, unfiltered Storage Chests would.

[EpicSlayer7666]

that would be useful, like when you only want 1 type of item in the chest but you have a 2 side belt and no space to split the content. it would simply make the inserter behave like it is a assembler requesting ingredients but only the permitted items of the chest filter.

in the case of Logistics, it could reserve a slot for a required item and not have the bot fill the chest with irrelevant items while reserving a number of stacks of the more important and needed item. (without having to limit the chest by hand and drop the items your self and unlock the space where you put the items manually... kind of defeat the automation of bots when you have to do that...)

[markw]

Hey guys, thx for your feedback. It made me rethink my question, which in retrospect was a little half-baked! I understand now, that having filter slots in chests wouldn't solve any of the problems I was having loading a supply wagon. I now use a chest with multiple request filters, and only one inserter with stack size 1. This prevents the inserter from "hanging" when inserting into a wagon but running out of space in the wagon.

[astroshak]

Wagons can have slots locked to specific items. Chests cannot.

What I do, when designing a train to carry multiple different items in a wagon, is use one (or more) requestor chests per item type. If, for example, I want the train to carry 4 stacks of Heat Pipe, 1 stack of N’uclear Reactors, 6 stacks of Steam Turbines, etc., I’ll have one requestor chest per item. Then stack inserters loading those chests into the train. At the other end, I’ll use Filter Stack inserters to remove the items to their own passive providers.

If you need more than 12 item types in the one wagon, you can always accept a lower loading/unloading speed by using some Long Hnaded Inserters rather than Stack or Filter Stack, but that presents some minor unloading problems, given the lack of Long Handed Filter Inserters.

[markw]

Hi @astroshak Yes! I used that pattern myself in the past. This time around, I was trying to avoid that limitation of 12 items per wagon introduced by having only one request filter per chest. I tried adding in multiple request filters per chest but then found that the inserters would a) try to load only the one item type continuously and b) hang when trying to unload more items into the wagon slot than there was space for. I was trying to then think how could this situation be alleviated, and my thinking went to having slots per chest, without really thinking how that would solve anything.

[Chiarello]

Is loading only the one item type more lucrative in the grand scheme of things? It seems so to me, unless I'm missing something.