Factorio Forums

I have come across some very odd behavior of inserters and can't think of it as anything else than a bug.

I just finished setting up my new coal liquefation build, wired everything up and watched start working as expected. Not over a minute after, I see that none of the refineries is active anymore, a quick check revealed that they were out of coal.
The coal is being loaded by blue inserters from a yellow belt. The Belts are fully backed up with coal but the inserters just won't move. Everything is powered, the inserter in it's "I'm ready"-animation and the configuration of the refineries remains untouched. Coal liquefaction worked just fine in my previous savefile, only the layout is different now.

What I`ve tried unsuccessfully:
rotating the inserter, connecting and disconnecting it to and from the logistic network, replacing it with different types of inserters, removing and replacing it on the same tile or on the adjacent tiles. No reaction. Using only left/right lane of the belt or both, same thing.
Saving and reloading the game, closing factorio and restarting it: the inserters remain stuck.


What (kinda) worked:
I canceled the coal liquefaction recipe in the the rifineries GUI, chose coal liquefaction again and the inserters instantly came back to life. Only for about 2 coal liquefaction-cycles though, then they stopped working again. This brings me to believe the issue is not directly concerning the insterters' behavior but rather their communication with the refinery.

A search in the forums returned nothing i found relevant. I'm new to posting, so if information is unclear or missing just let me know and I'll be happy to respond
Savefile and log are attached.

Post the save please.

Ref.: viewtopic.php?f=218&t=62434

Are any of the fluid outputs filled up? IIRC inserters stop inserting if they get filled too far, even if the associated inventory is empty.

This is likely related to the problem I had with furnace-type assemblers outputting a fluid backing up and sending the inserter to sleep, but not waking it back up.

Hexicube wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 30, 2019 12:14 pm

This is likely related to the problem I had with furnace-type assemblers outputting a fluid backing up and sending the inserter to sleep, but not waking it back up.

I doubt it. Furnaces had a distinct problem because they're not assembling machines. Refineries are assembling machines.

I've got to apologize... Yes, Light Oil was backing up because of a single misplaced piece of pipe :/
It's usually at least the second thing to check, but for some reason, I apparently didn't this time.
Sorry about the fuss, I'm officially a noob now!