Factorio Forums

http://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-137

Basically as stated, you end up in this trap where certain parts of your factory can get "worse" because of research you did. I don't think this is good design.

To counteract this, when you click you a rapid inserter you should be able to set its stack size (up to the researched maximum), perhaps along with item filters and circuit/logistic network conditions.

This way you can deftly use rapid inserters together with assemblers. You can put a rapid inserter with stack size two in the input of an iron gear assembler, or the output of a copper cable assembler.

When I suggested this on reddit several people agreed and suggested I post this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ow/d2v6gpm

If you can provide some hypothetical situations where this might be needed, please let me know

As it stands i don't think the "research will make my factory slower" is how it will turn out in actuality,
So i will test any builds you might suspect will slow-down

If I'm wrong then we can have a look at ways to mitigate this

The factory may not be slower in the overall term.

But the scenario where an assembler requires 2 of something, but has to wait for the rapid/bulk inserter to pick up 11 from a transport belt before transferring to the assembler seems annoying.

The one I can think of is the smart furnace setup to ensure only the correct amount of iron gets put in for steel.