TL;DR
Logistic requests persist and are always active. I think there is a use for a logistic request that is fulfilled one time and then deactivates.What?
The more I think about it, the more I realise that there are two categories of things that you request through the logistic request feature.Those that you always want to have supplied, e.g. belts, inserters etc. and those that you want once for a specific activity.
The specific activity requests might be things like setting up a new outpost, importing some artillery turrets to Gleba - that sort of thing.
The "trash unrequested" feature comes close to what I think would be useful, but you still need to remember to turn the request off once it has been fulfilled.
I can see some complexities in terms of removing items before the request has been fully satisified, but it feels like Factorio already keeps track of this to some degree? e.g. if I make a logistic request for some items, then once bots have been assigned, they will still deliver the items even if I remove the request.
Why?
I can see numerous use cases for this feature.- I think this will help when building space platforms. The way the auto request for construction flag works is pretty much a one-time request. However, if you need an amount smaller than one rocket capacity, you need to set up a request with a custom minimum payload. If you have already placed a ghost, then the items get built and requested again from the surface. With a one-time request, this hassle would go away.
Ideally, the auto construction requests wouldn't be special-cased. It would just create a one-time request and you could edit the minimum payload there instead of creating a whole separate request.
- If you're requesting a some items from a nearby chest, then it's not a large cost to trash them and put them back into storage.
With Space Age logistics, the cost is much higher - both in time taken and resources. Rockets become very cheap in the late game, but if you're requesting something from one planet to another then the lead time is typically several minutes and it might take multiple rockets to transfer them. There is also no automated way of sending them back to the original location other than setting up new rocket launches.
The incident that got me thinking about this and prompted the thread is that I requested some railgun turrets to Vulcanus to kill a big demolisher. I forgot to turn off the request after I took the turrets from the logistics network into my personal inventory. I then ended up delivering another set of turrets from Aquilo to Vulcanus that have no use now.
Everything becomes cheap eventually in Factorio, but it feels odd to have to remember to turn these types of requests off to avoid oversupply.
