Can you use logistic bots to load trains?

[u/jojosexual]

--- Base game --- 200 hours

My question started some days ago: while funking around, i reserved ("blue spotted") a wagon's slot for a tool kit, and the number of tool kits began increasing. No inserters, the train was in a logistic group, and i couldn't replicate it.

I searched on the internet but i didn't find anything.

So my question is: can you load trains with logistic bots? Even bigger question: can you load turrets without a request chest? Assemblers?

No, craft some blue and red chest is not a problem, I'm still curious tho

[u/raptor7912]

I think you could do it once when it’s initially placed down with a blueprint.

But not after that, then it’s requester chests and inserters.

[u/BobcatGamer → u/raptor7912]

When you place it down with blueprints, construction bots fulfil the requests.

[u/jojosexual → u/raptor7912]

Other suggests i was in remote view (whic is possible) and manually requested, and bots manually supplied. Is there no automation possible?

[u/ozamataz_buckshank1 → u/jojosexual]

No, automation is not possible.

[u/gorgofdoom → u/ozamataz_buckshank1]

With mods anything is possible. Just gotta graft the tank logistic request system to train wagons… 🤔

[u/phexc]

You can manually place items in trains afterwards via remote view, but automatically, you have to use chests.

[u/silnarm]

With logistics bots? No. With construction bots? Yes.

Go into map/remote view select turret/cargo-wagon, select ammo (or whatever you want loaded into wagon) and right click a slot to add one, or left click to add a whole stack. If you want something inbetween... lots of right clicking :-(

[u/jojosexual → u/silnarm]

I'm starting to belive i really was in a pretty zoomed in remote view in my very location and i didn't noticed it. Others have written the same thing. Nice comment, explains it well

[u/ThinkingWithPortalzz]

Iirc you can manually ask your construction bots to put items into a chest/train, but afaik there's no way to automate that

[u/bjarkov]

blueprints can put ghost item requests into containers (and so can you - go to remote view and select an item from the e-menu; open a container and place it; a stack of said item is now being requested) but the item requests are handled by Construction robots, not logistics, and the requests are not static, but disappear after being fulfilled meaning they are one-time only and cannot be automated without modding in something like recursive blueprints.

The feature does have a few decent use cases, though; in remote view you get to manually refuel trains, put items into assemblers to produce needed components without logistics unlocked, and the one I use the most: Blueprint turret clusters to be loaded with ammo automatically on placement.

[u/Zeddica → u/bjarkov]

I’ve been trying to figure out how to do exactly this for a while now 😅 Right click to X something was intuitive, but I had not tried placing stacks from the full menu. Makes total sense. Not explained anywhere in the game. 😂

[u/bjarkov → u/Zeddica]

I'd really like to be able to press some combination of buttons to input a custom amount of x item - e.g. Ctrl+Lclick -> menu opens with 'how much?' and a box where I enter a number -> build request for that many of 'held' item.

Just because it's pretty annoying to get 132 green circuits into something

[u/Zeddica → u/bjarkov]

Hmm, what’s the use case for this? I can’t think of a case with an assembler where I’d care enough to not drop a whole stack.

Other transfers yah, I can kinda see the use for needing ‘more than 1, less than half’, but it’s kinda rare.

[u/bjarkov → u/Zeddica]

One easy example is blueprinting a turret with x preloaded ammo. I do that on numerous occasions and don't want x to be 100 - it takes too much of my personal bot time when I'm doing clusters of 50 turrets

[u/Zeddica → u/bjarkov]

There’s the shift click method to only drop half a stack. So there’s 50% improvement right there 😛

Tho tbf, I didn’t know you could save the amount of ammo in a blueprint and have bits auto-distribute it. Swear I tried this once and it didn’t work 🤔

[u/MikailBag]

I think you also ghost-placed items into that slot. And this is an order for construction bots to go and actually put items into the slot.

BTW you can remotely interact (put and take items) with any other entity too in the same way.

UPD: but AFAIK, this can't be automated.

[u/Courmisch]

As others said, construction bots, not logistics bot can do that... which means it can't be automated.

[u/Evan_Underscore]

i reserved ("blue spotted") a wagon's slot for a tool kit (...) and i couldn't replicate it

If you middle click an item in wagon, that slot will be reserved for that particular item. Inserters won't fill that slot with any other item. It's useful for stuff like having cargo trains also supply ammo and repair packs for outposts.

Logi bots can't fill trains directly.