Factorio Forums

I think that given the choice between two different pickup targets, an inserter should choose the one closer to its pickup location. It appears that they currently choose the one closer to the inserter itself.

I accidentally created an inserter that could pick up from its own insert location. This results in a stuttering loop. However, the weird part that resulted in this bug report is that the loop can be broken by another pickup target coming by, but only in half of the possible configurations, depending on if the new target is closer to the inserter than the insert location.

This behaviour has become the core element of the game (that insert picks up things closer to the center of the inserter), and I believe it has some real uses in the game, so I'm against changing it.

On the other hand, this means that we can't make some very specific inserters for a mod, that would take from a specified side of the belt, and only that side, or others that would pickup on one side to put on the other.

Granted, the uses for such specific inserters is relatively low, but with the changes to pickup/insert locations, it made sense to try and make all the crazy inserters we could think about.

I like this experimentations. Sometimes they reveal new stuff.

Just one sentence to that, top bring back, for what those changes are useful: Granted, that it makes sense to have more that 5 different instances of a very similar function, and granted, that it makes sense to change core behavior for that, I think it is more than questionable, if the majority of the players is able to remember those types AND can use them correctly.

OK. I'll just hope for more advanced pickup location options in the future.