Larger chests / Warehouse (w/ reserved slots)

[MadZuri]

A warehouse would be a 2x2 building with inventory slots you can set like a cargo train. Advances in the tech tree would unlock a 'smart warehouse' for use in red/green logistics, and 'logistic warehouse' -- equivalent to the logistics storage chest that bots can move items in and out of.

Yes, currently you can just use a car for the building size with shared inventory, but I would really enjoy using a set building. I could have smart inserters taking in and out of a single storage space to a single assembly machine, logic circuits would be greatly enhanced... the possibilities are endless. I could have 2 parallel rail lines with unsynchronized trains using max inserter stack bonus without belts, bots, or long handed inserters. See what I'm getting at here? I don't even care if they have more storage that a steel chest, but it would make sense that they have at least as much storage as the car I would normally place there.

I searched for a while for this but didn't find anything. I'd appreciate some feedback, thanks.

[ssilk]

Hm. We had already some discussions into that direction.

Most useful, about warehouse/storehouse:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =Warehouse

I think the suggestion there is equal, to this one, but your target is different.

What do you think? I think it doesn't matter, a warehouse as described here and there could be used in one or the other way.



Btw, a bit off topic: I suggested in that thread a silo. That suggestion leads us directly to suggestions about hopper, funnel, horn or whatever:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... lit=Hopper

And there are some mods, already implementing that:
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=5973
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=4715

[MadZuri]

I read all the threads linked, and the closest thing to what I had in mind was a comment by BurnHard in the first link. I'm not really interested in direct belt-to-chest systems. Thanks for the input, glad to know something I thought was a good idea was at least casually mentioned in the past. Maybe warehouse was a bad name for it? A physically larger chest with reservable slots is what I'm looking for. Like I mentioned earlier, I could just use a car and have the same effect, but I would rather it be a building and have it parallel the existing research path. Item filtering would be ideal as well.

[ssilk]

I changed the topic (if not correct, change it yourself!)

And afaik there is one of the big mods, which has such a big chest anywhere. The advanced search (here right on top) will find it for you.

[MadZuri]

I have done a bit of research on this, and asked a handful of modders to do this. The thing I am most interested in, reserving inventory space in a chest like a train, is impossible to mod. The other things are easy. The reservation mechanic is unique to trains and toolbars and there is no hook to allow that to be applied to anything else.

[Leosmellsgood]

A warehouse would be a 2x2 building with inventory slots you can set like a cargo train. Advances in the tech tree would unlock a 'smart warehouse' for use in red/green logistics, and 'logistic warehouse' -- equivalent to the logistics storage chest that bots can move items in and out of.

Yes, currently you can just use a car for the building size with shared inventory, but I would really enjoy using a set building. I could have smart inserters taking in and out of a single storage space to a single assembly machine, logic circuits would be greatly enhanced... the possibilities are endless. I could have 2 parallel rail lines with unsynchronized trains using max inserter stack bonus without belts, bots, or long handed inserters. See what I'm getting at here? I don't even care if they have more storage that a steel chest, but it would make sense that they have at least as much storage as the car I would normally place there.

I searched for a while for this but didn't find anything. I'd appreciate some feedback, thanks.

Great idea.

[Factoruser]

I'd say the "warehouse" should be 3x3 in size, having 9 "super slots" each taking 50 times the amount of items, requiring many iron plates, gears, circuits and steel plates to create and needs to be powered.

Perhaps it could be even bigger or connectable like wall tiles and gets treated like one building then.

Maybe it has an entrace and exit for fast transport belts and can fill/empty itself automatically and superfast...

It should at least provide slightly more space than single steel chests and require more material than chests and some fast inserters/transport belts.

[bobingabout]

in short... a Big smart chest. (smart chests can have reserved slots)

[orzelek]

in short... a Big smart chest. (smart chests can have reserved slots)

I'm pretty sure I seen a mod with those - would need a nice graphics tho and some renaming

[MadZuri]

in short... a Big smart chest. (smart chests can have reserved slots)

That is a dirty lie. You can't reserve slots in a smart chest. I freaked out for a moment with the thought that I missed that detail for ... however long I've been playing. So, I checked, and NOPE, you can't reserve slots in a smart chest. You can only reserve slots in trains and toolbars. You can't transfer that behavior over to chests. That's all I want tho. I can make my own mod to make them physically bigger or have bigger inventory. It isn't possible to mod that behavior. If you can do that, please do, and prove me wrong.

[ssilk]

That is a dirty lie.

Please temper your emotions. Factorio is a very comlpex game. I would never assume purpose, if someone mixes up details in this game. (I mix things up all the time.)

[JamesOFarrell]

So, i tried to write you a mod for this because I am sick in bed and wanted something interesting to do. I got most of the way there but found I could not place wagons on rail with game.createentity. Oh well. Here is a screenshot of it in action



That ugly half smart chest is a 2x2 filtered chest. Works just as you would expect, here is a copy of the mod if anyone wants to have a play with the idea or wants to try and clean it up and release it. If you want to see them in action place a "filtered-rail" then put a "filtered-chest" on it. If you want to see the game error out put down the "filtered-proxy".

FilteredChest_0.0.1.zip

v0.0.1

(17.95 KiB) Downloaded 224 times

[MadZuri]

You win a billion internet cookies for that. That was what I was expecting one would have to do to get it to work, but I was trying to work around using vehicles so that bots could place and remove these items. Thank you very much for spending time on this. I'll give it a test and muck around with the code, but not on my main base that I stream from.

I apologize for losing it a bit at bobingabout. I was in error for assuming ill intent.

Edit... wait a second, energy-pipe-distribution? It's a power pole? No... the a[pipe] order makes me think of a pump. That is super weird.

[MadZuri]

Just did some testing. You can place normal rail on top of it without a problem, but anything else you can't. The rail doesn't lock to grid and is invisible. Bots can place the rail but not the chest. If you mine the chest you get back the proxy and the rail disappears. If you destroy the chest, it leaves behind a medium wreckage but the rail is unaffected. This is such a strange hack, I don't know what to make of it. It's getting late and I should head to bed. I might have time to investigate further after finals are over. This is absolutely fascinating. I do wish this was just a part of vanilla without such an ingenious twisting of the code, so my "idea and suggestion" still stands as is.

If this was a proper mod I would suggest a lock-to-grid, some silly texture for the rail (gray noise would work fine), logistic upgrades, things like that... but as it is, gives me something to play with and thank you again for figuring it out.

edit: also, you can place the rail anywhere, but can't mine it. If there is something in the way, you can't place the chest. If you destroy the rail through damage the game crashes.

[Peter34]

One huge benefit of a larger chest is simply that it'll have more "surface area".

Currently, in-game chests always take up a 1x1 tile foot print, which means you can only touch it with 4 Inserters, one from top, one from bottom, one from left, one from right.

If 2x1, 2x2, 2x3 or 3x3 chests are implemented, then you get a bigger "surface" area, so that you can have 6, 8, 10 or even 12 Inserters interacting with the larger chest at once. That opens up some interesting possibilities, quite apart from the ability to reserve slots in such chests, or the ability to move stuff into them or (especially) out of them faster than you can with a normal chest.

[MadZuri]

One huge benefit of a larger chest is simply that it'll have more "surface area".

Currently, in-game chests always take up a 1x1 tile foot print, which means you can only touch it with 4 Inserters, one from top, one from bottom, one from left, one from right.

If 2x1, 2x2, 2x3 or 3x3 chests are implemented, then you get a bigger "surface" area, so that you can have 6, 8, 10 or even 12 Inserters interacting with the larger chest at once. That opens up some interesting possibilities, quite apart from the ability to reserve slots in such chests, or the ability to move stuff into them or (especially) out of them faster than you can with a normal chest.

This is very true, but that behavior is fairly simple to mod already, and several mods include it. I do wish it was in vanilla though.

[Factoruser]

I think it'll look better and would be more interesting if warehouses are filled/emptied over a fast transport belt... although even assembling machines are filled/emptied by inserters. But this might be also OP because it would work faster than 3 fast inserters.

[ssilk]

There are mods, that implement chests filled by belts.
For example https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=7121