[0.13] Make inserter stack bonus individually configurable

[ssilk]

The key here for not confusing new players is the GUI language. As it is now, the filters on the filter inserter screen have no numbers. Which makes sense, because it sets a filter, not a quantity.

...
If a player is too new to tingle with the cirquit network (or just doesn't care about it) he never needs to know the option even exists. He can use the filter inserters and it'll work as expected.

It could be done in two different ways: Either by adding a button, that turns this on/off or by introducing new technology "limited stacksize filter". Before this isn't researched you don't see that button. And maybe also no numbers. Otherwise you see the button and numbers. Then you can use it, otherwise no confusion, before the player thinks he is ready for a new thing.

[MeduSalem]

The key here for not confusing new players is the GUI language. As it is now, the filters on the filter inserter screen have no numbers. Which makes sense, because it sets a filter, not a quantity.

...
If a player is too new to tingle with the cirquit network (or just doesn't care about it) he never needs to know the option even exists. He can use the filter inserters and it'll work as expected.

It could be done in two different ways: Either by adding a button, that turns this on/off or by introducing new technology "limited stacksize filter". Before this isn't researched you don't see that button. And maybe also no numbers. Otherwise you see the button and numbers. Then you can use it, otherwise no confusion, before the player thinks he is ready for a new thing.

Of course there should be an info text with some explanation too when hovering over the option. Can't have enough info on hover.

[Cabanur]

adding a button, that turns this on/off

Well, the "off" button would be to have no wire attached to the inserter. If there's no wire, it can be filtered but you can't set the amount per stroke. By attaching a wire to the inserter you are enhancing the capabilities of the inserter, which is the whole purpose of the circuit network anyway, and you are giving it an extra funcionality: setting the amount of items per filtered stroke.

You may argue that that would prevent a circuit-connected filter (stack) inserter from using tha maximum stack size, but there's a pretty straight forward solution to that since you're using the circuit network anyway.

[...]introducing new technology "limited stacksize filter".

I'm not sure this is the best option. We already have the circuit technology to unlock the extra features it offers. Without it (iirc), you can use filter inserters, but will literally be unable to plug green/red wire to it so there's no chance for the player to see the numbers regarding how the filter is limiting the stack. A player that isn't interested in circuit network won't be bothered by it. Is an extra unlock step really necessary?

[Cabanur]

Sry for double posting but i'd just like to bump this thread a bit to find out if there's any chance of us knowing if the devs know about the idea and if they're considering it for implementation. I understand it is their decision, so I'd just like to know if they've made one about this idea in particular. Maybe there's a process in this forum I don't know about that sistematically determines if the idea gets to the game, or maybe we just need to make enough noise about it so it reaches their eyes.

[siggboy]

If you're not sure if you'll still play the game one year from now, then your best bet is that this can be added by a mod and somebody does. My feeling is that this is not going to be considered important enough to be added any time soon.

There are some things that will probably never be a part of Factorio unless they're made moddable, no matter how many people want them.

[CorBlimey]

while configurability would be useful for some edge cases, the easiest fix for the time being would be for the Devs to just change the stack size tech tree such that the highest bonus ends up as a multiple of 5 and (preferably) also 2 (for bricks). Who on earth needs more than 10 stack size bonus anyway? 10 vs. 13 is negligible difference in almost all real scenarios, including high volume train stations - 12 stack inserters at 10 each = <10 secs unload time.

[siggboy]

That would be a very reasonable solution. It would also solve the problem that if you load a train wagon from empty to full, the inserters can have left overs in their hand. Which is a huge problem if you want to make a smart filtering loader for multiple resources and avoid mixed wagons.

I don't really understand how they got to a bonus +12 anyway. I can only assume that it's to get close to the capacity of a yellow belt, but who even cares, blue belts are the only thing that matters. The stack size "13" looks terribly arbitrary to me (I also don't think the world needs 7 tiers of capacity upgrades).

With a +9 bonus, the stack inserter would still be fast enough to almost fill a quarter of a blue belt -- and one could get rid of that shortfall by making the inserters move slightly faster (about 2% faster).

Having said all this, actually being able to set the precise count that the inserter will load on the next swing would still be amazing for those who need it; but what you've suggested (making the max. bonus a +9) is also a very good suggestion.

[Sneaker2]

well I guess I found a way some days ago. This also works for any inserter now.
if u activate the wireless network for the inseter or connect a wire to a pole u get the menu for the inserter. enable "on hand scanning" and the condition "activate if: item < wanted item number". It seems when the inserter gets the "deactivate" command from the condition it wil still finish the drop of the items, which should be the limited amount you wanted. Only disadvantage is that the netowrk coditon isnt open for other stuff anymore that might be used. I havent tested that yet, cause i didnt need it.
Like this u can also reduce a stack inserter to single item pick/drop .

[Radical]

This was literally the first problem I ran into when coming back to play with 0.13. Uncontrollable inserter stacks make it unnecessarily difficult to create optimal solutions. Here's my small, quick vote for implementing this change.

[Sneaker2]

This was literally the first problem I ran into when coming back to play with 0.13. Uncontrollable inserter stacks make it unnecessarily difficult to create optimal solutions. Here's my small, quick vote for implementing this change.

k, guess I have to rethink my previous comment, because I ran into the same problem; I cant make precise filtering with these stacks enabled. One could argue to not research them in the first place, but the stacks have their uses, so its not really comforting to make a choice between those two. This gets even worse, because an already researched technology cant be undone. so there have to be some better choices in the future. there is a mod ( I almost hate that sentence) that at least splits the research trees for normal and stack inserters, but do we really have to rely on mods for this? I wouldnt mind, if the stacks for normal inserters get removed and the stacks for the stack inserters stay, because this would uplift the value of the stack inserters and makes them even more worth their costs.

I can think of the following,

option 1, give the inserters the option between stack pick and normal pick

option 2, make it possible to disable this technology in your game, if u have already researched it, since it cant be undone.

option 3, make it controllable by the circuit network (thought I have no idea exactly what would be good and how this should work)

option 4, anything else, that gives back control over single items for inserters

[Cabanur]

I actually stopped playing because of this. I set up a bot-based factory that crafts low volumes of many items (around 60 different items), but I have to scrap it all because there's no way for me to guarantee that both trains will refill all items.

[MeduSalem]

I actually stopped playing because of this.

Me too about a month ago... I sadly have to say. Not being being able to adjust the stack size with the Stack Size changes introduced with 0.13 killed a lot of my setups in my factory. And I lost the will to scrap everything to build contraptions without depending on the currently unreliable stack size bonus (which is hard if not impossible to do for Smart setups). For me that's just been a major step backwards and I refuse to comply.

[mrtux]

+1 !

The behaviour is nice for high-throughput scenarios, but breaks lots of my setups where belt contents are exactly balanced based on the sub-factory's needs. I cannot do this anymore because inserters put more than one item on a belt and the number of items changes when another bonus is researched.

My current options are
a) either reset or do not use the stack size bonus
b) or do not use the balanced setups.

It would be nice to have a checkbox in the inserter that says "stack size 1"

[JCav]

I would appreciate the option to tell an inserter to only grab one of something, despite researching stack size bonuses. Or the basic electric inserter could always stay at one.

It would not kill me to see it stay the same, but I can see situations where it would indeed be useful.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I'm starting to encounter scenarios where this is a problem myself.

The most powerful solution would be another circuit mode "Disable stacking". You have the option of having it always enabled by just saying something like [fish] = 0, but you might have a chest you want to fill with 100 items. Connect it to the chest, set it to disable stacking when item > 96.

[siggboy]

The most powerful solution would be another circuit mode "Disable stacking". You have the option of having it always enabled by just saying something like [fish] = 0, but you might have a chest you want to fill with 100 items. Connect it to the chest, set it to disable stacking when item > 96.

If the value of the filter signal is also the stack size, then you can always fill a container with exactly "X" items rather easily (if you can read the container, so it would currently not be possible for e.g. train wagons or furnaces in Vanilla).

Let the desired item count be "100 Fish", you set the filter to "100 - actual_count Fish", where "actual_count" is the content of the container. The inserter would start filling an empty container with maximum batch moves (let's say 12 items per operation), the last three operations would have 84 items (filter = 16) then 96 items (filter = 4), then 100 items (filter = 0 = disabled).

A separate mode "disable stacking" is not better than this, and it's rather clumsy.

[Deadly-Bagel]

But if you build it in to the existing logic condition you risk causing further problems. What if the inserter works on a different type of logic? What if it's loading a belt rather than a chest (I posted last night a circuit system that ensures x quantities of items on a belt loop). You can't assume the inserter is connected to its chest and ONLY its chest. Also you might have something like a balanced train loading system which is probably the most common circuit where you activate if iron < 0, how would it affect that? I feel there are too many different scenarios to deal with there. By doing it that way you remove flexibility and simplicity, and it becomes a hidden feature.

[siggboy]

Your "disable stacking" feature corresponds to a filter value of "1". If you need to disable the stack bonus in certain cases, you need to build logic for that, one way or another, and then you can just have that logic normalize the filter value to "1" if you want no stacking.

Maybe you can show a scenario where an explicit feature would make this easier. How would that feature work in detail? How do you tell the inserter to disable the stacking?

The only good reason I can see for such a feature is that the player could enable it manually, e.g. if there was a checkbox or input box with a "stack size" then it would override the filter value and always use that stack size. This might be appropriate in some cases.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Yes but if you want moderate quantity of items, for example 100, you don't want that whole chest filling one by one. You want it to make use of the stack size bonus right up until those last few units.

And what I mean is the stack logic would be a logic condition to disable stacking, same way a train signal works. You can have it correspond to a value of 1 if you want, or you could tell it to be less than 96, or a setup that holds a count of items and ticks them off using the inserter to pulse the items it moves. Either you have a negative number in memory that you're trying to fill, or you might have a positive number in memory and the inserter goes through an arithmetic combinator to multiply it by -1 to count down. You want either to be possible, as well as anything else.

The point isn't to say "this is how I want to use it so make it that way", you want to allow it to be used in new and fabulous ways you never would have expected.

And I'm not sure what you mean by "filter value"... I'm not talking about filter inserters here or filters of any kind. It would simply be an optional logic condition, same way as belts work. You can enable and disable circuit features so if it's connected to a circuit network (or logistics network for that matter) it can enable/disable, count contents, both, or neither.

[siggboy]

Yes but if you want moderate quantity of items, for example 100, you don't want that whole chest filling one by one. You want it to make use of the stack size bonus right up until those last few units.

I have already described a very easy solution for that if the "value" of the filter signals would indicate the stack size that you want to move.

Example:

"1 Iron" -> Only move "Iron", one item at a time
"10 Copper" -> Only move "Copper", 10 items at time; if your maximum stack size is "3", then move 3 items at a time
"1000000 Fish" -> Only move "Fish", use the maximum stack bonus
"-1 Rocket Silos" -> No filter is set

and so on.

Right now the "value" of the signal is not considered, if it's positive a filter is set, if it's negative or a virtual signal (not corresponding to an item), the filter is unset.

And I'm not sure what you mean by "filter value"... I'm not talking about filter inserters here or filters of any kind. It would simply be an optional logic condition, same way as belts work.

Yes, I had filter inserters in mind. For normal inserters you'd have to specify a signal that is used as the stack size indicator (it could be set to "S" by default, like accus right now have a default output of "A"). The value of that signal would then set the stack size, without any filtering. No conditions or anything, simply use the "S" signal (can be unset if you want to explicitely ignore it, should rarely if ever be necessary).