Factorio Forums

I just stumbled upon this reddit post and haven't found a related report here.

When a damaged item is placed in the output slot of the appropriate assembling machine, the machine starts consuming resources and producing items without ever creating output. I randomly tested this with underground belts, underground pipes and assembling machines 2.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Damage entity
2. Place damaged entity into output slot of assembling machine producing that entity
3. Watch assembling machine producing into the void

IIRC, there was a statement regarding the outputted science packs of rocket silos:
Should a rocket with a sattelite be launched while there are still packs in the silo, the excess packs wont be voided but buffered internally, reappearing once enough room for them is given.

Thes same could apply in this case - What does happen once you remove the damaged item and run another production cycle? Do the items reappear or are they indeed lost?

Thanks for the report. Since this is such a rare thing and you have to manually interact with the assembling machine and purposefully put an item into the output slot (not something normally done) and because the "fix" would add overhead to every running assembly machine/furnace I'm going to say we won't fix this.

Simply don't do that

I would say just prevent the player from trying to shove damaged items into the output of the machine and throw an error at them saying that. The game already does this when players try to shove the wrong item into the output, e.g. placing engines in the output when the assembler is actually making science packs. I mean, this condition only happens when the player manually interacts with the machine and try to put an item into the output, so I figure the check wouldn't be running at all points causing too much problem.

KaiserTom wrote:I would say just prevent the player from trying to shove damaged items into the output of the machine and throw an error at them saying that. The game already does this when players try to shove the wrong item into the output, e.g. placing engines in the output when the assembler is actually making science packs. I mean, this condition only happens when the player manually interacts with the machine and try to put an item into the output, so I figure the check wouldn't be running at all points causing too much problem.

This sounds great.

searker wrote:IIRC, there was a statement regarding the outputted science packs of rocket silos:
Should a rocket with a sattelite be launched while there are still packs in the silo, the excess packs wont be voided but buffered internally, reappearing once enough room for them is given.

Thes same could apply in this case - What does happen once you remove the damaged item and run another production cycle? Do the items reappear or are they indeed lost?

I just tried this.
Fired 3 rockets then emptied the silo. Only 2k packs ever appeared.

This has been fixed. The assembler now just stops working.