Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Add another inserter option, like "override stack size: 1 stack" or "don't pause for more items". These options would make inserters perform faster (both in terms of item throughput, and visual smoothness) on stacked+mixed item belts.

Why?

I have been dealing with a lot of mixed and stacked belts in space age, as they are the natural output of recyclers (whether recycling scrap or recycling items), and current inserters struggle to deal with these quickly and smoothly. If I place a fast inserter to put this belt into a chest, it will pick up a stack of three red chips, pause for half a second, then move the three red chips to the chest. Then it grabs a miner, followed by another half second pause before swinging. Then thankfully it can grab four tungsten, which fills the inserter allowing it to swing immediately. But then it grabs two more half-stacks followed by pauses. This is slow throughput compared to what the inserter seems like it should be capable of, and also looks clunky with lots of inserter arm pauses.

Setting "override stack size" to 1 eliminates the pauses, but then it takes four swings to deliver one stack of tungsten to the chest. This was a good option for sushi belt inserters in 1.0, but in 2.0 this loses the benefit of stacked items.

What?

Here are several ways to make inserters pick up from this belt quickly and smoothly. (I don't think all of these should be added, these are just some different ideas.)

• Do not pause to wait for more items would continue to fill up the inserter arm with items it can reach, but once there are no more items it can grab, would immediately swing instead of making a half-second pause to see if more items will arrive.
• Override stack size: One stack would pick up one stack of items (whether it has 1 or 4 items in the stack) and then swing immediately. Perhaps a stack inserter could specify "two stacks", which would grab two stacks of items and then swing, even if each stack only has 2 items.
• Swing after X items would be allowed to pick up a stack and exceed X items, but would then have to swing immediately. This one is a more powerful tool: "swing after 1 item" would be equivalent to override stack size: one stack. "Swing after 9 items" would force a bulk inserter with 9-11 items in hand to swing, meaning it wouldn't try to pick up more items if it doesn't have enough room for a full stack of 4.

This seems like a pretty unnecessary feature, when you could just use more inserters, or use filtered splitters to put the different items onto different belts.

Related (quality inserter throughput suffers with mixed belts) viewtopic.php?f=6&t=121498