How to daisychain storage boxes?

[DrummerJacob]

Im not sure how to connect multiple boxes together. Does anyone know a way to do this?

Specifically I want to be able to take an item by drone from its production source to a storage box, and then if the conditions are right, have it moved to another storage box at my auto crafter area or have it moved directly to my auto crafter, that way I autocraft items straight out of production and store the excess.

Right now, I am able to take items from production and put them into boxes but then theres a disconnect. I have to manually move them to another box that then Supplies those items to the auto crafter.

If anyone has tips on how to do this or if its just not part of the game, please let me know! Thanks

[DarkEternal]

Escrito originalmente por DrummerJacob:

Escrito originalmente por Vela Darney:

Why do you want to put an item into a box, then take it out again and send it to an autocrafter when you can just place the box directly by the autocrafter?

Because I have a complicated setup in a very large base that has the storage area being far from the floor/workspace that I use for crafting. Its a large setup and its a very basic part of automated setups like this.

In Factorio you couldnt play the game without being able to daisychain boxes so you can store things and access them in more logical ways that allow flexible setups do split things off in multiple directions.

Your question is the same as me asking me why do we have distribution centers in real life? Why dont we just take things from the farm and send it straight to the grocery store?

Just like you said: Why do you want to put an item in a box and then take it out again?

Basic supply chain reasons, I guess. So you can control the distribution of things. Why wouldnt you want to, thats my question? Why would you want to always send your items direct to just one place and never have a storage route setup for backup connected to your production, and not be able to tap into that when necessary but then give the overflow to boxes to be used for different purposes such as storage or sending items to auto crafters, and not want other boxes to be able to fill up and serve as central service points for those auto crafters?

I guess I enjoy the automation part and want to mass produce things in a large way to make tons of Terra Tokens and that involves splitting things off and re-routing them and Id have to do that using boxes at different stages of the supply chain. In my massive setup, not everything is near everything else and in range of the auto crafter.

I'll eventually just rebuild my whole setup to fit this limitation, before I did that I wanted to make sure I wasnt doing something wrong because again, it is a pretty basic function. Not sure why its made exclusive to Supply or Demand, but thats your explanation as to why.

Auto-crafters will pull resources from floors above and below them.
Using this knowledge, I constructed a base with storage on the first floor and auto crafters on the second that are in range of the resources needed to craft each item.
I even have an Inbox where I just dump everything that can be sorted properly by the drones (genes can't be separated by size, color, etc. so I manually sort things like that) and they fly over and move everything into its proper storage locker. Really makes exploration and Portal Wrecks easy when the drones are doing all of the sorting for me. I can just dump my stuff and head right back out.
It works flawlessly.

[DrummerJacob]

Escrito originalmente por DarkEternal:

Escrito originalmente por DrummerJacob:

Because I have a complicated setup in a very large base that has the storage area being far from the floor/workspace that I use for crafting. Its a large setup and its a very basic part of automated setups like this.

In Factorio you couldnt play the game without being able to daisychain boxes so you can store things and access them in more logical ways that allow flexible setups do split things off in multiple directions.

Your question is the same as me asking me why do we have distribution centers in real life? Why dont we just take things from the farm and send it straight to the grocery store?

Just like you said: Why do you want to put an item in a box and then take it out again?

Basic supply chain reasons, I guess. So you can control the distribution of things. Why wouldnt you want to, thats my question? Why would you want to always send your items direct to just one place and never have a storage route setup for backup connected to your production, and not be able to tap into that when necessary but then give the overflow to boxes to be used for different purposes such as storage or sending items to auto crafters, and not want other boxes to be able to fill up and serve as central service points for those auto crafters?

I guess I enjoy the automation part and want to mass produce things in a large way to make tons of Terra Tokens and that involves splitting things off and re-routing them and Id have to do that using boxes at different stages of the supply chain. In my massive setup, not everything is near everything else and in range of the auto crafter.

I'll eventually just rebuild my whole setup to fit this limitation, before I did that I wanted to make sure I wasnt doing something wrong because again, it is a pretty basic function. Not sure why its made exclusive to Supply or Demand, but thats your explanation as to why.

Auto-crafters will pull resources from floors above and below them.
Using this knowledge, I constructed a base with storage on the first floor and auto crafters on the second that are in range of the resources needed to craft each item.
I even have an Inbox where I just dump everything that can be sorted properly by the drones (genes can't be separated by size, color, etc. so I manually sort things like that) and they fly over and move everything into its proper storage locker. Really makes exploration and Portal Wrecks easy when the drones are doing all of the sorting for me. I can just dump my stuff and head right back out.
It works flawlessly.

Yeah thats right. The range isnt bad on those things. I had just built basically a 7x7 building using 3x3 units on each side with a 1x1 hallway down the middle in a + shape, and have 7 stories high of that, and had the top 2 floors all storage that I spent hours setting up and then for convenience I wanted the production downstairs with all the boxes being accessed far above that I never have to see with automation, but no, I will have to redesign with more local boxes around each auto crafter which is fine, its just a setback that I discovered after digging in and building a setup that doesnt work like I wanted.

Time to get to work! Im doing it right now :)

[DarkEternal]

For future reference, if you set an auto-crafter in the middle of a 3x3, it will reach storage in the corners of 3x3's placed above and below.
I hate posting screenshots, otherwise I'd show you what I have set up so you can maybe take some inspiration from it.

[DrummerJacob]

Escrito originalmente por DarkEternal:

For future reference, if you set an auto-crafter in the middle of a 3x3, it will reach storage in the corners of 3x3's placed above and below.
I hate posting screenshots, otherwise I'd show you what I have set up so you can maybe take some inspiration from it.

Ok thats good to know exactly where it stops. You can share a screenshot I dont think thatd be a problem but I see what you mean.

Another issue im dealing with that makes me want to daisychain is that I built up in the north in the waterfalls area and for some reason theres an area in the NW corner of my base toward that waterfall that just will not power things up even though I have like 10k extra power.

Any ideas about why that would be? Is it a bug in the game that some areas dont have power working? I built really far out as an end game thing to have a riverside base, but sadly I cant use part of my base for powered up items so thats also why I need to be able to move things differently.

Its weird too because I have an autocrafter thats right next to another and one is powered and one isnt yet I have excess power generation.

[archmag]

Escrito originalmente por DrummerJacob:

Any ideas about why that would be? Is it a bug in the game that some areas dont have power working? I built really far out as an end game thing to have a riverside base, but sadly I cant use part of my base for powered up items so thats also why I need to be able to move things differently.

Yes, it is a bug. Some areas in the north part are disconnected from global power grid. Even if you build energy generator there it will be powered down. I heard there are similar issues in some other places too but most people mention northern area. Just treat it as another anomaly from aliens that drains your power which we know nothing about (for roleplaying reasons) until it is fixed.

[DrummerJacob]

Escrito originalmente por archmag:

Escrito originalmente por DrummerJacob:

Any ideas about why that would be? Is it a bug in the game that some areas dont have power working? I built really far out as an end game thing to have a riverside base, but sadly I cant use part of my base for powered up items so thats also why I need to be able to move things differently.

Yes, it is a bug. Some areas in the north part are disconnected from global power grid. Even if you build energy generator there it will be powered down. I heard there are similar issues in some other places too but most people mention northern area. Just treat it as another anomaly from aliens that drains your power which we know nothing about (for roleplaying reasons) until it is fixed.

lmao ok fair enough!

[DarkEternal]

Escrito originalmente por DrummerJacob:

Escrito originalmente por DarkEternal:

For future reference, if you set an auto-crafter in the middle of a 3x3, it will reach storage in the corners of 3x3's placed above and below.
I hate posting screenshots, otherwise I'd show you what I have set up so you can maybe take some inspiration from it.

Ok thats good to know exactly where it stops. You can share a screenshot I dont think thatd be a problem but I see what you mean.

Another issue im dealing with that makes me want to daisychain is that I built up in the north in the waterfalls area and for some reason theres an area in the NW corner of my base toward that waterfall that just will not power things up even though I have like 10k extra power.

Any ideas about why that would be? Is it a bug in the game that some areas dont have power working? I built really far out as an end game thing to have a riverside base, but sadly I cant use part of my base for powered up items so thats also why I need to be able to move things differently.

Its weird too because I have an autocrafter thats right next to another and one is powered and one isnt yet I have excess power generation.

Ok, let's see if I can get this right.

This is my first floor. Total storage aside from the ladder up to the second floor that has my auto-crafters. You can see my "Inbox" on the left. That's where I dump my spoils from explorations/portal wrecks for the drones to sort into my various lockers.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3229330753

On the second floor, I have the auto-crafters spread out so they can access the resources they need from the first floor storage lockers.

Note that you can double this by simply adding a third floor on top and adding another auto-crafter for each of the crafted items on the second floor.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3229330879

I only use one storage for resources that don't have many uses. Iron and Cobalt are good examples of resources that have no or few items that can be made with an auto-crafter that you'll need in quantity. Best to have only single storage of them on a single floor. Super Alloy, however, is used in a number of auto-crafted recipes (super alloy rod also factors in), so I keep 2 lockers of them on a single floor.

[DrummerJacob]

Escrito originalmente por DarkEternal:

Escrito originalmente por DrummerJacob:

Ok thats good to know exactly where it stops. You can share a screenshot I dont think thatd be a problem but I see what you mean.

Another issue im dealing with that makes me want to daisychain is that I built up in the north in the waterfalls area and for some reason theres an area in the NW corner of my base toward that waterfall that just will not power things up even though I have like 10k extra power.

Any ideas about why that would be? Is it a bug in the game that some areas dont have power working? I built really far out as an end game thing to have a riverside base, but sadly I cant use part of my base for powered up items so thats also why I need to be able to move things differently.

Its weird too because I have an autocrafter thats right next to another and one is powered and one isnt yet I have excess power generation.

Ok, let's see if I can get this right.

This is my first floor. Total storage aside from the ladder up to the second floor that has my auto-crafters. You can see my "Inbox" on the left. That's where I dump my spoils from explorations/portal wrecks for the drones to sort into my various lockers.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3229330753

On the second floor, I have the auto-crafters spread out so they can access the resources they need from the first floor storage lockers.

Note that you can double this by simply adding a third floor on top and adding another auto-crafter for each of the crafted items on the second floor.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3229330879

I only use one storage for resources that don't have many uses. Iron and Cobalt are good examples of resources that have no or few items that can be made with an auto-crafter that you'll need in quantity. Best to have only single storage of them on a single floor. Super Alloy, however, is used in a number of auto-crafted recipes (super alloy rod also factors in), so I keep 2 lockers of them on a single floor.

Very cool. What I was doing was having crafters in the middle of the room with boxes around it, but using the floors is a better us of space.

So the auto crafters also go 3x3x3? Meaning a square above and below it too? If so, it would seem to make sense to have boxes on 2nd floor with crafters on 1 and 3, tapping into those 2nd floor boxes since many of the items would be crafted with different crafters.

[DarkEternal]

Escrito originalmente por DrummerJacob:

Escrito originalmente por DarkEternal:

Ok, let's see if I can get this right.

This is my first floor. Total storage aside from the ladder up to the second floor that has my auto-crafters. You can see my "Inbox" on the left. That's where I dump my spoils from explorations/portal wrecks for the drones to sort into my various lockers.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3229330753

On the second floor, I have the auto-crafters spread out so they can access the resources they need from the first floor storage lockers.

Note that you can double this by simply adding a third floor on top and adding another auto-crafter for each of the crafted items on the second floor.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3229330879

I only use one storage for resources that don't have many uses. Iron and Cobalt are good examples of resources that have no or few items that can be made with an auto-crafter that you'll need in quantity. Best to have only single storage of them on a single floor. Super Alloy, however, is used in a number of auto-crafted recipes (super alloy rod also factors in), so I keep 2 lockers of them on a single floor.

Very cool. What I was doing was having crafters in the middle of the room with boxes around it, but using the floors is a better us of space.

So the auto crafters also go 3x3x3? Meaning a square above and below it too? If so, it would seem to make sense to have boxes on 2nd floor with crafters on 1 and 3, tapping into those 2nd floor boxes since many of the items would be crafted with different crafters.

Yes. All 3 floors are 3x3. 1st floor storage, 2nd floor auto-crafting, 3rd floor storage.
In my experience, it's best to use 1st and 3rd as storage, and 2nd for auto-crafting.
You could always keep stacking them if you want faster production. You'll need more drones, though, as you'll also be using more ore extractors in that case.

This setup is what I call a "crafting sandwich" since your storage is on top and bottom with your crafting in the middle. In my opinion, this is actually better since you need more storage for resources rather than crafters, so this will make the most efficient use of your space.

What you envision with crafters surrounded by storage is wholly unnecessary when you realize that crafters can grab from storage above and below. This means that you can pack more crafters into a single floor and more storage into 2 floors, sandwiching as needed. If you dedicate space, then you can pack more in to each floor, utilizing the fact that auto-crafters only need to be in range of storage to craft the items you assign them.

[DrummerJacob]

Escrito originalmente por DarkEternal:

Escrito originalmente por DrummerJacob:

Very cool. What I was doing was having crafters in the middle of the room with boxes around it, but using the floors is a better us of space.

So the auto crafters also go 3x3x3? Meaning a square above and below it too? If so, it would seem to make sense to have boxes on 2nd floor with crafters on 1 and 3, tapping into those 2nd floor boxes since many of the items would be crafted with different crafters.

Yes. All 3 floors are 3x3. 1st floor storage, 2nd floor auto-crafting, 3rd floor storage.
In my experience, it's best to use 1st and 3rd as storage, and 2nd for auto-crafting.
You could always keep stacking them if you want faster production. You'll need more drones, though, as you'll also be using more ore extractors in that case.

This setup is what I call a "crafting sandwich" since your storage is on top and bottom with your crafting in the middle. In my opinion, this is actually better since you need more storage for resources rather than crafters, so this will make the most efficient use of your space.

What you envision with crafters surrounded by storage is wholly unnecessary when you realize that crafters can grab from storage above and below. This means that you can pack more crafters into a single floor and more storage into 2 floors, sandwiching as needed.

Yeah, most of my issue is the power in my base not working. I can only use a quarter of my rooms to power things up so I had to decide between rebuilding a whole new base or just having a very ugly setup. Daisychaining would have solved everything but instead im really going to just have to redesign the whole thing somewhere else cause this location is messed up and I only found out after I had built everything up.

Anyway, it was nice chatting and thanks for the input! I will make a very efficient setup soon enough. Take it easy!

[Myrion]

Here's my solution:
Big living compartments - stack 5 on top of each other.
Layer 1, 2, 4 and 5 are storage chests. Regular lockers, one for every different item there is in the game. You can fit 33 of those in every layer (a U-shape across the 3 walls without the door, then two rows of 8: 4 rows back to back) and only need a total of 109* in those 4 layers, so you got room to spare.

Layer 3 are 25 autocrafters for the 25 reasonably crafted items (no need to craft oxygen or water at this stage, obviously).


I tested it and even across the entire big living compartment, over 2 layers the autocrafter will still be able to reach each and every one of the possible 132 chests.

This way all those chests can receive to their heart's content, you can craft everything and store it there. Useful addition: prio 5 chests for the quartzes close to your portal, prio -1 for everything you want to store more than one locker full of, prio -5 on two shredders** for everything where machines produces different kinds of stuff so you don't get a traffic jam (honey, bee larvae, phytoplancton A/B/C, fish eggs, ores, ...).


* Might be a bit more if you count all the different larvae/eggs.
** Having only one shredder might lead to delays if the shredder is almost full and an item is in transit - new items that should be shreddered would be blocking it in the meantime.

[DrummerJacob]

Escrito originalmente por Myrion:

Here's my solution:
Big living compartments - stack 5 on top of each other.
Layer 1, 2, 4 and 5 are storage chests. Regular lockers, one for every different item there is in the game. You can fit 33 of those in every layer (a U-shape across the 3 walls without the door, then two rows of 8: 4 rows back to back) and only need a total of 109* in those 4 layers, so you got room to spare.

Layer 3 are 25 autocrafters for the 25 reasonably crafted items (no need to craft oxygen or water at this stage, obviously).


I tested it and even across the entire big living compartment, over 2 layers the autocrafter will still be able to reach each and every one of the possible 132 chests.

This way all those chests can receive to their heart's content, you can craft everything and store it there. Useful addition: prio 5 chests for the quartzes close to your portal, prio -1 for everything you want to store more than one locker full of, prio -5 on two shredders** for everything where machines produces different kinds of stuff so you don't get a traffic jam (honey, bee larvae, phytoplancton A/B/C, fish eggs, ores, ...).


* Might be a bit more if you count all the different larvae/eggs.
** Having only one shredder might lead to delays if the shredder is almost full and an item is in transit - new items that should be shreddered would be blocking it in the meantime.

Yeah its all about designing your setup around the limitations of the boxes. Thats a similar conclusion I came to eventually. I wanted to have daisychained boxes so that I wouldnt have to have such localized everything, but its fine and works to do it that way.

Cheers!

[Thiesen]

Escrito originalmente por DrummerJacob:

Escrito originalmente por Balsover:

You can't have a box demand and supply the same item at the same time.

Best option would be to use priorities. Have your two boxes setup to demand the same item, and once the higher priority is full, the drones will start filling the next box.

But the problem remains, the box has a disconnect to the next step in the chain which is what im looking to solve. I have no issue just filling 10 boxes with the same material, the issue is taking that and sending it to be auto crafted into something. If I do that manually, it disrupts the automation.

The auto crafters will retrieve what they need from storage containers that is in range of it...

Just have the lockers demand what you want them to demand and the autocrafters will use those things...

[DrummerJacob]

Escrito originalmente por Thiesen:

Escrito originalmente por DrummerJacob:

But the problem remains, the box has a disconnect to the next step in the chain which is what im looking to solve. I have no issue just filling 10 boxes with the same material, the issue is taking that and sending it to be auto crafted into something. If I do that manually, it disrupts the automation.

The auto crafters will retrieve what they need from storage containers that is in range of it...

Just have the lockers demand what you want them to demand and the autocrafters will use those things...

Yes weve established this basic idea multiple times on this thread. Im way past that. I had a complicated setup that had storage separated due to bugs in the game and power not being able to be used in half my base for strange reasons and I was trying to daisychain.

The mere fact that you cant just puts an end to this thread, thats literally all I was asking about and if you read through, you can see Ive replied to multiple people explaining that yes, Im just going to have to abandon my much better setup to have to adapt to the games' limitations.

Being able to daisychain sets up logic to the chain and allows there to be "If" conditions which opens up a whole array of things you can do to be even more efficient and craft things in different areas while having all your crafting done in one spot instead of spread out to be near boxes. Its fine if I cant, I simply wanted to know if Im doing it wrong because its a pretty basic thing and most games that deal with automation do have this.

Thanks anyway! How to close this thread?

[archmag]

Escrito originalmente por DrummerJacob:

Thanks anyway! How to close this thread?

You can choose one post as the answer and while this won't close the thread it will at least show that you already got an answer and stop some (not all) people from giving you more advices trying to help. Only people with special powers can close the thread, steam mods or mods from devs side which were given such powers but I have no idea how to summon them. You can also just unsubscribe from the the thread to stop notifications going and for you it won't matter if people are still posting in it.