Factorio Forums

Currently, burner inserters start with some limited free energy.

Some mods, like Bob's mods, add long-handed burner inserters ... unfortunately this free energy given to burner inserters isn't enough for burner inserters to self-fuel even if fuel is the first thing they grab, which is unfortunately not always enough to complete that first self-fuel move especially (for some odd reason) burners reaching from above to feed below or right to feed left, leaving to frustrating micromanagement when setting up large arrays of burner inserters to fuel burner tech to go through and fuel them manually after building them due to them shutting down.

I realize this is a request to help fix something that may be considered mod-specific, but its a core mechanic (starting energy for burner inserters) the mod maker (bob) indicated was hard coded into the game so its something I guess only the game devs could fix.

I propose a fix that instead of some limited free energy, when placing a burner inserter, automatically fuel the burner with one unit of fuel from the player's inventory that gives the burner inserter a full bar of energy which is no longer free.

But what should the burner insterter prioritize with regards to fuel consumption? Coal and wood both have varying degrees of rarity in the early game when burner inserters are still being actively used (as most people seem to go directly for normal inserters to power everything).

Also, surely it would be easier to just have it so that 'self fueling' movements use no/almost no energy or even just make the fuel usage on the first item 0 and every one after that be higher. No idea how easy/hard it would be to implement but I see it producing less problems than choosing fuel from your inventory.

Edit: Not sure if up to date but this would fix your problem: viewtopic.php?f=92&t=1612

Woodmn wrote:But what should the burner insterter prioritize with regards to fuel consumption?

powerpoles, obviously. (if you ctrl-click your inventory into a car, then the first burnable item ends up in the fuel slot, which happens to be power poles due to menu sort order)