Factorio Forums

Hi!

/me noob.

Having lots of raw wood I thought it would be a nice idea to burn it as fuel. And trying to automate it, I thought it would be a good idea to switch the fuel of a locomotive, if a level is below a certain amount.
Basically two inserters turned off/on if level of wood is below/about 2000 and then solid fuel is loaded. Works great (as far as I see…).

And to speed it up the process I try to unload the other fuel, so solid fuel is unloaded via inserters, if wood is about 2000 and wood is unloaded if wood is below 2000. This does not work.

The filter inserters are set up to unload solid fuel/wood, filtered with solid fuel/word and all....

Any ideas?

Inserters don't unload fuel from locomotives. Just imagine the contamination problem if you stopped a locomotive in the middle of a belt based unload station. The easiest way is just to let the trains burn down their existing fuel and add wood as there is room in the locomotives.

Without the unloading it works the easiest way…. I just wanted to make it faster.

I understand your argument with the contamination problem, but this is a general problem. Simply don't stop a train in the middle… the contamination problem exists if you have a "solid fuel load into cargo wagon"-station, too. And has to be solved by design. So why a special solution for a general design problem?

It is not very consequent to have inserters that can load a locomotive but not unload it. It is not very consequent to change behavior that makes something impossible because that would make something else a little bit more difficult.

Suggestions:

I. Either document this limitation on the wiki page
II. Or remove the behavior.

I fully agree. A few versions ago it was possible to unload fuel from locomotives. I appreciated this feature.

Use case:
If you load and unload at every station the fuel distributes itself through your rail network like a disease. Now I need fuel deliveries to several hubs of my rail network and cannot insert fuel only at the refinery.

just imagine the contamination problem if you stopped a locomotive in the middle of a belt based unload station.

Protip: Just don't do that. Automated trains lock their inventory until they hit a station. There is no contamination problem. If a player chooses to drive manual then they accept all the risks.

Inserters don't remove fuel from locomotives because they remove the burnt fuel instead. In vanilla there is no fuel with a burnt_result that can be used in locomotives, but if mods for example make uranium fuel cells usable in locomotives, the inserter will remove the used up uranium fuel cells.

Just a thing to consider: since fuel type affects acceleration of vehicles, if you switch your trains to wood from solid fuel, their routes will end up taking a longer time to complete. For this reason, it's better you use your wood in boilers, furnaces, burner inserters and drills - which only care about the energy of the fuel. Of course, you can always make wooden chests, small electric poles, or just put all the extra wood in a box and shoot it

Inserters don't remove fuel from locomotives because they remove the burnt fuel instead. In vanilla there is no fuel with a burnt_result that can be used in locomotives, but if mods for example make uranium fuel cells usable in locomotives, the inserter will remove the used up uranium fuel cells.

But can't filter inserters take care of that? IMO it is better to keep inventory behavior consistent and let the player manage their strange freakish niche situations.

+1 consistent behavior!

you could spread the chests out so it fills up multiple cars

IMHO the best way to dispose of excess wood is to put a requester chest buyout steam plant and use a splitter with input priority to the wood to merge it into your plant's fuel supply.

Wood goes from your trash slot to the plant and burns quickly. Plus you save on coal.