Refined Network Storage Redux

Store, access and transfer items and fluids digitally. No belts, no pipes, no robots between your storage and the machines that use it.

This is the Factorio 2.0 port of Refined Network Storage by NindyBun (MIT). The original is 1.1 only and is tagged deprecated on the mod portal. The item storage layer has been rebuilt on the engine's script inventories, so the network keeps full item identity instead of a bare number.
I'm a big fan of the original mod and since the author don't continue the development I picked up his work with opencode and deepseek v4.1 flash. This is my very first mod release. Will try to deliver regular updates.

How it works

Everything reachable from a Network Controller over cables counts as one network. Without a controller, cables and drives do nothing. Rename the controller to tell several networks apart.

Storage Drives

Item Storage Drive — 4k, 16k, 64k or 256k items.
Fluid Storage Drive — 25k, 100k, 400k or 1600k fluid.
Each drive has its own filter list and works as a whitelist or a blacklist, so you decide what it accepts.
Drives are capacity based, not slot based: a drive holds the amount it says, no matter how many different item types that is.

Cables

10 cable colours with matching underground cables. Different colours never connect, so several networks can run side by side.
Underground cables reach 8 tiles.

IO Buses

Item IO Bus — moves items between the network and the chest, wagon or machine it points at. Base rate 15 items/s, raised by research and adjustable per bus.
Fluid IO Bus — the same for fluids. Base rate 1200/s.
External IO Bus — makes a chest or a machine part of the network directly: the network sees that container's contents without copying them into a drive first.
Every bus switches between input, output and input/output, and can be driven by the circuit network: enable/disable, set filters, override the stack or fluid size.

Network Grid

The Network Grid opens the whole network and moves items by hand: left click for one, shift + left click for a stack, right click for half a stack, ctrl + left click for everything. Sortable and searchable.

Priority

Every network component takes a priority from -5 to 5. The network fills and drains higher priorities first.

What the 2.0 port changes

Item identity survives. Because drives store through engine inventories, quality, ammo, durability, health and item tags come back out the way they went in.
Quality items are refused at the drive input instead of being silently merged or downgraded.
Drive contents are no longer a hand-serialized table, so large drives keep accepting new item types.

Not in this release yet

These parts exist but are not researchable in this release and are planned for a later update:

Wireless Transmitter and Portable Wireless Grid
Personal Player Port
Network Transmitter and Network Receiver
Detector
The wireless range bonus technologies

Known issues

Hovering over a placed drive shows Storage: 0/0. The drive's own window shows the real contents.
A cable of a second colour connected to a drive that is already part of a network bridges the two networks, even though cables of different colours otherwise never connect. Connect only one cable colour per drive.
The Item IO Bus does not take items straight out of a mining drill. Route through a chest or place the bus at the machine that uses the ore.
The Network Grid can flicker for a moment when a new item type is added by hand. The stored amounts are not affected.

Credits and licence

Refined Network Storage Redux is an independent port of Refined Network Storage by NindyBun, used and published under the MIT licence. Everything not listed above comes from the original. The 2.0 port and the rebuilt storage layer are by haiGodzilla. See NOTICE in the mod folder for the full attribution.