Dedicated / Smart Fuel inserters

[MagicKyrano]

Summary

Dedicated / smart fuel inserters.

Explanation

When you want to put fuel in trains, you have to use the inserters. It works, but there is a problem if they are not correctly positioned or when train sizes, especially train with more locomotives, differ. The problem is that inserters do not know what they are inserting into, or out of. It is my assumption that that is one of the reasons that since version 0.15.7 of Factorio, inserters can no longer extract fuel from a Locomotive, to prevent them from emptying fuel from a train on accident. (Link: https://wiki.factorio.com/Version_history/0.15.0#0.15.7). (small caveat: inserters can still remove Used Fuel from locomotives, according to the patch notes, but I don't think this is used normally).

Now, what if the inserters knew that they have to work only on fuel?

Request / Proposal

Optionally make inserters only work on the fuel contents of a train, not on its other content.

The way I could see this working is by one of these methods:

• Have an extra setting for inserters, besides currently Overriding Stack Size, that this inserter is for Fuel Only

• Have a new dedicated inserter entity, that can only work with Fuel content

If you make the setting to default to off, that is normal inserter behaviour, nothing changes in the game, since inserters then still act as they normally do. But if you activate that setting, or use the new dedicated fuel inserter entity, you could have inserters specifically able to handle fuel requests. A few examples of what you can then do with these special fuel inserters:

• Automatically insert fuel into Cars and Tanks parked against the inserter.

• Insert new fuel in, but also remove old fuel. (remove Coal from fuel and replace with Rocket Fuel)

• Fuel trains with more than one locomotive. (it will automatically skip wagons, and only load Locomotives on fuel)

The idea is to have more control over fueling, instead of having to position inserters specifically at positions to insert fuel.

[Cribbit]

I would rather see filter inserters have a "passive mode" that can be toggled. In passive mode an inserter will only takes items "requested" by their target, such as recipe items.

Then make fuel slots "request" fuel. Make dedicated slots "request" that type.

I think that this better utilizes and expands on the existing systems in the game without needing to add a whole new inserter.

[Impatient]

As I understand it, your feature request stems from the problem, that there is no way to determine, what kind of train vehicle (engine, cargo wagon, fluid wagon) is in front of an inserter and that there is no way to determine the contents of only this vehicle.

First, if you request an additional setting to inserters, you would also need to request this for pumps and every entity, that is able to interact with train vehicles. Just saying, though I can not think of any other than inserters and pumps.

Second I would suggest to rather request

-) either for the train stations to be able to retrieve and signal more complex and specific data about the train in the station (eg, vehicle type and contents on a per car slot basis)

-) or a general entity, that is able to determine and to signal the type and contents of the entity somewhere in front of it. "Somewhere", because the tiles next to the entity of interest often are needed for inserters and connections as in an example of a cargo wagon and 12 inserters, trensport belts, etc ... . I believe I read, there is a mod, that offers such an entity.

What do you think?

[JohnyDL]

How about circuit connecting rails it could tell you if a wagon, fluid wagon or engine was on top of it the same way belts do. I don't see an easy way to do per car without something similar anyway 2 cars is your red and green circuit wire used up.

Or train stats like with the ID train wagon count, engine count fluid wagon count on I,j,k or something. After all you're unlikely to have 2 different configurations with 4 engines and 4 wagons

[Impatient]

I would rather see filter inserters have a "passive mode" that can be toggled. In passive mode an inserter will only takes items "requested" by their target, such as recipe items.

Then make fuel slots "request" fuel. Make dedicated slots "request" that type.

I think that this better utilizes and expands on the existing systems in the game without needing to add a whole new inserter.

I understood, the problem is not train engines getting "fueled" with iron plates , but inserters loading cargo wagons with rocket fuel intended for train engines, with a train engine on one train occupying the car slot and with a cargo wagon on another train occupying the car slot. And the fuel slots in a train engine do request fuel items only in vanilla right now. Wait ... to be honest, I never tried to load anything else than fuel items into a train engine. So I actually might also be wrong on that last one (not intending a joke ).

[Impatient]

How about circuit connecting rails it could tell you if a wagon, fluid wagon or engine was on top of it the same way belts do.

I like that one. Clean and simple. A sensor-plate-rail like entity.

[Cribbit]

How about circuit connecting rails it could tell you if a wagon, fluid wagon or engine was on top of it the same way belts do.

I like that one. Clean and simple. A sensor-plate-rail like entity.

Would also be nice if it could tell you the contents of that specific car.

[Cribbit]

I would rather see filter inserters have a "passive mode" that can be toggled. In passive mode an inserter will only takes items "requested" by their target, such as recipe items.

Then make fuel slots "request" fuel. Make dedicated slots "request" that type.

I think that this better utilizes and expands on the existing systems in the game without needing to add a whole new inserter.

I understood, the problem is not train engines getting "fueled" with iron plates , but inserters loading cargo wagons with rocket fuel intended for train engines, with a train engine on one train occupying the car slot and with a cargo wagon on another train occupying the car slot. And the fuel slots in a train engine do request fuel items only in vanilla right now. Wait ... to be honest, I never tried to load anything else than fuel items into a train engine. So I actually might also be wrong on that last one (not intending a joke ).

It's not that fuel slots request fuel, it's that they can only take fuel. Requesting is a thing pretty specific to assemblers right now.

If your train stops are having wagons going into loco slots and locos going into wagon slots you've got a design problem in your rail network.

However, the idea I posited would solve your issue for this case.

[Impatient]

As I understand it, your feature request stems from the problem, that there is no way to determine, what kind of train vehicle (engine, cargo wagon, fluid wagon) is in front of an inserter and that there is no way to determine the contents of only this vehicle.

How about circuit connecting rails it could tell you if a wagon, fluid wagon or engine was on top of it the same way belts do.

Would also be nice if it could tell you the contents of that specific car.

Some1 write an official feature request for the sensor rail. It is so simple yet so powerful. The devs might like it.

[MagicKyrano]

I would rather see filter inserters have a "passive mode" that can be toggled. In passive mode an inserter will only takes items "requested" by their target, such as recipe items.

Then make fuel slots "request" fuel. Make dedicated slots "request" that type.

It's not that fuel slots request fuel, it's that they can only take fuel. Requesting is a thing pretty specific to assemblers right now.

I had a bit of trouble understanding what you wrote there, but now I see. It's like inserters against assemblers: They only put stuff in when the assembler needs that stuff, they ignore items on belts or in chests if it is not what the assembler wants.

However, there are three reasons I still prefer an inserter set to work on fuel cargo only: (when there's a Locomotive , Car or Tank in front of the inserter):

• The ability to put stuff into, and take stuff out of, the fuel space of a vehicle. This would be helpful when upgrading a vehicle to next-gen fuels. For instance, having an 'old-style' coal locomotive, removing the coal from the fuel and replacing it with Rocket Fuel. Currently, it is impossible to remove stuff from the fuel of a Locomotive. (other than manually).

• The ability to add fuel to Cars and Tanks. Currently, inserters can only operate on the inventory space of Cars and Tanks.

• Preventing inserters from inserting fuel into wagons. Basically, when a train stops in front of an inserter that's inserting fuel for a locomotive, prevent the possibility of having that fuel put in the wagons by accident.

To elaborate on the 3rd option: Trains set on automatic already have a safety measure: Only when a train has stopped at a train station, are the wagons open for loading/unloading. If a train on automatic is moving, or even if it has stopped for a red light or something, that cargo cannot be loaded/unloaded by inserters.

Let me give you a scenario where the use of special fuel inserters, (be it dedicated new entity or normal inserter with that fuel-only setting set), can be helpful:

Suppose you have a refueling station, where trains can come and refuel. There you can put up inserters in the right locations, depending on the locomotive location.

I'll try to illustrate this in a diagram:

I = Inserter
L = Locomotive
W = Wagon (material wagon or fluid wagon, doesn't matter)

Code: Select all

  I
  L W W W W

Now suppose you have multiple layouts of trains, or you want to upgrade your trains in some way. You can have longer trains, with more wagons, but also with more locomotives, like so:

Code: Select all

  L W W W W W W
  L L W W W W
  L W W W W W L

With traditional inserters, it's hard to make one refueling station that can refuel them all, since the inserters will happily insert stuff in what has stopped there, they don't know / care what they are inserting into. But with the fuel-only inserters, you can make this array, and cater for any train (up to 8 long in this example):

Code: Select all

  I I I I I I I I
  L L W W W W L L

Since only the locomotives will get fuel, the wagons are nicely being ignore by the fuel-only inserters. And it also makes it easy to upgrade the fuel in the trains. Say your train network is running on Coal, so every train has coal in it. And you want to upgrade all your trains to run on Rocket Fuel. Then you can use this layout:

Code: Select all

  I I I I I
  L W W W W
  I I I I I

The bottom inserters remove the old Coal fuel from the locomotives, and the upper inserters put the new Rocket Fuel in the Locomotives.

These are some of the reasons why I prefer fuel-only inserters: They are aware of what's in front of them, and know what and what not to do.

[MagicKyrano]

First, if you request an additional setting to inserters, you would also need to request this for pumps and every entity, that is able to interact with train vehicles. Just saying, though I can not think of any other than inserters and pumps.

As far as I know, and using vanilla game, only inserters can insert fuel into fuel capable entities. Those entities are:

• Burner mining drill

• Stone furnace

• Steel furnace

• Boiler

• Nuclear Reactor (not sure about this one, I haven't used these much, so can't really tell about them)

• Locomotive

• Car

• Tank

That's the reason I only referred to inserters. No fluid can be used as fuel. Yes, you can use Solid Fuel as fuel, but that is no longer a fluid, it's a material handled by inserters.
And the only thing I can think of that could be seen as fuel, is Steam. But Steam is mostly used as an intermediate product, used to make other products, and is not counted in the game as 'fuel'.

I understood, the problem is not train engines getting "fueled" with iron plates , but inserters loading cargo wagons with rocket fuel intended for train engines, with a train engine on one train occupying the car slot and with a cargo wagon on another train occupying the car slot. And the fuel slots in a train engine do request fuel items only in vanilla right now. Wait ... to be honest, I never tried to load anything else than fuel items into a train engine.

Preventing inserters putting stuff in the wrong entity is one reason why I proposed the fuel-only inserter. Currently, inserters can put stuff in Locomotives as well as in wagons. There are already a few safety measures, like trains on automatic can only load/unload wagons that are stopped on automatic at a station. This also goes for fluid wagons, you cannot load/unload fluid wagons when you manually drive a train, it will only connect to fluid wagons if the train is on automatic and stopped at a station. And about loading the fuel: These are the fuels that you can use as fuel for the entities mentioned above. Any other entity cannot be used or loaded as fuel, nor by you, nor by entities :

• Raw Wood

• Coal

• Solid Fuel

• Rocket Fuel

• Wood (the square placket of wood, ingredient of Wooden Chest)

• Wooden Chest

• Small Electric Pole

Yes, you can put Small Electric Poles in Locomotives as fuel, it will run . And sadly, you cannot put Uranium based fuel in trains.. Would be awesome to see them run ultra hard on Uranium, maybe even glow when they fly past

[MagicKyrano]

How about circuit connecting rails it could tell you if a wagon, fluid wagon or engine was on top of it the same way belts do.

It still does not make inserters aware of what they are in front of. And I can see it working if you combine combinators with inserters, but I also can see small problems with that layout. For example, how does an inserter know the cargo the sensor gives is the cargo of the train or of a wagon? If the sensor sees nothing, is that because no train is there, a totally emptied Locomotive's fuel (possible but rare), or an empty cargo wagon? And the inserter still cannot remove anything from a Locomotive (upgrade fuel content from Coal to Rocket Fuel).

But, having said that:

Some1 write an official feature request for the sensor rail. It is so simple yet so powerful. The devs might like it.

Totally agree.

[JohnyDL]

It still does not make inserters aware of what they are in front of. And I can see it working if you combine combinators with inserters, but I also can see small problems with that layout. For example, how does an inserter know the cargo the sensor gives is the cargo of the train or of a wagon? If the sensor sees nothing, is that because no train is there, a totally emptied Locomotive's fuel (possible but rare), or an empty cargo wagon? And the inserter still cannot remove anything from a Locomotive (upgrade fuel content from Coal to Rocket Fuel).

You can hook inserters direct to the rails if the rails could have circuit connections there'd be no need for combinators. The idea (at least my original) wasn't to detect the cargo but just C.Wagon, F.Wagon or Engine.

If cargo was detected I'd suggest that the cargo be of only what's directly on top of the connected rail (there are cases where 2 cargo wagons might be on top of the same rail but never when the train is in a station iirc or at least there'd be places where that'd be true for every wagon) and if you do have empty waggons you can combine this with the circuit network from the train station (this does need at least one combinator) which would allow the inserters to see the inventory and see the existence of the train, if no train don't work if train and no inventory work, etc. etc..

The solution isn't one size fits all but allows for a myriad of possibilities you might decide that every cargo waggon carries 1 slot of fuel around so at every outpost there's a small fuel reserve which can be necessary on exceptionally large networks if this was the case that inserter inserts when there's 0 cargo whether it's an engine or a C.Wagon and doesn't need to know which is which, everything else sees that cargo and then goes ham for inserting.

As for upgrading fuel I'd suggest maybe asking the Devs to prioritise the lowest value fuel stack rather than just in order, this means a stack of 50 wood would be used before 26 coal, and so on. I think a stack of 10 rocket fuel has less energy than a stack of 50 solid fuel but that might be a good thing 2 stacks of rocket fuel for speed and then a reserve stack of solid fuel that will always get you home eventually.


(Oh also when making a post quoting multiple people you can do it when making the post you can see all the previous posts on the submit reply screen and hitting quote on each will add them to your post (on some browsers even highlighting sections works) thought you'd find it useful rather than 3 or 4 consecutive posts to different people with no names attached)

[Engimage]

Some1 write an official feature request for the sensor rail. It is so simple yet so powerful. The devs might like it.

While the idea is kinda decent it is not nearly complete.
What should the sensor rail output in which case? Belts output items on it and rails? Loco/wagon? Or their content? What should you consider as a content for locomotive? How to differentiate if from same items stored in a wagon? And in the case of a type output what signal should it output if target is a locomotive and a wagon respectively? Should you be able to change those signals? Waaay many questions.
However it would be awesome to have such sensor. So many possibilities...

[Zavian]

You could output either L=1, C=1, F=1 for the type (Locomotive, Cargo, Fluid respectively) plus their contents (for locomotives their contents would be their fuel). As a bonus this scheme could cope semi-rationally with the case that 2 locomotive/cargo wagons are both simultaneously stopped partially on the same piece of track, although for simplicity of actually using this system, you probably want to make sure that that can't happen.

But overall I don't see the need for this. For The OP's original use case, wanting different size trains to share the same fuel stop, personally I'd just use a different stop for each train configuration. 0

Finally Factorio is about using simple systems/machines to automate complex tasks. A key part of that is that is using the existing general purpose tools factorio gives you. A dedicated fuel inserter breaks that pattern, by giving you a specialised item that can only do one thing, and that is only useful for a particular pattern of train refueling. You can already refuel trains without needing a dedicated fuel inserter. You simply need to design within the limits of the existing tools. And that is where the fun comes from.

[JohnyDL]

The problem with L, C, F is what happens when you add mods into the list. An electric train an artillery train, a wagon with 30,000 inventory slots etc...

Like I say the original suggestion is just to signal the type of item directly and not the cargo, that said there's no reason why you couldn't have a "Type" mode and a "Cargo" mode like belts have "hold" and "pulse", you'll always have 2 clear sections of track under any wagon, so to use both it's a simple matter of hooking both up and doing it how you want it to work non trivial decoding but that's fine in most cases.

I'm happy not taking credit for the idea if anyone wants to formalise into a separate suggestion.

[Selvek]

I would rather see filter inserters have a "passive mode" that can be toggled. In passive mode an inserter will only takes items "requested" by their target, such as recipe items.

Then make fuel slots "request" fuel. Make dedicated slots "request" that type.

I think that this better utilizes and expands on the existing systems in the game without needing to add a whole new inserter.

This would also solve the problem where you can't load a train that has dedicated slots for multiple items using a single requester chest. Right now, the inserter will pick up its full stack size, even if there aren't enough slots left for that item on the train. Then the next item is stuck, because the inserter can't put down its hand contents. Aside from limiting the stack size to 1 (and who has time for that! Plus I haven't actually tested to be sure it works) the only way to solve this currently is use a different inserter for each item type, which seems silly.

[Cribbit]

I would rather see filter inserters have a "passive mode" that can be toggled. In passive mode an inserter will only takes items "requested" by their target, such as recipe items.

Then make fuel slots "request" fuel. Make dedicated slots "request" that type.

I think that this better utilizes and expands on the existing systems in the game without needing to add a whole new inserter.

This would also solve the problem where you can't load a train that has dedicated slots for multiple items using a single requester chest. Right now, the inserter will pick up its full stack size, even if there aren't enough slots left for that item on the train. Then the next item is stuck, because the inserter can't put down its hand contents. Aside from limiting the stack size to 1 (and who has time for that! Plus I haven't actually tested to be sure it works) the only way to solve this currently is use a different inserter for each item type, which seems silly.

I also really want this for using wagons as chests for interesting assembler setup. Right now you're limited to 4 stack filter inserters between cars which means you can only have 4 ingredients between cars without getting deadlock, which greatly limits your ability to use this setup. With better inserter logic surrounding full chests you can do a lot more.

[Impatient]

The problem with L, C, F is what happens when you add mods into the list.

That is a good question. I would go for U=1, with U signifying "unknown", until the modder defines the type of signal, that will show preconfigured in the sensor rail, to signal the modded type of train vehicle. Like E=1 for electric engine. Which I strongly assume the modder will do, if there is a sensor rail in vanilla.

[JohnyDL]

Like I said just make 2 modes, identify the train component which is just a signal of 1 *unit* so that could be 1 Loco or 1 F Wagon or 1 C Wagon or 1 Electric Loco etc etc etc expandable to modded because all items get a circuit condition signal, and a read cargo mode which tells you the contents of said unit. With units being 6 long you can always have room for 2 rails with 2 different read modes.