Factorio Forums

What?

A picture is worth a thousand words:

Add planet selection possibilities to logistic groups on space platforms.

I took the graphics and the 5 slot idea from the inserter filters.

Each logistic group could be simply checked if staying at the right planet upon arrival, and skipped entirely if staying at a wrong one, without the need to further inspect the requests in it.

A bit more details

When adding a logistic request group to the space platform, not only the request multiplier, but also the source planets selection could be specified.
The selected source planets are saved to the space platform, so different platforms can use a different selection of source planets.

The selected planets might be also shown next to the request group name, as shown in the picture (drawing overlaying planet icons would save horizontal space).

Why?

The idea behind request groups is to set once & apply everywhere.

This principle does not work well for requests on space platforms, since after adding a new request over for example the requester chest interface, one needs to remember to also visit one space platform to set the source planet specification there.

Even if one could have a default value of "import from: any planet" (as indicated by FF-441), source planets must be configured manually for each item in many interplanetary transfer scenarios.
Having this one could specify the source planets for the logistic group once, and automatically apply this selection to all requests added to the group later on.

Selection of multiple source planets for logistic requests.

Example: one might only produce repair packs on Gleba and Nauvis, where actively attacking enemies exist.
This way one could specify to supply repair packs from both of these, but not from other planets like Vulcanus or Fulgora.

Selecting only source planet "any" as opposed by FF-441 and while having the wait condition "all requests fullfilled" set would block the space platform from leaving planets where these materials are not getting produced.

This would be most relevant if playing planet overhaul mods: some resources can be produced only on specific (one or more) planets due to surface conditions or ingredient availability restrictions. This way one could specify multiple source planets for the same materials over a single logistic group.

Different platforms can request the same materials from different planets.

This would allow easily setting different source planets on different ships without logistic group duplication.

Given one has both a Nauvis-Gleba and also a Vulcanus-Gleba ship. Among others, blue circuits should not be produced on Gleba but transferred by these ships. Currently, one cannot use a logistic group for both (like a group "Gleba material requests"), since it only allows setting one source planet.
Even if the platforms have further stops in their schedule, the blue circuits would get only picked up on the specified planets without exhausting the supply of other, solely self-maintaining planets.

This is another advantage that would be most relevant if playing planet overhauls mods.

+1. I do not have my main base on nauvis and it is just infuriating that I have to switch every request I make manually to "No, not nauvis, nothing is on nauvis. Take it from vulcanis, where my base is". This is just bad design. Giving us the option to change imports for an entire group at once would severely reduce the annoyance this causes.

Also with 2.1 you introduced platform to platform request. That makes it possible to have a ship travel from nauvis to gleba, handover its requests to another ship, which then goes on to deliver the things to aquillo. Now, I have to setup the request group, copy it for the second ship and change every single request from from nauvis to "platforms orbiting gleba". This is a lot of unnecessary work and I dont think it should exist. Please change this.