Loading certain amount of items to vehicles?

[Rahjital]

I'm currently trying to make "gas stations" where a pair of long-handed inserters would refill the fuel in cars. The problems is that inserters fill all the inventory spots of the car, not just the ones used for fuel. This is wasteful and impractical, since I have to check manually whether the car is full. Is there a way to use something like smart inserters or the circuit or logistic networks to do this?

It would also be very useful to fill trains with only certain amount of cargo.

[DaveMcW]

Here's a system that fills a smart chest with 60 items very slowly (1 item per 2.4 seconds).

When you pull your car up to the long-handed inserter, it will fill with ~64 items in a quick burst. Then when the long-handed inserter slows down you know it's time to pull away.

gasstation.jpg (223.54 KiB) Viewed 7684 times

[cube]

This cannot be done easily now. In 0.10.0 there will be filters for inventory slots, but these won't help you either.

What you could do is a station driven by logic networks that first unloads all coal from the car and then loads in the precise ammount. Complicated

Edit: I'm too slow

[Rahjital]

Here's a system that fills a smart chest with 60 items very slowly (1 item per 2.4 seconds).

When you pull your car up to the long-handed inserter, it will fill with ~64 items in a quick burst. Then when the long-handed inserter slows down you know it's time to pull away.

Whoa, that's quite a clever system! It occured to me to make something similar to this, but I could never make it quite as compact as this. Thank you, this is definitely going to see some use!

This cannot be done easily now. In 0.10.0 there will be filters for inventory slots, but these won't help you either.

What you could do is a station driven by logic networks that first unloads all coal from the car and then loads in the precise ammount. Complicated

Maybe if filters were expanded to limit how many items can be loaded too...

Unloading all the fuel from the car first is a pretty good idea, but with a few flaws. It would certainly stop fuel from piling in the car inventory, but I would need to either use smart inserters or stop carrying things in the car's trunk, neither of which do I want. It would also take so long it would be faster to just add the fuel by hand..

[ssilk]

I use the car meanwhile as good replacement for the train!

This is how it goes: I build an outpost based on solar. Anything runs with solar power. I have two circuits: one for miners and radar and the second for the inserters and lasers. This second is cut based, because it needs much less power.

The inserters feed the mined item in chest and from there into the car with long arm inserters (short work also, but that is pur luck not to collide with them). You can use up to 8 (4 on each side, but this is also pure luck to drive that exact, I use normally 3, that is also enough, if you have inserter stack size. So it can also be used later for train.

So I put one car in there to be filled and drive with the (filled?) other back to my factory to unfill it!

This is also my main issue: you cannot unfill a car with inserters! but ok, I just put it in some chest by hand. With logistic bots this works well,but I can imagine also a system, where I unload this chest into some other chests and then put that on the belts...

What else to say: the outpost can be built up very slow, I mean not everything must work at the first run. For example I begin with 1-2 miners driven by one solar and directly filling into chests, then belts, more solar, the second electric network with the accus, lasers, walls etc. Every time I drive to the outpost it will be enhanced. After 5-7 iterations you have a very good outpost and nearly everything is automated. Time to build the train, full electricity and go for the next outpost.

[Bleda]

hm, I remember having emptied a car with inserters...

another trick for the problem with the exact driving: use belts to bring your car close to the inserters. you just have to drive onto the belts and then the car automatically gets pushed towards the loading/unloading station. leave one space however, so you can drive away without ruining everything.

[Rahjital]

I just tested and ssilk is right - you can only unload the cargo from cars, but not the fuel. It's great for carrying stuff in the car, but not so much for automatic gas stations...

I also checked the wiki and it seems Lua can't access the cargo in cars, so it can't be modded in either. We'll have to wait for future versions of Factorio for gas stations.

[Bleda]

ok, I never tried to unload the fuel deposit. however, this is great for building gas stations. just have one inserter inserting fuel and another one taking it out. as long as there is space in the fuel deposit, it will be filled. if it starts filling the trunk, the other inserter will start emptying the trunk as it is being filled, so you know you can drive away.

[Rahjital]

Whoa, that's a brilliant idea! No need for any circuits, just two inserters, one putting in the fuel and a smart one taking it out. Fast, compact, allows carrying items in the trunk, that's exactly what I was looking for!

[Bleda]

you're welcome

[GewaltSam]

This cannot be done easily now.

I really hope that's on the roadmap for the circuit updates
I think that's a rather important thing, because it would help with delivering special requests to outposts and such in a great way. Right now, that's pretty difficult to do.