Factorio Forums

The setup I have is a fast underground belt running into a yellow inserter. When the inserter is holding an item the power consumption is steady, but as it travels back to pick up another item, the power fluctuates like mad.

When the fast belt is running along side the inserter, the power still fluctuates but not as much.

When viewed at 0.1 speed it can be seen that the inserter stutters as it moves back.
The way I could have it coded would be to test if the inserter is moving then consume x amount of power. I guess between each frame or if the animation is not in one "folder" (for lack of a better word) it would be considered to have stopped and then started again which would cause it to do this. But I don't know if this is how it works and that still doesn't explain why it fluctuates more with the underground belt than it does with the side belt.

I'm not sure what is going on or if this is intentional, but I feel like it on a world with lots of inserters this would have some sort of effect, since power consumption numbers are changing so frequently.

Here is a blueprint:

This is simply inserter mechanics at work, the pick up window on an underground belt is smaller so the inserter will fail to grab items sometimes. NaB.

Also: power draw fluctuating like that doesn't have any impact on game performance.