Factorio Forums

I finally got my automated robot mall working close to how I want, something where I could have all the lower quantity items readily available. I wanted a system where I would only have to alter a single unit to indicate what I want produced, in this case the assembler, then it would collect ingredients in sufficient quantity and feed to a chest. But I also wanted easy feedback, so I didn't have to hunt around as to which aren't working, or to why.
In this setup:
- The assembler dictates what's produced
- The requested chest gets 10x the ingredients so the logistics robots deposit enough to produce several items
- The light is Red if there's an ingredient shortage, Yellow if producing, and Green if the provider chest is full*

*Well, actually it's green if the machine is not producing and the conveyer has 3 items on it. I didn't find a way to read the shortage state of the assembler, nor did I want to have to adjust more than one item in the shop. The conveyer always holds at max 3 of something, regardless of stack size, so it's a good buffer to read that the chest is indeed full (it can't accept more).

I put the light in the bottom left, since that's has the least amount of wire overlap, thus easy to see.

What's missing is the reading of shops that are available on the network. I'd ideally have another color for "ingredients on the way". However, I doubt I could that the work without increasing the size of the shop a bit more.

Why current mall is mostly red since I just set it up and depleted my factory of all its raw resources. It stabilizes after a while.

I also have a bunch of buffer chests on the right of the mall for the mass produced raw components. This speeds up delivery to the individual shops, letting me produce them elsewhere.

Here's a close-up of an individual shop.
Copy blueprint

mortoray wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 8:30 pm I wanted a system where I would only have to alter a single unit to indicate what I want produced, in this case the assembler,

That seem the perfect fit for the parameterized blueprint ! I couldn't resist using your blueprint, just picking a recipe on the assembler and re-doing it, but with the "parameterized" option activated to change the recipe to "parameter 0".

This way, any time the blueprint is pasted, it prompt you directly with the choice of recipe, as if you were to define "parameter 0" everytime.

Copy blueprint

mortoray wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2024 8:30 pm The requested chest gets 10x the ingredients so the logistics robots deposit enough to produce several items

It appears to be x20 on the blueprint you linked

This would be harder to parameterize, but it could be done with a constant combinator holding things like [green = 1] [ yellow = 5] [red = 10] [blue=20], and you choose as parameter 1 a color everytime you place the blueprint, not sure it's all that useful, maybe for 1 or 2 items like nuclear reactor or silos where requesting 10x times is too much for 1 chest.

I like the idea of the 3 color lamps, that's more in-depth than just working/not working and make sense for a mall where it's not easy to distinguish fast if the machine is "not working" due to chest full or ingredient missing.

Yes, parameterization is a good option. Though I like to copy/paste a lot before I even know what I want to build.

It appears to be x20 on the blueprint you linked

I meant the input ingredients, to ensure it's well stocked so the machine keeps building and not pausing. I only control the total amoutn by limited the space in the output. My default is two stacks I think, and I do have to manually reduce that to one sometimes. I don't care too much about having too big a stack of reactors... one could always use a few more.

I mean that the blueprint linked in OP is configured to request 20 times the ingredient for a receipe, which would cause it to request 20 000 concrete if you set it to build a silo, and that would overflow the requester chest so it may not receive the other ingredient and get stuck.

Should add fluids as ingredients and support changing of the fluid automatically

Khazul wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2024 2:32 am Should add fluids as ingredients and support changing of the fluid automatically

There doesn't seem any change in recipe in the build though

mmmPI wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2024 2:55 am

Khazul wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2024 2:32 am Should add fluids as ingredients and support changing of the fluid automatically

There doesn't seem any change in recipe in the build though

Fair enough - I didn't look closely enough.

mmmPI wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2024 1:18 am I mean that the blueprint linked in OP is configured to request 20 times the ingredient for a receipe, which would cause it to request 20 000 concrete if you set it to build a silo, and that would overflow the requester chest so it may not receive the other ingredient and get stuck.

Okay, I get it. I thought it was ten times, might have slipped on the slider.

Yes, to fix this I'd actually need a variant that considers the ingredients inside the assembler. I don't know if I could get that as compact. In theory it's just one more subtraction, but then it wouldn't be a nicely filled square layout.

Khazul wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2024 2:32 am Should add fluids as ingredients and support changing of the fluid automatically

Would that even be possible? I don't see any kind of fluid switches... oh wait... if I convert everything to barrels, and dynamically request the barrels. But that would require the items to report the fluid they need, which the other poster said they don't.

I do these use for items with fluid, but I manually group the same fluids together, rotate the assembler, and build a pipe by hand.

mortoray wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2024 9:21 pm

Khazul wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2024 2:32 am Should add fluids as ingredients and support changing of the fluid automatically

Would that even be possible? I don't see any kind of fluid switches... oh wait... if I convert everything to barrels, and dynamically request the barrels. But that would require the items to report the fluid they need, which the other poster said they don't.

I do these use for items with fluid, but I manually group the same fluids together, rotate the assembler, and build a pipe by hand.

You can do it with fluids directly. You need a buffer tank and a pair of pumps per fluid. One pump feed from tank to machine input, the other feeds back from machine input to tank when recipe is changed. The pump back pump needs to be filtered and must be on when the other pump is off (assuming always connected to machine input and never an output). The tanks must always have enough space in them to pump back, so can never be allowed to fill.

mortoray wrote: Mon Dec 09, 2024 9:20 pm Okay, I get it. I thought it was ten times, might have slipped on the slider.

Yes, to fix this I'd actually need a variant that considers the ingredients inside the assembler. I don't know if I could get that as compact. In theory it's just one more subtraction, but then it wouldn't be a nicely filled square layout.

Yeah that could ruin the layout, but you can also have some special rows that are wider for certain items like silos and reactor. As the main alley in a mall has bigger sign board or promotions Or just be careful when using those recipe, after all there's not that many 10 times is a value fit for most items i found for my games.