Factorio Forums

Dear Dev Team,

Ive come across problems when i tried to start using plattforms as trading hubs, as in one of the last friday facts mentioned, being one of the intended use cases for the plattform trade feature.

Easily said, the limitation lays in the logistic nature of the plattform hubs, since the requests work different than a buffer chest.
To explain what i mean, let me start at the basics.
A buffer chest has an active request, for example 1000 iron plates, requesting from the logistic network.
Yet, even while this request is active, the contents are accessable to construction and the logistic network immediately. So as soon as Iron plates are present, requester chests with checked buffer draw and construction can request items from said buffer chest.

This same mechanic is missing in space plattforms though.
If i have a stationary plattform orbiting Nauvis, i want to import items arriving from different planets with their own freight ships. So i set a request group in the nauvis plattform hub, requesting all those items (import from station).
Now i want to have a new ship, which is set to supply aquilo, wanting to import from the nauvis hub, yet it cant see/access/request items, which the nauvis plattform tries to import too.
So while the request from station at the nauvis plattform is active, it does not make it accessible to other plattforms that request from it.

In my understanding, lets say a plattform hub needs a checkmark, to act as buffer to the network?
Which then enables the present items to be accessible by other plattform requests (maybe even with the option to have it as slider saying above value x make accessible rather then yes-no), even when the plattform itself has the active request still.

Another point why its a hard limitation, is that its not workaroundable with cirquits, to for example trigger the request only for a few seconds, to otherwise enable the other plattforms to grab those buffered items, because requests by cirquit networks are generally import from all locations and not plattform only, messing with the whole logistic setup.

To sum things up, ive seen similar entries in the forum under game help, stating similar problems with this and no solutions, so i thought i should put it together with some more thoughts on here.
Greetings, Take~

If you have it flicker every frame and don't have rocket silos with the item preloaded on planet, your workaround works. Still should be properly addressed though

Another point why its a hard limitation, is that its not workaroundable with cirquits, to for example trigger the request only for a few seconds, to otherwise enable the other plattforms to grab those buffered items, because requests by cirquit networks are generally import from all locations and not plattform only, messing with the whole logistic setup.

The way I would suggest working around it is with circuits. Platforms that bring things to the hub should tell the hub that items X, Y, and Z are available (if the platform has some on board). At that point, the hub will check its stored supplies and, if they are too low, will then request whichever items are available (limited by the amount on the other platform). Once it's full up on those items, or if the sending platform is empty, it stops requesting them.

And this can be done just by having a specific universal channel for hub interactions. There's no need to pulse anything "for a few seconds"; just request what's there.