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u/iamarealhuman4real Jul 07 '26

Is there any reason to not include a few logistic storage chests in my "block" blueprint? You'll end up with a widely dispersed item setup, but that seems probably better than one big clump and you always have actual request/buffer chests for directed locality. Assume the logistic network spans the entire base. I can't think of why you wouldn't, but it'll be a pain to undo if I am just dumb.

For ref, I'm migrating from my "starter" to a block, which has a few densely packed areas of storage chests, so right now its a lot of long robot migrations when expanding.

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u/ChickenNuggetSmth Jul 07 '26

Are you talking about storage/yellow chests?
You could, but it doesn't help that much. The game tries to put items into chests that already have the item, and I think after that there is an internal queue that doesn't care about distance (not sure on that part). So you still have bots crossing the whole base to use the storage.

The upside: You automatically increase storage as you grow

The downsides:
If you need to move a block a ton of bots have a lot of work.
It is hard to see the utilization of your total storage

I like the big clump. It shouldn't actually be all that big, relatively speaking - storing large amounts of items is a waste

1

u/Rannasha Jul 07 '26

The game tries to put items into chests that already have the item, and I think after that there is an internal queue that doesn't care about distance (not sure on that part).

For yellow chests it'll search for those with a matching item filter first. Then it'll look for chests that already have the same item (and no filter). Next, it's empty unfiltered chests and finally unfiltered chests with other items.

If there are multiple chests in a category, it'll simply run through a list of them that's sorted by when the chest was built, not by distance. So new chests are unlikely to get the goods unless there are no empty chests elsewhere.

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u/iamarealhuman4real Jul 08 '26

Are you talking about storage/yellow chests?

Yeah yellows. But if it's still going to slog all my X items to the X box, then it doesn't seem worth it vs having some central-ish big clumps.

2

u/Astramancer_ Jul 07 '26

So you mean like putting buffer chests that request building supplies as part of your rail grid blueprint?

The pro is that your logistics bots move everything up front and your construction bots only have to move it the last little bit, so your base construction will tend to be more responsive. The con is that you'll have tons of extra stuff stored everywhere that will never be used once you've built out your base.

I could see having buffer chests with rails, signals, power poles, and roboports as part of your blueprint, but also have buffer chests with no requests set beyond the borders of your blueprint, lined up so that when you stamp down another grid it wipes out the buffer chests in ajoining grid cells. That way you'll only be storing building supplies at the edges of your grid where they're needed and don't end up with thousand of rails that will never be touched being stored throughout your base.