Factorio Forums

I got a bug with that yellow inserter which should put belt into the splitter assembly (the output chest is empty) but he doesn't. It has worked when I built my factory, I don't know when it stopped.
If I rotate him, it doesn't work better, if I replace him ok it works again.
I already had this bug on a yellow underground belt assembling machine with the same inserter setup. (Not visible but on the top of my screenshot)
I tried to reproduce this bug by emptying the chest, it doesn't happen anymore.

screenshot : https://imgur.com/0eVpdXV

After a couple of hour I got it again but this time on a green science assembling machine and the inserter stay above the belt (see below). I wanted to check if he has taken an item with a red wire, magic he moves. (he had one item). He returns to the same state when I cut the red wire. Any change of the condition makes him work but only one time. This time replacing the inserter, even with a blue one, doesn't fix the bug. And it happens only when the inserter take one belt not when he takes a yellow inserter.

Edit : I fixed it by placing another belt after the inserter.

screenshot : http://imgur.com/msnkHgJ

I forgot the log file for the first bug.

I hope I am clear, my english is not so good :/

It looks like your splitter assembler won't run because it won't get any gears. Unless you have gears coming from somewhere else. The inserter won't insert a belt because the belt input on the assembler is probably full.

Splitters don't need gears.

As precised and as we can see on the screenshot (sorry I don't know how to insert image directly in the post), the assembler and the output chest are empty.

The first one is simply a damaged belt that can not be inserted, the green science one I don't get yet.

Right for the first one, I have put damaged belt in the chest, I didn't know this, ty !

Ok I think I got the second "bug". It was the same problem, there was one damaged belt too. With the stack inserter research inserter tried to take three of them, stopped at one because he can't take the damaged. Then when I have connected a conditionnal signal I forced the inserter, so he put the undamaged and still let on the belt the damaged one.

it would look like the green science build tries to insert more belts, but the belts could also be damaged?

Not more belts as usually because the assembler isn't running.

As Loewchen said; no, the belts can't be damaged. I think that is the reason why the the inserter stopped, because he took a damaged belt. And I guess, he stop above the line because he can't stack this belt with ohter undamaged ? (I had the stack inserter tech) I should try.

Thanks for the report. This is indeed caused by a damaged belt that can't be put into the assembling machine.

It's such an edge case and the fix will have performance implications for the 99%+ use-case where items aren't damaged that I don't consider this worth fixing at the moment.

Simply remove the damaged belt and fix it to get things going again.

This is the sort of thing I can see happening to players if they deconstruct any damaged yellow belts, and then try to recycle then, either into science or upgrade them to red belts. When it happens it is very unobvious what the problem is.

Would there be any performance penalty if all recipes could accept damaged items (and produced undamaged outputs)?

Recipes do accept damaged items.

The error ocurrs when:
1. Inserter is pulling multiple ingredients from the same chest/belt.
2. Inserter inserts damaged item.
3. Inserter tries to insert an undamaged item (or vice versa) and has to wait because the slot is occupied by an item with different health.
4. The assembling machine runs out of a different ingredient because the inserter is stalled.

Changing any of these conditions will solve the problem. The annoying part is that no one expects it to break like this.

The real bugfix is to allow ALL items to merge with damaged stacks like science packs and repair packs do.

Since damaged items now get their health averaged together when merged, allowing damaged and intact items to merge would then turn all of them into damaged. You could go from a stack of 99 intact belts to 100 damaged if merging was allowed.

Fixing an edge case like this doesn't seem worth the annoyance of having to repair all those items.

For what it's worth, science packs and repair packs (and axes, and most ammo) have a different kind of durability that increments when you add another of the same item on and decrements when utilizing them. Think of those as having a number of charges instead of having durability like placed items do. Adding on another of the same item, even if it has lost charges, should always increment the charges. Combining 2 ammo magazines that each have 4 shots left will result in 1 ammo magazine with 8 shots left.

Merge 1 damaged repair pack with 99 undamaged repair packs. You get a damaged stack of 100 repair packs.

Remove 1 repair pack from the damaged stack. You get 1 damaged repair pack and 99 undamaged repair packs.

It works perfectly!

The only annoying part is the green bar appears on undamaged stacks, but that can be fixed too.