Robot AI: Storage Wagon vs. Storage Pull, Front Pull, and Storage Push

[lyric geyser]

The robot gets stuck moving materials between wagons that interact with each other. Not as much a bug as it is robot AI, so here I am in the feedback section.

I know that has been reported before, and is on the dev's radar, but I wanted to add $.02 and a more detailed request in feedback rather than in the bug reports.

Rarely is it useful to move something from the consumable side of a train (miner, supercharger e.g.) when it has front pull or storage pull on it. When it's urgent to craft tracks and there's no material available on the ground (AND the miner isn't about to clear out a lot of resources) is that useful - it doesn't seem like something that bot AI should handle at all. One exception being MAYBE the compactor, but only to move resources straight from compactor to the crafting wagon or else it will, once again, get stuck in the loop that is storage wagon Vs. Storage pull

• It's not useful move something from the processed side of a wagon with storage push (Compactor Transformer, Collector) .

[river trail]

Thanks for the feedback and the 0.02$ 😍 ! You definitely describe some badly handled cases. We'll go over the bot very soon and I'll want to add your feedback as well. So to sum up

• When getting items from consumables, the bot should avoid loops. Maybe even only activate this feature if we're low on resources and directly feed the crafter only
• When something has a storage push, the bot should not touch the processed/output stack at all?
  Do you by chance have some run-ids #.. where you could saw theses issues quite well (only in case you have it or find it easily; it helps a bit for validating changes)

[lyric geyser]

I will happily start collecting some run-ids! On a small scale from this morning, I have #xw0G - My bot pulls from the miner to feed the storage wagon on a loop.

• Storage push - YES PLEASE! Maybe the bot could pull from the processed side side of a wagon to feed theconsumable side of the wagon (e.g. pull from collector or transformer to feed the miner.) The Transformer wagon is the biggest loop risk since it's both fast and has consumable and processed sides of the wagon. But, everyone tries to get storage or front pull to automate the Transformer anyhow. If the bot detects these wagon extensions, maybe it doesn't need to feed it at all (unless it's the only one it has access to pathing-wise to avoid an idle state?)

It's very much an edge case to have the bot direct feeding crafter. I would personally rather switch to my bot than have it start pulling out of another wagon to throw to the crafter. If the automation I have set up on my train is self sabotaging, consider it a lesson learned rather than a bot ai problem 😅