Mixed Mined Material does not get sent to Shipyard

Issue description

Removing Mixed Mined Materials ("MMM") from the list of items to sort on an ore sorter will not send that material to the Shipyard and in fact appears to delete it, if there are no suitable storage buckets assigned to receive MMM in some location which have already been "initialized", i.e. they have previously received MMM either by belt or truck (newly placed buckets with MMM assigned but which have never actually received such material will not receive the buffer from an ore sorter; I believe I have read elsewhere that this is a pre-existing issue with storage units in general).

Likewise, a "unity quick remove" from a storage bucket will effectively delete MMM if there is no other suitable place to send it, instead of sending it to the Shipyard as with other materials.

In either case, this "deleted" material does not appear to move to another (or the same) ore sorter's input buffer or any component (e.g. dirt, rock, etc.) storage bucket elsewhere. Re-adding MMM to the ore sorter restarts the buffer at zero until new material is received by belt or truck as usual.

Otherwise, if a suitable bucket exists, the ore sorter buffer appears to clear towards one of them as expected normal behavior, and MMM can be "volleyed" between storage buckets using the "empty" button on the applicable storage bucket assuming another one is available which is able to receive it.

Attached is a sandbox save that I have created that (for me) demonstrates this behavior depending on the configuration (or deletion) of the storage buckets. I initially believed this to be an issue related to a mod but have found that it occurs consistently with and without loading the few (UI only) mods that I use.

See also this Reddit post by myself: Another user has reported seeing that MMM appears to remain in buffer despite not appearing in the ore sorter window, but I have so far not been able to observe this behavior.

Question about Ore Sorting/Mixed Mined Material : r/captain_of_industry

Thanks!

Reproduction steps

1. Create mining towers, designations, assign vehicles, etc.
2. Create ore sorter, add applicable ores and "mixed mined materials" ("MMM") with no attached storage bucket.
3. Wait for trucks to deliver MMM to sorter.
4. Remove MMM from list of products to sort, or
5. Attach MMM storage bucket to sorter and select unity quick-remove of MMM from said bucket after some MMM accumulates (provided there are no other suitable buckets to receive it).

Game version and build number

v0.8.8 (b627)

Which branch of the game are you on?

Stable

Operating system

Windows

This is intended, quantities are low and we don't want material to end up in places where it could create problems (some copper into the mainly-iron area).
The approach is best effort, we try to move material into storages that already store the same type of material otherwise we destroy it before it reaches the shipyard.

Captain Matt wrote:

This is intended, quantities are low and we don't want material to end up in places where it could create problems (some copper into the mainly-iron area).
The approach is best effort, we try to move material into storages that already store the same type of material otherwise we destroy it before it reaches the shipyard.

Thanks! In that case the logic makes sense. I suppose the lesson here is make sure you have storage buffer available so as to avoid losing precious ore should you make a mistake in assignments. 😉