Factorio Forums

I love this new feature! I struggle with one aspect of it though, and that's when a platform is providing and also requesting P2P transfers.

My specific case is probably something most users will use this for: one of my Aquilo platforms is distributing fusion power cells to inner-system platforms. Before P2P, it'd drop them on Nauvis and any inner platforms would pick them up from here. With P2P, I'm trying to deliver from the Aquilo platform (C) to the Nauvis platform (A), and from there to any inner-system platforms visiting Nauvis (B). The problem is that if the Nauvis platform has "request from platform" set on the power cells, it never distributes power cells to any platform requesting them; it will only transfer if I don't have "from platform" checked for cells on the Nauvis platform.

I can understand how it would be a chicken/egg logic problem if two platforms are requesting the same thing from each other, but if:

- A is providing to platforms; and is requesting X from platforms, and
- B is not providing to platforms; and is requesting X from platforms, and
- C is providing to platforms; and is not requesting X from platforms, then

it seems straightforward that A should provide to B, and C should provide to A? There's no conflict of logic. This is not the behavior I'm seeing; if A is providing and requesting X, it never provides X to any requesting platform.

Is this supposed to work, and just isn't in my game, or is request+request just not allowed?

You can search the forums, there have been countless topics on just this issue alone.
I may sound cynical, but you are essentially doing something that is unintended by the devs.
You can get around it by using combinators, I think.

Set the platform hub to read current planet.
Use one combinator to check if current planet is Aquilo, then output X number of Fusion Cells.
Re-Wire those to the platform hub and set requests.

Now, when your platform is over other planets, this request disappears and they are free to be claimed by other platforms again.

Expect any solution similar to this to be quite janky.

I made a post about something similar, but it might be a helpful start: 135225

As far as I see, the functionality to request an item by a platform, then provide this item to other platforms or to a planet doesn't work without circuit control. With circuit control, you're able to make the request appear only if the platform is in orbit of the providing planet. Without circuits, there is no way to configure similar requests statically.

And even with making the request by circuit control, there's no possibility to decide if the request should go to a platform or to a planet. For example, you have a manufacturing platform in orbit (for example quantum processors above Aquilo) and want to collect some to provide this to the inner planets.
Aquilo itself wants quantum processors as well, so it can happen it requests the stock from the orbiting manufacturing platform. Now the travelling platform arrives and requests quantum processors as well, by dynamic request via circuit. The manufacturing platform is out of stock, but the planet has the stock it just requested. It will send it up to the travelling platform to satisfy its request - there is no control over this behavior. Neither the travelling platform is able to specify in its dynamic request to request from platforms only, nor is it possible to deny a request for a rocket silo if the silo is in automatic mode.

I created a suggestion for the latter part (the whole thing is no bug, but it's kind of missing functionality): viewtopic.php?t=135311