I've been seeing a similar situation; not sure what intereactions could be doing this, since I sorta splurged on mods- wasn't sure if this was due to one mod updating and doing something weird.

I've have a setup that has gardenbots harvest perishables and place it in a distribution fridge and the three reception fridges I had earlier had been sorting( and stacking said food, thanks to the food stacker mod) like a charm without issue.

Lately however, I had noticed that when food is broadcast, it no longer drops intochests that contain like materials and instead pops into the nearest viable container from left to right. Per the food stack mod, all these foods retain very similar expiry timers( the garden bots seem to be able to carry and transfer food without depleting it's expiry) I was able to confirm the new foods still stack fine with existing gardenbotted stacks when I can swap them from container to container quickly enough.

I'll keep diggin to see if I can determine which mods may have change that may be affecting this, though I'm not entirely sure how to go about testing that.

anyhoo, lemme know if there's a way I can supply further data if desired.


EDIT: I think I understand now; seems for some reason I managed to activate the secondary sorting algorthym on the one broadcast beacon overtop the fridge used for the perishable crops, and I hadn't noticed until very recently. I made sure that that was disabled and everything appears to be working as desired again.

That said, could there be some sort of visual difference between a broadcast beacon set for primary alg versus one set for the secondary alg. I had no idea that was the culprit( and shamefully I had been wondering for the longest time how to toggle that feature).