Inserter drop point inconsistency

[Engimage]

The well-known rule is that inserters do drop items on the far side of the belt if they do it from the side.

I'm not sure if this was always like that but currently (in 0.15) if inserters try to put items straight they always do put items on North/East side despite of their orientation

I will attach screenshot describing this.

Imo inserters should put items say on far side and to the right of their pointer so when you turn it 180 degrees it will start offloading to another side of the belt.

Inserters direction.jpg (135.58 KiB) Viewed 7879 times

Basing on this intuitive logic I designed the marathon green circuit build

Blueprint string

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

Green circuits.jpg (166.96 KiB) Viewed 7879 times

But figured out it will produce only a single-sided belt

[Nemoricus]

As a workaround, move the electric circuit removing inserter on the left down one spot and place a north-facing belt. This will let the electronic circuits go to the bottom lane. You'll have to move the medium power pole, of course.

[Engimage]

Sure thing there are always workarounds. And I already did fix this in other design. However the inserter behaviour is what was bothering me.

After some research I came up with conclusion that when putting items straight inserters always put them on the right side of the belt so north/east is not actually true. The truth is that they still do use the same (right) side of the belt no matter of their orientation. So there is a predictable consistency in this but I'm not sure that it is desirable.

[leoch]

This mod lets you customise output location (and pull form the side). I consider it essential now.
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/GotLag/Side%20Inserters

[Engimage]

This mod lets you customise output location (and pull form the side). I consider it essential now.
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/GotLag/Side%20Inserters

I know this mod. And I use Bob's one most of time. I am talking about vanilla here.

[sparr]

I, too, would love it if inserters were more locally consistent in the scenario you describe here. I've run into this problem when rotating blueprints before.

[leoch]

Then I agree, but I'd like it even more if something like that mod were stock. (It could be just one key to toggle between near/far or left/right sides of the belt, and one key to rotate the pick-up point.)

Bob's version is just over-complicated (and over-capable).

[Koub]

What's funny is that back in the old ages, the inserters did behave like you whish. It was changed for optimisation reasons.
I think it was with 0.12, but I might be mistaken.

[BenSeidel]

What's funny is that back in the old ages, the inserters did behave like you whish. It was changed for optimisation reasons.
I think it was with 0.12, but I might be mistaken.

If that is true (the optimisation part, not the old behaviour part), with the new belt optimisations, is the inserter optimisation relevant anymore? Can it safely be removed to give us the old behaviour back?

[leoch]

If that is true (the optimisation part, not the old behaviour part), with the new belt optimisations, is the inserter optimisation relevant anymore? Can it safely be removed to give us the old behaviour back?

That's not the way code optimisation works.

In any case, removing a feature to improve performance (or something else) isn't optimisation really, it's simplification.

Maybe Koub meant the "optimisation" was from the UI perspective: simpler & easier to learn?

[Koub]

Wen I said "optimization", I meant :
Changes have been made to inserters and belts to improve the game performance (so that you could build bigger factories with same performance, or have better performance for a given factory).
One of the changes that came with these optimizations is the change in inserter/belt interaction.

[BenSeidel]

That's not the way code optimisation works.

That is exactly the way code optimisations work. The original optimisation was based upon the original items-have-a-hitbox while on a belt, so there was a lot of work to be done to find a gap in the belt. As the belt mechanic has fundamentally changed, even more so with Rseding's new pointer-to-the-head system, it may not be an optimisation that will have any effect on game performance now as the inserter does not need to do an area search, but have a pointer directly into the belt datastructure?

Additionally, One optimisation may increase code speed, but in the presence of another optimisation, decrease code speed.

[mOoEyThEcOw]

That's not the way code optimisation works.

Additionally, One optimisation may increase code speed, but in the presence of another optimisation, decrease code speed.

Exactly, without the code base, there is no way for us to know what optimizations do what.

[BenSeidel]

That's not the way code optimisation works.

Additionally, One optimisation may increase code speed, but in the presence of another optimisation, decrease code speed.

Exactly, without the code base, there is no way for us to know what optimizations do what.

Hence the question directed to the developers:

with the new belt optimisations, is the inserter optimisation relevant anymore? Can it safely be removed to give us the old behaviour back?

[gustaphe]

+1 to this request. After 1337 (hey, look at that) hours in-game, something like this should be intuitive.

[Lav]

Placement being dependent on inserter/belt rotation is effectively a bug. It harms the gameplay, causing issues with an important game feature - ability to rotate blueprints.

Inserters should follow a specific set of rules. It doesn't matter what set of rules (though backwards compatibility is always nice), for as long as it's consistent and direction-agnostic.

[steinio]

Surprisingly 1 million buyers have no problem with the current functionality.

[Lav]

Surprisingly 1 million buyers have no problem with the current functionality.

So following your logic, there's no need to fix bugs at all? Since, you know, a million lemmings can't be wrong million buyers have already confirmed that they have no problem with them?

And how do you know they don't have a problem anyway? Have you asked all of them? Cause I can't remember answering.

[British_Petroleum]

If this can't be fixed without making inserters more performance hungry, then I'd much prefer it to stay the way it is. It's quirky

[bobingabout]

I don't really care. It wouldn't affect me either way if you fix it or not
This is... "Non-standard use of an inserter", I mean, they're configured for "far side of a belt", far side is the middle, so... non-standard. Besides, my inserters mod allows you to select what part of a tile to place items, even in this situation.