Logic for supplying material

[Mastermindx]

So, I had a fish feeder feeding a pacu... I thought, 200 algae is not enough capacity, so I'm gonna make a storage bin right next to it. I REALLY think feeder should have more than 200 algae considering it doesn't even last 1.5 cycle,  but that is not the point I'm trying to make here...

Now, I have 3 tons of algae in the storage bin next to the feeder... My auto-sweeper won't fill it up from the storage bin...  I REALLY think auto-sweeper should be able to fill fish feeder, but it's not the point I'm trying to make here.

Now... it was next to impossible to have my dupe take care of the fish feeder.  Priority 9 wasn't enough... it HAD to be "top"(!) priority.  And then, the dupe would go halfway in the opposite direction to gather algae while there are 3 tons of it right next to the feeder.

So, I think right now that AI only check at supply source closest to the duplicant to choose which source to gather from. If I'm right  :

I think an improvement would be to look at both the source closest to duplicant and the one closest to target to decide which one to choose from.

An even better improvement would be to look at total trip length for both cases.

i.e.   (D)upe, (T)arget, (S)upply

That is good : S--T--------D

That is better : T-----S-----D

That is bad : T-----------D----S

 

It could be optimized beyond that, but that would be a lot more process intensive.  I think what I suggest is a good compromise for performance/quality.

Am I missing something that would make my suggestion worst than what we currently have?

[Soul-Burn]

I have an auto-sweeper that fills the fish feeder from a conveyor receptacle, and feeds farm tiles from a storage bin.

What is the priority of your storage bin? If it's higher or equal to the priority of the fish feeder (i.e. 9), it won't be filled by the sweeper or dupes.

[Mastermindx]

Tried everything, even putting the algae back on the ground (by removing it from the list of valid content of the bin). and the sweeper still won't feed the feeder.

The only thing I didn't try is move the sweeper... But right now, the only par the sweeper doesn't cover is the "tile" part of the sweeper. Honestly, if that's the tile that need to "receive" the algae, they seriously need to add an indicator in an overlay or something...  

[Xaekai]

Not specific to your situation, but yeah, there is a serious problem in this game with a lack of dupes looking nearby the target for resources. Having dupes bring the materials from halfway across the map when there is stacks of those materials on the ground or in a storage unit nearby the target is just retarded. For example I have a wood burners in my slickster paddocks, and dupes will bring wood from my former tree farm ~150 tiles away instead of the wood that's right there in the storage bin directly next to the burner.