Logistic network
Logistic network consists of different chests, Logistic robots and Roboports covering the area of one logistic network. Depending on the type and configuration of the chests and area of the Robotic network the robots will transport items between these chests as alternative to the items manually, by belts or Railway network.
The player character can also act as Requester chest in the Logistic network. After researching Character logistic slots. You can configure an amount of Items and Logistic robots will start to move the specified Items from network to your characters inventory.
Items
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Spawns the Robotic network and with it's coverage also the logistic network. |
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Moves items between Logistic Chests. (*) |
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Logistic Chest: Supplies the contained items to the Logistic network. (**) |
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Logistic Chest: Stores Items currently not requested. (**) |
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Logistic Chest: Will be filled by Logistic robots until the configured amount is reached. (**) |
(*) At the beginning each robot is carriing only 1 item. This amount can be increased by researching Logistic robot cargo size.
(**) logistic chests are also useable for a Circuit network by using wires.
Usage
This is well useable for creating more and more complex items in your main factory. Low complexity (smelting) can keep using belts.
The area covered by a Robotic network is identical to that of the Logistic network. All Logistic network/Chests inside a robotic network are connected and build the Logistic network. Imagine the logistic chests send their containments to the Roboports.
There can be many distincted Robotic networks; and so also many Logistic networks! Bots cannot fly from one network into another.
Network info
Logistic network knows the numbers of all Items stored in all logistic chests and also the number of all items currently carried by Logistic robots. This information can be seen by hovering a logistic chest: you see the sum of all items in logistic chests or on the way in this logistic network.
Negative numbers
For some reasons, you can see negative numbers in the network info. This is not a bug. This means, that the bots can transport more than available (cargo item stacksize).
How it works
Place some logistic bots anywhere or in a Roboport, they will immediately begin to work.
The logistic bots try to fulfill the requests by moving items from storage- or provider chest to requester chest or from provider- to requester chest.
Order of movement
The bots fulfill all requests with the same priority. The algorithm looks for the next free robot, then the next request in the queue and after giving orders to the robot, this request is put at the end of the queue, so that first all other requests are done. (The results are not optimal; it can happen, that the farest next bot will be requested, even if there is a much closer. Because of this, it's recommended to use the bots not for high throughput. For that are the Railway network much more useful.)
Requests are coming from the requester chests and storage chests.
- a requested item is first looked up in the storage chests, then in the provider chests (storage chests are emptied first)
- if robots are free and there is space left in storage chests, and there are unrequested items in provider chests, the items are moved from provider to a storage chest.
- if a any storage chest already contains items of different type, empty storage chests are filled first. This should avoid having storage chests with different items inside.
In other words: the storage chests are filled last, emptied first and try to store the items they already have.