Factorio Forums

I searched around and asked in discord but couldn't figure out if this is a bug or intended. When in the logistics request menu for a space station, you can choose a planet to filter the request from so for instance, you can only get iron plates from vulcanis.

When you right click the filter at the bottom of this interface:
it appears to clear the planet filter, but upon editing the specific request again, the planet filter returns and is set again. So which of the two cases is correct:

1) You can not make an orbital logistic request without a planet filter, and it's a bug that you can right-click-clear the planet filter.
2) You can make orbital logistic requests that will pull from any planet, and it's a bug that clearing the filter doesn't stick.

I'm assuming it's case #1, but I thought I'd check just in case. Either way, I feel like there should be some more clarification on that tooltip with this regard.

I also ran into this issue, where clearing the import planet filter does not stick. My example was piercing ammo, I'm able to make it from excess on Fulgora so I want to also provide that to orbiting space platforms, but if I clear the filter, it automatically goes back to Nauvis.

This can be worked around by setting different filter group for the same item with a different planet filter, but really there should be an "any" option for planet filters since that would be more intuitive, or at least prevent a null planet selection from being possible if that's the intended behavior.

Ref 126565 Spaceship cannot clear planet filter on logistic requests.
Also see Allow option to import item from more than 1 planet to platform without duplicating the request.

Thanks for the report. This was specifically implemented to always require planet to be set to the point there are safeguards to not allow having empty importFrom. If importFrom would be allowed to be set empty, such request would effectively become a "request from anywhere for platform only" as platforms are unable to provide items that are requested. Ability for clearing this would be a feature request and may need some solid arguments to change this design decision. Not having importFrom set would be a quite significant gotcha for new players in an already complex piece of mechanic.