Storage?

[Hydroculator]

I've been making groups of 7 storage structures around a small building with a teleport device inside it. I then set up a chain to connect all the storages together. So when something is put into the first storage, it will jump from storage to storage until the last full one. Then I set up another pod of these nearby and set that to be the next link in the chain, and so on. I have about 10 of these pods.
The problem is that if this system starts to fill up, everything grounds to a halt. Nobody can find places to put things, and so they just sit there in a traffic jam. The ones waiting for an empty slot just sit there blocking the ones that are supposed to move things along to empty buildings, and I have to manually untangle it.
How are you "supposed" to do storage in this game? Is there a way to just say "everybody, just dump your crap in whatever storage has an empty slot and move on." I find it cumbersome to have to assign a single storage building as an output for every single drone.

[SnugglePilot]

You can use the "overflow" storage behaviour chip (the four green square icon). If something is full, it will redirect to whatever "locked" item you've set in that bin's inventory. That might help you a bit.

If things are grinding to a halt because there is no place to put the INPUT item necessary for a factory to run - make sure you lock the storage slots on the inventory bin for those items, so that those slots aren't taken up by other stuff.

If things are grinding to a halt because your OUTPUT is full, that just means you have no need for those items - other than stockpiling for stockpiling's sake, no need to manufacture more. If the output is blocked with other junk, again - reserve a slot in the inventory for the output type to ensure only that goes there.

The only time I chain together storage bins is for my cleanup & exploration bots. These bots exist outside of the production chain, and I don't want them to stop just because the storage bins are full. I've only ever needed 4 storage bins chained together with teleporters for this; I guess it depends on how industrious you are.

Once I was overwhelmed with crystals being picked up by my exploration bots; to use all that capacity up I just paused my miner bots for a few minutes.

Also -- don't forget to set your teleportation-automated-buildings to "teleporter only" on the right-click-wifi-symbol menu. Otherwise items will become reserved on that building for manual transportation.

[dermanus]

Worth noting you only need the item transporter on every other storage box. I'll usually chain five or so together to support high volume things like ore. I've got a generic one for stuff my scouts find. I also have behavior setup in my factories so they turn off if the item they're producing is in the logistics network, this makes sure that if my scout finds a building part it gets used instead of sitting in storage.

[Quait]

remember, the transport component can not move items from one neighbour to another directly, it will always hop that item to itself and then distribute it to somewhere else.

If a building in its range requests something it will check other buildings around it and if possible grab that item to itself and then deliver it, it needs free space to do that. this chain can not see and fulfil requests outside its neighbours, so no automated hopping items through a chain of buildings.

Make sure to lock items on buildings to allow space for item transfer of that type. In addition you can setup Store-Registers to force move items into the next building.

[Hydroculator]

I finally understand how my parents felt when I tried to tell them how to program the VCR.

[Zaflis]

Originally posted by Hydroculator:

...
The problem is that if this system starts to fill up, everything grounds to a halt. Nobody can find places to put things, and so they just sit there in a traffic jam. The ones waiting for an empty slot just sit there blocking the ones that are supposed to move things along to empty buildings, and I have to manually untangle it.

I'm confused. How are you filling the first storage building so that workers are waiting outside? It sounds like the delivery in the first place is done wrong way.

So normally you can for example set a machine that produces metal plates "storage register" to the storage building. If there is a situation that the producer machine is full of metal and storage is also full, no worker will pick up from it thus not creating any traffic jam. A delivery requires empty space so it won't start it.

Maybe you created it with trade route or scripted behavior? Sure that can cause a jam.