Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Have inserters capable of extracting coal (or any fuel) out of the burner inserter slot, like it is possible from boilers and burner drills.

What

I think inserter should be capable to extract coal (or any fuel) out of the burner inserter slot. Since inserter don't have input slot (and have a single slot), I think this should not pose much issues. Also, the sole purpose of having the input of an inserter on a burner inserter is to attempt to extract its fuel, so I don't think it could break any existing facory.

Why

The main point is to increase the number of logistic possibilities, purely for divertissement, reguardless of (in)efficiency.

applications

It would allow chain feeding of inserters, especially output inserters, which are currently a pain to feed. It would allow pre electric automation. It would ease the life of masochistic people (like Gepwin) making burner only challenges. Also, it would allow to replace the now impractically large boiler fuel filter by a simple two inserters fuel filter.

Chain feeding would not render useless existing belt feeding space expensive design, because chain feeding is even worse efficiency wise than, for example, belt feeding.

Similar suggestions

I guess it falls into the early game enchancement suggestions, although I have not seen this particular suggestion made yet.

I'm not sure this is needed other than for a "burner only" challenge.

Early in the game you have burner mining drills and it is easy to place them to get just coal or just iron. No need for complex filter setups. Also no assembler that need 3 inputs, where feeding coal to the burner inserters is a problem. Assemblers need power anyway so putting a burning inserter there is kind of stupid (other than for a challenge).

I've build huge smelting setups with just burning inserters and figuring out how to feed coal to each inserter for e.g. steel smelting is half the fun. I think making it easier would lessen the game.

Yeah, burner inserter is kind of useless, niche at best, and by no means this suggestion changes anything.

It does significantly changes burner only challenges, for better or worse since, as you say, headache is part of the challenge. Still, this would not be an outrigth ease of the challenge since, while chain feeding is much more compact, it also is much less efficient : on a fifty-ish long chain, bringing one coal to the furthest inserter cost one coal. And fifty is about the lenght limit fof the chain due to thourghput issue. So it's not an outright gain, more of a new option with tradeoff.

More broadly than burner only challenge, the point of this small suggestion is to increase possibilty to toy around with an other logistic paradygm, just for fun, reguardless of inefficiency. I'll update the OP to reflect this view.

Sounds like you need burner leech: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/niki1233 ... 0A15%20Fix

The original version was from Klonan, one of the developers which may mean it gets into the game if more user wish so.

Now that mod sounds useful. But only if it also works for other inserters too. Move coal from furnace to furnace using fast inserter should allow quite a long chain.

Imho it makes no sense that one can chain boilers (that still works in 0.15, right?) but not furnaces.

steinio wrote:Sounds like you need burner leech: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/niki1233 ... 0A15%20Fix

The original version was from Klonan, one of the developers which may mean it gets into the game if more user wish so.

Nice! Thank you, I will give it a try. Also, it does more than I asked, and maybe more than I want. For example, when burner inserter take from furnace, can they output fuel onto a belt (bad)? or do they only pump out fuel into themselves and fuel receivers (more than what I asked for, but bearable)?

4xel wrote:

steinio wrote:Sounds like you need burner leech: https://mods.factorio.com/mods/niki1233 ... 0A15%20Fix

The original version was from Klonan, one of the developers which may mean it gets into the game if more user wish so.

Nice! Thank you, I will give it a try. Also, it does more than I asked, and maybe more than I want. For example, when burner inserter take from furnace, can they output fuel onto a belt (bad)? or do they only pump out fuel into themselves and fuel receivers (more than what I asked for, but bearable)?

Honestly i don't know if the inserters put coal back on belts.
Easiest way to find it out is just to try it

mrvn wrote:Imho it makes no sense that one can chain boilers (that still works in 0.15, right?) but not furnaces.

As it is now, chaining furnaces is more usefull than chaining boilers, but on the technical level, they are two widely different things : boiler have a single slot, so their inventory can be treated as a simple chest, for inserting purposes. Furnaces, on the other hand, have an output slot, so you usually don't want to extract its fuel, and mix it with its product. You may want to extract fuel if it is to insert it into a fuel consumer, but these are logic conditions to check.

I have tried it, and what the mod does is allowing the burner inserters to power themselves from their input, no more, no less. So no inserter chain, and no furnace chain, but burner iserter can be used to make smelting array similarly to electrical inserter.