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TL;DR

An "auto-import for construction" request of 0 (zero) on a space platform triggers deliveries from the planet to fulfill non-zero platform-only logistics requests of the same item in other logistics groups.

What did I do?

The intention was to switch from producing space platforms on Nauvis to importing them from Vulcanus, but still do the construction in Nauvis orbit since it has no big asteroids. I already had a stationary orbital platform (let's call it NOSS) over Nauvis and a logistic platform doing the rounds between the two planets' orbits. So, in the logistics requests groups of NOSS, I switched over the space platform requests to import from platforms only instead of planet only and enabled it. This request group had been sitting disabled for a few hours.

What happened?

Unexpectedly, space platforms started getting launched from Nauvis. For the first wave, I assumed it was because of some previously queued up launches, but then a second wave of launches started happening. I checked that the automatic requests on NOSS had a bunch of items in it (all 0 by the way, completed hours ago), but the status diode was blue and quoted 175 pending space platforms. This was only partially correct, as the now-enabled platform-side import logistics group did require more resources, but they should not be requested from the planet (I double checked). So I tried disabling and renabling the automatic requests to hopefully clear the list. This cleared the list of imports and stopped importing space-platforms from the planet, excluding the couple that were already on their way (see screenshots, diode changed from blue to red with pending requests).

What did I expect to happen?

Upon first enabling the logistics group with platform-only space-platform imports, no launches should have been triggered from Nauvis - there was no logistics groups with non-zero planet-side imports enabled.

Does it always happen or only sometimes?

Always. I loaded up an autosave and could precisely recreate this sequence of events. I've included some screenshots (in logical sequence) to demonstrate this.

Update: This issue also messes up space platform expansion. Everytime I want to build out NOSS a bit further, I need to manually disable the space platforms logistics group in advance, as otherwise, space platforms start getting imported from the planet to satisfy the requirements of the logistics group even though the platform itself was already expanded by using the existing stock of space-platforms, thereby generating an auto-import for construction request for 0 (zero) space-platforms. Even if auto-imports are hard-coded to always import from both a planet and a platform, a request of zero in this group should not override platform-only imports on other logistics groups.

• Sanity check on NOSS: no pending requests, space platforms logistics group disabled. (The import setting is on planet-only here)

• Sanity check on the planet-side rocket silos showing they're inactive:

• Now changed logistics import to platform-only but not enabled the logistics group on NOSS (2 images):

• Enabled that logistics group. Note that the only other platform from which deliveries should technically be possible is on Vulcanus, but 100 items are still "on the way" as per the tooltip. This is the unexpected behaviour.

• After resetting the auto-imports option, the logistics diode is blue due to the rockets on the way.

• Final state, after waiting for the previous round of rockets to arrive.

Edits: Language and clarity