Negative Amount in Logistics Network - Factorio Forums

Factorio Forums. Negative Amount in Logistics Network. Negative Amount in Logistics Network. Post by phi1010 » Mon Apr 17, 2017 9:02 pm. The negative amounts described in https://wiki.factorio.com/Logistic_netw . ve_numbers do not seem to work reliably: Works: While there are 50 items requested, but only 20 available, the item count is -30. Fails: While there are 50 items requested, but none available, the item count is not present. I'd expect a value of -50 here, causing all connected components to start working to fulfill the request. Re: Negative Amount in Logistics Network. Post by Loewchen » Mon Apr 17, 2017 10:39 pm. Re: Negative Amount in Logistics Network. Post by BenSeidel » Tue Apr 18, 2017 12:31 am. It's not about the amount being requested vs the amount available, but the amount available vs the amount that the robots are trying to pickup. I can't seem to find numbers where your examples would work, as the max cargo size in vanilla is 4, so I'm going to assume you have a mod that allows you to get them to collect 5 items at a time, for the explanation. In your example you could have had 10 supplier chests each with two items in each of them, this would cause 10 robots (one for each supplier chest) to go and pick up the items. If the robots can pick up 5 items each, then they will "reserve" 5 items from each chest, leaving a deficit of 3 items for each robot. It's the total of this deficit that you are measuring, in this case 10 * -3 = -30. While there are 50 items being requested, but none available, no robots get dispatched. This means that you get deficit of 0 * -5 = 0, hence no signal. IMO this system is better than one that takes the currently requested and subtracts it from the currently available as there exist other mechanisms to do that (more manual though) and there is no other way of knowing if you are flooding your robotic network except for the -ve signal because there is no way to count items in flight. Re: Negative Amount in Logistics Network. Post by phi1010 » Tue Apr 18, 2017 12:34 am. I don't understand the reference to "internal mechanics". The whole game consists of internal mechanics exposed to the user -- and to me, this specific mechanic does seem to expose unexpected and probably unintended behaviour -- in the latter case, a bug. As far as I understand, the use case of the negative amounts is indending to signalize a deficit, to allow the user to build circuits to respond to that deficit. Is there another use-case for this behaviour? For Example: I built some assemblies, whose inserters are only enabled if there is a deficit for the product requested. This works fine, until at some point, the deficit used up everything I had in reserve. At that point, the deficit seems to be gone (not a negative number anymore), so my assemblies stop -- although they should be running at maximum speed. It looks like a linear function, yet, in the last line, it behaves weird, not returning the difference as described in the wiki documentation. I could not find an intention why this works like this -- and probably, this result was not the intention of the developer. 50 requested, 51 available -> Output: 1 50 requested, 50 available -> Output: 0 50 requested, 49 available -> Output: -1 . 50 requested, 3 available -> Output: -47 50 requested, 2 available -> Output: -48 50 requested, 1 available -> Output: -49 50 requested, 0 available -> Output: 0. Re: Negative Amount in Logistics Network. Post by phi1010 » Tue Apr 18, 2017 12:37 am. Ah, then this was my misunderstanding. Still, I am not sure whether this solves the Use Case that it was developed for. @Loewchen: Move this to feature requests please, if you do not deem it to be a bug. Re: Negative Amount in Logistics Network. Post by phi1010 » Tue Apr 18, 2017 1:02 am. With flooding you mean transporting more items than the current number of robots can? What do you mean with the "-ve" signal? I'd usually look at the "available robots" number of an roboport, and start manufacturing new ones slowly, if this drops to zero. Re: Negative Amount in Logistics Network. Post by phi1010 » Tue Apr 18, 2017 1:11 am. Re: Negative Amount in Logistics Network. Post by BenSeidel » Tue Apr 18, 2017 3:15 am. The construction ghosts has been kicking around the forums for a long time, Twinsen even said he was thinking about it. It'll come eventually. However, your suggestion won't allow this to occur anyway as construction robot requests don't have a requestor chest source. As for player requests, why would you need to read this? It's a serious question as even trying to implement a lean factory (only ever produce what you absolutely need), you would be subjecting yourself to having to wait for the items to be manufactured. If that is your requirement, set up a constant combinator as an "item requestor" that will trigger the manufacturing of the items required, again, more manual - but doable. If you don't want to wait for the items the the current system works. Don't get me wrong, the current logistics network item reading is currently extremely lacking as you can't read many things that you may need to read (such as items in-flight), but changing it to the system proposed is an even worse solution, especially as there already exists the circuit network that allows you to do everything this change would allow. It sounds to me that you find the circuit network to be too much of a pain to set up so you want a wireless solution? If you could give an example of what you are trying to achieve that you can't achieve through the current system, or let us know why you think that the change would make better gameplay then that would be a better discussion.