What can you do with red and yellow logistic boxes?

[-RickZ-]

So just unlocked logistic robots that came with the red/yellow boxes. However I can't get these boxes to interact in any way? Kind of irritating that the blue box, having the most basic function of "GIVE ME", is locked behind a few more expensive science upgrades. I just want these robots to take from A, and put into B. They're flying robots, shouldn't this be doable right from the getgo??

[Nailfoot]

No.

EDIT. Oops, hit post too soon!

The developers designed it so that you need to make everything using belts before you can switch to "easy mode". Its progression in its most basic form. The yellow chests are where robots will put stuff that you drop into your inventory's "trash slots".

If you convert your entire mall area into red, passive provider chests, then you can set up requests in your personal inventory. Bots will ensure you never run out of those items!!

[Fel]

You can use construction robots with them, storage (yellow) chests are needed if you want to deconstruct things (including rocks and trees).
Logistics robots are only capable of providing items to the player and taking items you don't want into storage chests at that point but it's already pretty useful if you set a "mall" that uses passive prodiver (red) chests for belts, inserters and so on so you don't have to go there every time you need more.

[luziferius]

As an alternative to the common way, you can also do this:
Granted, it is a bit more setup work (which is mitigated, if you blueprint it and carry it over to the next map). But it also has its merits, which may be sublte. If you don’t value these, ignore my post and go with the common solution.

Instead of passive providers at your mall, use yellow storage chests and use their filter slot to lock them into the product dumped into it via the inserter.
Then take a logic wire (red/green), connect the inserter with the box and set the inserter to only work, if the product amount is below a certain threshold.

That way, deconstructed items get placed into the same box they were taken from when constructing, instead of a different one.

[BlueRock]

Just wanted to also add since it was implied but not specifically stated above that construction bots will also pull from the yellow chests or red chests in order to build any blueprints that you place. You will need some roboports nearby with some construction bots in them and materials in the chests. Just in case you aren't aware the orange square range around the roboport is the logistic bot range (for requesting or trashing items from and to red chests) and the green square is the range for construction bots when deconstructing or building blueprints (which will grab from yellow or red chests or take items away and place them in yellow chests) Oh yeah, you can also load some of the roboports (or chests nearby) with repair packs and they can keep your walls or turrets repaired! And yes, it does take a while to get to the blue requestor chests, and they are so nice when you finally do, but if you had them too early you would miss out on a lot of the fun puzzling that comes with trying to make cool and efficient belt based builds.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by luziferius:

As an alternative to the common way, you can also do this:
Granted, it is a bit more setup work (which is mitigated, if you blueprint it and carry it over to the next map). But it also has its merits, which may be sublte. If you don’t value these, ignore my post and go with the common solution.

Instead of passive providers at your mall, use yellow storage chests and use their filter slot to lock them into the product dumped into it via the inserter.
Then take a logic wire (red/green), connect the inserter with the box and set the inserter to only work, if the product amount is below a certain threshold.

That way, deconstructed items get placed into the same box they were taken from when constructing, instead of a different one.

I obtain this same functionality by having a passive provider's inserter programmed to only insert how many of a thing I want, and using buffer chests to request raw materials needed for that thing.

You need to use conditions so that raw materials are not crafted when they are already available in a buffer chest, but that's easy.

Still, this solution only works once you've progressed further through the tech tree.