There are a few things the system should have in order to improve things for better usability, and they likely have code in engine already that could be used to solve them:

Cargo (Any Wagon)
Cargo (All Wagons)

This is similar to the Fuel count difference and critical for more complex networks ...

Apologies if this is considered a necro or not, but I was about to suggest my own thread and found this one during searching. I would like to throw my vote in for removing 'slots' as a display concept in chests and instead start using it as a figure to show 'density', especially for the upcoming 2.0 ...

Had this idea myself creating a station, and completely agree!

at run-time

Ah, thank you, that indeed answers my questions regarding possible or not


https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Manifolds

I had not seen this before, thank you! I'll be taking a look at it

FluidMustFlow does something interesting with its internal buffers in the ducts that may be ...

I've been trying to search for it, but I don't think I know the lingo enough to be looking correctly. I've read that large inventories are bad on UPS because of the methods inserters use to find empty spaces to put items. I've also seen 'compression' chests that densifies items down into one slot ...