Overlapping Logistic Network II

[ofca]

So are we there yet?

[MeduSalem]

Well that is the best worked out suggestion on how to do overlapping networks yet.

Here are my 2 Cents:

Adding new networks

After researching "overlapping logistic networks" in Roboports there's a list of networks and adding a new network or deleting one out of the list can be done from there. There you can also specify a color/name/icon or whatever for each network to distinguish the different networks from each other. Of course every roboport displays the same list - they merely act as accesspoints to the modification window. Would make the most sense to do the management of creating/deleting/modifying of a network inside a Roboport because that's the first thing that comes to my mind.

But I wouldn't mind if there's a keyboard shortcut as well as only a button in a roboport/chest that takes you the logistic network management window so you can basically set it up wherever you feel like it.

Configuring networks

I have quite some strange feelings about an item that connects several chests to one single large chest... What if one places two chests and connects them but both are in the same network? Like a Requester Chest and a Passive Provider Chest? What happens then? Will it allow that? If not how does it determine which one is allowed to connect if there are 2 or more conflicting ones of the same network?

If that determinism problem would be solved I could live with the connecting item as long as it works by combining a maximum of 8 chests in a circle around it (like a beacon for chests). Maybe due to the chest connector they are connected through underground. Who knows all the miracles of factorio science.

So I thought about an alternative too:

I'd say have one monster chest called "Logistic Chest" that becomes available when the exchange between networks is researched and in there you can define how this Logistic Chest works for each network. For example:

• Network 1: Act as Requester
• Network 2: Act as Active Provider
• Network 3: Act as Storage
• ...

Or something like that, depending on how many Logistic Networks can exchange on the same Logistic Chest (which actually could be a staged research to allow more networks with increasing research level up to a maximum yet to discuss).

The chest could change colors accordingly to reflect all the modes it is working in simultaneously as a visual notifier... like blue-yellow-purple-red striped or something funny like that.

Of course each Logistic Chest is crafted out of 1 Active, 1 Passive, 1 Requester, 1 Storage, 1 Processing Unit or something absolutely ridiculous like that to make people suffer. But it could also be 2x2 in size then with the storage capacity of 4 chests, so 4x48 slots.

(Actually thinking about that I wouldn't even mind if this Logistic Chest would become the default logistic chest in the game that gets expanded functionality once network exchange is researched, thereby removing Active/Passive/Storage/Requester Chests from the game altogether and all existing chests in maps could be updated accordingly to match how it should act on the current default logistic network. But well dream on.)

Eventually I will live with whatever solution the devs come up with anyways. So no big concern here.

Robot Management

Reading through Marconos concerns of critical actions and having the same on some stuff I'd say there could be an additional tab next to the logistic network management window that exactly deals with that:

• A priority list in which the networks can be ordered and the robots will try to serve the networks from highest priority to lowest priority
• A robot count that can be specified in a field for each network in the list that should be maintained so they can't be drawn to serve another network.

Would pretty much do the job.