Factorio Forums

Hi all,
I have only had this game for about 24hrs and already in love with it. I got my first setup going last night and automated research. But there are a few questions I need help with to optimize my setup.

First: Is there a way to control how much of a resource I have on a belt network at one time? I have found that I am making things in one location (say gears) and transporting them long distances. This causes a HUGE backlog of produced materials that are just sitting on the belt when the raw materials that went into producing them could have been used for something else. I have a similar issue with my research. For a while I was over producing Green research. Now, Green research takes alot more materials to make then Red so I would like to stop making Green research when I have, say 50 unused packs on the circulation belt. I would like to automate the balance of Red and Green research on the circulation belt.

Second: Is there a easy way to sort the product on a circulation belt? Using research as an example, I would like to be able to at least put Green research on one side and Red research on the other side. If I could do something more complex for when I get to higher tiers of research (like green-blue-green on one lane and red-purple-red on the other lane).

Third: I'm having problems finding a solid tutorial for for Smart Inserters. The belts lane page on the wiki (https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... /Belt_lane) shows a smart inserter pulling one material off a converyer line and putting it on another. I cant for the life of me figure out the interface for the smart inserter and what is doing what.

For reference.
My Research production setup:


My General production setup:

To control the amount of stuff on a belt there's really only one way: use shorter belts

To put stuff together on a single belt, you make clever use of some properties of belts and inserters. I often make my red and green research like this

Inserter puts red on the far end of the belt, green gets merged onto the closer lane.

Boogieman14 wrote:To control the amount of stuff on a belt there's really only one way: use shorter belts

Damit...was afraid you would say that.

But that setup looks cool, going to have to steal it. I guess I was just worried about putting things too close together and not leaving me enough room to expand.

I tend to start my research area out pretty compact. This is basically my entire red/green research (and the beginnings of blue, just started this map)


All other production pretty much gets planted outside of this area (and actually all over the place, especially once I get my logistics robots going)

And as you can see, I make use of direct insertion a lot (from one factory straight into the next, for instance with the copper wire to electronic circuits). This also cuts out on a lot of belt storage, and for some things it's pretty much the only way to get things going at full speed (those aforementioned copper wires being a notable example). Direct insertion also benefits from inserter stack bonus research, once you start getting that.

Ifandbut wrote:Hi all,
I have only had this game for about 24hrs and already in love with it. I got my first setup going last night and automated research. But there are a few questions I need help with to optimize my setup.

First: Is there a way to control how much of a resource I have on a belt network at one time? I have found that I am making things in one location (say gears) and transporting them long distances. This causes a HUGE backlog of produced materials that are just sitting on the belt when the raw materials that went into producing them could have been used for something else. I have a similar issue with my research. For a while I was over producing Green research. Now, Green research takes alot more materials to make then Red so I would like to stop making Green research when I have, say 50 unused packs on the circulation belt. I would like to automate the balance of Red and Green research on the circulation belt.

As mentioned not really, but a good way to handle this sort of stuff (to a degree) is to use a 'main line' that you pull most resources from. Then have splitters grabbing off the line (in that way whatever you split off..will only get half of what is on the line instead of all of it). Also consider making more things locally. For instance i'll often take gears..and insert them directly into their target. Instead of transporting them around. And pretty much everybody who has been around for awhile agree that copper wire should be pretty much only inserted.

Little tricks like this, and similar, will help keep workflow going as you'd like.

Second: Is there a easy way to sort the product on a circulation belt? Using research as an example, I would like to be able to at least put Green research on one side and Red research on the other side. If I could do something more complex for when I get to higher tiers of research (like green-blue-green on one lane and red-purple-red on the other lane).

Two ways to do it. If you want to use just one belt..place them on the side you want (inserters place on the far side of the belt). If you don't want to..or can't do that. Then place red on one belt, green on another. Then bring them together in a T intersection. That'll put them on only one side of the belt.

Third: I'm having problems finding a solid tutorial for for Smart Inserters. The belts lane page on the wiki (https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... /Belt_lane) shows a smart inserter pulling one material off a converyer line and putting it on another. I cant for the life of me figure out the interface for the smart inserter and what is doing what.

Smart inserters are..complicated. By themselves..you can use the filter options to tell them what they will pick up. So if you have a mixed belt..but only want to grab off one item. Then you can set the filter to that one item.

But if you combine them with wiring, or logistics networks. Then you can set conditions on when they work, based on the amount of other items you have. Which those options only become open in the interface..if they are part of the network (connect a green, or red wire to them..or have them in the 'orange section' of a roboports space). They will then 'see' any other 'smart' container on the network. (So with Wires...any other smart chest that has the same wire connected to it..AND the wires stretch across enough electric poles to string them together, with roboports...any other smart chest that isn't a basic smart chest (its confusing I know..re-read it till you figure out I'm using 'smart' as a type of chest..as well as the name of a specific chest) in the same roboport network.

The big lesson here is that inserters always place on the far side of the belt. Here's the research arm of my factory, for example:



Since green is being inserted from below, it is placed the top half of the belt. Since red is being inserted from above, it is placed on the bottom. No need to merge belts, unless you want to make a fancy rotating setup like Boogieman.

As to smart inserters, you set up a filter by just left clicking on the smart inserter once it's placed. They will not grab items off a belt until you set up this filter. (You can set multiple filters as well, if you want to sort multiple items.)

Ifandbut wrote:Third: I'm having problems finding a solid tutorial for for Smart Inserters. The belts lane page on the wiki (https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... /Belt_lane) shows a smart inserter pulling one material off a converyer line and putting it on another. I cant for the life of me figure out the interface for the smart inserter and what is doing what.

smart inserter interface is made of two parts: the "filter" one and the "condition" one

filter part
smart inserter will take only "filtered" item from belt. For example, if a belt contains iron and copper plates, and filter is set to iron plate, the inserter will take only iron plates, letting copper plates pass through. this is the situation of belt lane page on wiki

condition part
smart inserter will take any item but only if condition is true.
Condition could be based on red/green circuit or logistic network.
typical use is to limit input/output of assembly machine: if logistic network contains < X item of this type then load the assembly machine. as soon as X items are in logistic network assembly machine is not loaded any more. Usually it's easier to limit output, so items are not removed from assembly machine and when internal storage of the assembler is full it will stop producing.

finally you can use both: filter and condition, so it will only move item X (letting other pass through) if there are less/more than Y number of Z items.

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... +schematic - have a look at the schematic at this thread for some ideas.

One note for the OP: You could set up a timer circuit to move items onto/off of a belt in a time-delayed fashion of limiting how often the inserters move things.
Some searching on the forums (and the wiki) will turn up several versions of such.

Rewritten the post by arl85 and included into the wiki:
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... t_inserter

Jace_Macleod wrote:The big lesson here is that inserters always place on the far side of the belt. Here's the research arm of my factory, for example:

...

Since green is being inserted from below, it is placed the top half of the belt. Since red is being inserted from above, it is placed on the bottom. No need to merge belts, unless you want to make a fancy rotating setup like Boogieman.

As to smart inserters, you set up a filter by just left clicking on the smart inserter once it's placed. They will not grab items off a belt until you set up this filter. (You can set multiple filters as well, if you want to sort multiple items.)

Ya, the whole idea of the robots putting parts on the FAR side of the belt instead of the NEAR side was screwing me up. Any idea why it is like that instead of taking from the side closest to the robot (or better yet, letting us decide which side the robot should take parts from)?

I actually found a way to do the merge belt thanks to the wiki (https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... /Belt_lane) if I bring the 2 products at a 90 degree angle to another belt the products will merge so that product A is on one side and product B is on another.

arl85 wrote: ...
finally you can use both: filter and condition, so it will only move item X (letting other pass through) if there are less/more than Y number of Z items.

So I would need to research and set up a logistics network in order to tell a smart inserter to only supply gears to the red science factory if there are less then 20 red science in the network? I guess this is more of a late-game thing and I will just have to live with filling conveyors for the early game.

Ifandbut wrote:Ya, the whole idea of the robots putting parts on the FAR side of the belt instead of the NEAR side was screwing me up. Any idea why it is like that instead of taking from the side closest to the robot (or better yet, letting us decide which side the robot should take parts from)?

To screw you up even more When putting items on the belt, inserters put them on the far lane. When picking items off the belt, they prefer the closer lane (but will take the far lane as well)

Ifandbut wrote:

arl85 wrote: ...
finally you can use both: filter and condition, so it will only move item X (letting other pass through) if there are less/more than Y number of Z items.

So I would need to research and set up a logistics network in order to tell a smart inserter to only supply gears to the red science factory if there are less then 20 red science in the network? I guess this is more of a late-game thing and I will just have to live with filling conveyors for the early game.

You can get the same done by connecting the smart inserters to smart chests using red or green wire and setting the appropriate wire condition on the inserter. But whichever option you pick, these only count items that are in chests (either smart or logistics). Items on the belt are invisible for everything except any inserter next to that belt feeding it to a requesting machine.

ssilk wrote:Rewritten the post by arl85 and included into the wiki:
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... t_inserter

Thanks. That is exactly what I needed.