I know how/where to set the request. This question is how to arrive at the number. What factors or principles do I consider?
I am thinking about switching over to logi bots for Gleba, and it occurs to me going for a smaller number might be best? I'll use belts to get the stuff from the farms but all the sorting will be logi bots.
For a regular old mining outpost that uses bots to fill trains, how many ore do you set the requester chests to request? And why?
How do you decide how many items to request on a requester chest?
Re: How do you decide how many items to request on a requester chest?
For Gleba you are right. Setting it to small numbers (like the amount that a single logi-bot can carry, which is 4 items after researches) works better to avoid unnecessary spoilage from too many items sitting idle in chests. ^^
For other non-spoilable things I often go with a whole stack (at least for items that I need a lot of).
Most prominently it covers the flight-delays if provider/requester chests are further apart.
But in high-demand scenarios where the factory currently might not be able to produce enough of the ingredient items it sometimes also covers the situation when I want to build something immediately it can craft a couple more items because the ingredient materials are already buffered in the requester chests during times when the factory was not under such a demand pressure.
For other non-spoilable things I often go with a whole stack (at least for items that I need a lot of).
Most prominently it covers the flight-delays if provider/requester chests are further apart.
But in high-demand scenarios where the factory currently might not be able to produce enough of the ingredient items it sometimes also covers the situation when I want to build something immediately it can craft a couple more items because the ingredient materials are already buffered in the requester chests during times when the factory was not under such a demand pressure.