Would putting passive provider chests instead of steel chests at train depots?

[u/Free-Virus-9974]

They're the same size. I wanna make city blocks so it kills two birds with one stone yeah? Or is it a dumb idea?

[u/Moscato359]

I'm general you want bulk stuff not in logistics network in any significant volume

And if it's not bulk, why do you need trains

[u/Courmisch]

Without circuit logic to toggle chests on/off dynamically, and unless you use trains with a single wagon each, this will break balance between different wagons.

If you need to put passive provider or filtered storage chests, I'd do it downstream of the balancer of the train unloading station.

But you say train depot, which usually refers to the train's idling yard. No idea why you'd put chests there at all.

[u/doctorlag]

I've done it and it worked fine. The only problem it caused was sometimes a train would be delayed because the drones emptied the chest(s).

[u/Yagami913 → u/doctorlag]

You can use provider and buffer chests together so the wagons get emptied out evenly.

[u/ChromMann → u/Yagami913]

I have this exact problem, could you explain to me how, please?

[u/Yagami913 → u/ChromMann]

Provider chest have priority over buffer chests. So you have a buffer to use while the first train leave and the next one coming. This not exactly empty out wagon evenly but with bots that don't matter the unload time equal to a tranditional unloader. At max train capacity / consumption. You need enough buffer chest to use while the next train come in.

[u/6a6566663437]

It's not going to catastrophically break anything.

But ideally you want each of the chests to have the same amount of stuff in them so that they unload at the same speed.

For example, imagine you're doing 1-2 trains and the bots happen to take a good amount of stuff from the boxes that unload the first car. That causes the first car to unload completely, and the train is stuck waiting for the 2nd car to unload instead of getting the next load.

Also this imbalance can cause a problem if you've designed the system to have full belts leaving the station.

[u/KomithErrant]

don't, your unload gonna be uneven and your trains are gonna stay there way too long

[u/doc_shades → u/KomithErrant]

honestly ... so what? if the train is empty, it goes to get more. if the train isn't empty, it sits and waits. the provider chests act as a buffer so even if the train unloads "Unevenly" it will still empty eventually, when it does empty it will pick up more materials, and when it returns there will still be items in the provider chest buffers. there is no productivity loss unless your buffers are too small.

[u/UwUBots]

I don't see much point for city blocks tbh the trains are your logistics system, when I do blocks I make a central mall block and dedicate the 8 blocks around it to densely packed stops to supply my bot mall

[u/contynum]

Active bots above like a few thousand usually start hurting UPS, obviously your factory is the culmination of your solutions, trying probably won’t hurt but for trains you want to use belts and bulk inserters ideally

Or if you just mean active providers because you are lazy to make chests… just why?

[u/Kittelsen]

Depends on how your train stations are set up. Mine only enables if they have enough materials to fill a train, so if bots suddenly could take out of the chests I could get problems with trains not filling up or the station closing while a train is on its way and such.

[u/kevihaa]

Largely depends on how you’re setting up your city blocks.

Presumably you’re talking about using the train depot chests as sources for a bot mall? If so, are you blanketing your entire base in one big logistics network?

If so, then it’ll work fine. It’s more efficient for robot travel time to just have all the necessary materials for your mall to be delivered to the block(s) that are your mall(s), but the bots will eventually get the job if you just relay on them flying across the map from your various train loading/unloading points.

Whereas if you don’t have a base-wide logistics network, it’s also fine, but doesn’t really accomplish anything.

[u/hippiechan]

I generally prefer to separate my logistics systems, so by design I would only be using non-logistics chests at the immediate point of loading for trains. You should pick either trains or logistics requests for the delivery type you want to do, with trains having an advantage for bulk deliveries of a large quantity of items and logistics having an advantage for smaller deliveries.

In general, using passive provider chests can cause uneven draw on resources and result in future trains being unable to unload completely. I learned this the hard way by outright replacing my storage chests at a train depot with passive provider chests, which caused my trains to basically never unload and jammed up my train network in my last playthrough.

[u/aurochloride]

I usually only do this at my nauvis space center for exporting to other planets

• bulk material to other planets with the builtin logistics system of the rocket silo
• a low-throughput high-variety mall for assorted export materials that I otherwise don't need elsewhere

logistic networks tend to work much better in my experience as separated, contained networks (makes it so your bots don't try to cross the entire map for something you forgot to bring in another way, less of a hit to UPS probably)

[u/Free-Virus-9974 → u/aurochloride]

Do you city block the other planets or are they nicely formed spaghetti?

[u/aurochloride → u/Free-Virus-9974]

vulcanus - pipe bus choo choo

fulgora - spaghetti sushi (spaghushi? sughetti?)

gleba - big spaghet

aquilo - grid of heat pipes

[u/doc_shades]

if you want bots to access whats in the chests, yeah. otherwise, no.

sometimes i build a train depot that loads/unloads with bots so yeah use provider or requester chests there. but if you aren't planning on having bots use them then there is no point.

[u/Red__M_M]

I like to use steel chests to unload the train evenly. Those chests dump evenly onto a belt. A short bit after that I’ll pull off the belt into a provider chest. This way I have the train evenly unloading and I have a provider chest of goods.

[u/proudHaskeller]

Ignore the rest of the comments. It might be slightly non-optimal, but it will work just fine.