[2.0.14] Yellow Inserter Skipping Arithmetic Combinator

[mediore_handyman]

1. What did you do?
I was setting up an automated mall on Fulgora. Reading the logistic network content via a circuit connection to an arithmetic combinator so I can multiply them all by -1 and add them to the values in my constant combinator. Then I'd decide to only pass along the values higher than 0 to my assembling machines.

2. What happened?
The machines kept trying to create yellow inserters even though I wasn't requesting them to be built. I followed the yellow inserter in the circuit wiring back to where they appeared to be passing from the roboport and through the arithmetic combinator without being set to a negative value like everything else. See the attached video

3. What did you expect to happen instead? It might be obvious to you, but do it anyway!
I expected the yellow inserters to be fed through the arithmetic combinator instead of being passed through. I wanted them to be turned negative!

4. Does it happen always, once, or sometimes?
Always!

First time reporting a bug with you all so if you need additional info let me know and I'll be happy to help! Thank you for such a fantastic game!

[Muche]

Welcome to the forum.

I believe the order of operations in your setup goes like this:
Fast inserter is selected to be crafted. Its ingredients (which contain yellow inserter) go to the requester chest. A logistic robot tries to fulfill that request. At that moment the number of yellow inserters dips below zero momentarily (e.g. there is only 1, robot tries to take 4, so there are -3 in the network). This gets reinterpeted as a request to craft them were coming from the constant combinator. The signal of yellow inserter is earlier than fast inserter, so it gets selected to be crafted. Unused requested yellow inserters return to the network, their number goes above zero and the cycle repeats.

Filtering the contents of the network to above zero fixes this instability:

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Copy blueprint

Note however, once the number of fast inserters goes above the requested 50, the cycle appears again in the form of flickering between bulk and fast inserters.

[mediore_handyman]

Your order of operations makes sense to me! Thank you for the suggestion. I'll look at it and see how you'd address the issue.

The only thing I'm confused about is that I'm requesting the contents of the logistics network, not the requests. The way the tooltip reads to me (screenshot below), it shouldn't give negative values, but maybe the contents include the requests and my original interpretation is incorrect! When I have a requester chest attempt to request an item not in the network at all (a tank for example) it's not output by the roboport, why are the yellow inserters?

11-07-2024, 07-31-15.png (406.87 KiB) Viewed 525 times

[wisnia20012]

Hmm, I think it always worked (pre 1.0) like described by @Muche meaning:
Suppose u have 2 Red Belts in logistic system, and single robot capacity is 4 (upgraded by research) THEN when u request those red belts by any means: either personal request or logistic chest u will get from the roboport: -2 (2 items present - 4 requested = -2 items in Logistic network) That is how u get negative numbers there...
In case u have 0 red belts and request some then this request won't get processed - value in logistic network stays at 0

[mediore_handyman]

Interesting...so because there are actually items in the logistics network contents it shows the item and because more are requested it shows the negative number. But when an item is requested (like a tank) that doesn't have any in the content it doesn't show it?

Shouldn't that mean the negative items should appear on the "requests" setting of the roboport?

I'm sure you're both correct and this isn't a bug, just confusing behavior that the item appearing is using slightly different logic compared with the numbers for those items. I gotta keep that in mind when dealing with logistics networks interacting with circuits.

[boskid]

I am going to move this to Gameplay help because i do not know what exactly is happening here. I see there is 1/ a low power situation happening, 2/ first assembler is wired differently than other assemblers (red wire goes to selector input instead of selector output), 3/ assemblers are not given enough time to craft anything so the items are inserted and removed over and over again.