In the previous guide about drones in Factorio we only talked about two type of logistic chests, but there are more than two. And in this guide we will go briefly into explaining what these chest do.
Exactly there are five types of logistic chest, we can recognize them because they have a sort of hole on the top, that’s the point where the drones will take the items.
These chest are extremely useful when managing you base, but to unlock every type you need another research:
As said in the drones guide all logistic chest must be in the logistic zone (orange zone) of the roboport, otherwise it will be ignored.
But how do logistic chest work?
Active provider chests:
Active provider chest are the purple ones, and are used to input items to the network, which mean that everything that you put inside will be took away by the drones and deposited in other places, in other words the network will try always to empty this chest.
This chest can be used as a sort of trash can of a farm, as it will be emptied as soon as possible.
Passive provider chests:
Passive provider chest are the red ones, and are similar to the Active provider, with the only difference being that the network will not try to empty this chest, simply everything that is contained in that chest is considered ready to use, the network will retrieve items from this chest only if that item is needed.
This chest can be used as an output to a farm that can have buffer.
Storage chests:
Storage chest are the yellow ones and, as the name suggest, it is only a storage where the network will put items that are not needed but still available to it.
Buffer chests:
Buffer chest are the green ones and are the most tricky to understand. It can request items, for example say to the network that in that chest there must be always at least a defined number of specific items (all defined by the player).
And every item that is contained in that chest can only be either:
-
- Used by construction robots to build ghosts or blueprints
- Used by logistical robots to deliver items that a player has requested to be delivered in his inventory
Factorio wiki‘s scheme examples
The network will not use those items for anything else.
These chest are usually used as a centralized source of items for building robots and player delivers.
Requester chests:
Requester chest are the light blue ones, and as the name suggest they can request items, the player can set up a certain number of specific items to be always contained in that chest and the network will try to fulfill that request.
These chest are usually used as input to a farm.
I hope I’ve managed to explain the usage of all type of logistic chests in Factorio, that’s it for this guide.
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