Make inserters be able to grab from another inserter while the items is in the air

[loptos]

My life story (prepare tissues): I just made a very cool steel smeltery where there is full belt of coal in the middle (between iron and steel), the sad thing is it doesn't work because the second inserter cannot grab item from the first inserter without it being placed on the ground. (the coal is on the belt on the ground)

You could argue just put coal on half of it. Yes, I will do that, is what I would say, if I was being unreasonable. My creation is perfect the way it is, it's just the game has a flaw.

[atomizer]

Even if grabbing items from hands of other inserters was implemented, making inserters iterate over every possible source or destination on every swing is not feasible and would kill performance. When an inserter already points at a belt, that belt is the only thing it will interact with.

If I understood your setup correctly, you can use undergrounds to stagger the coal belt (2-2) and put long hand inserters in the freed up space instead of chains of 2 normal ones.

[Tertius]

It's difficult to understand what you are trying to achieve as a whole without having a picture or a blueprint, but you can create "bucket chains" with inserters and chests very easily: (don't forget to limit the chests to 1 stack only, otherwise they fill up quite quickly if the output of the chain is congested.

out.gif (940.8 KiB) Viewed 2421 times

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Copy blueprint

[loptos]

I need not bucket chains (they don't fix the game), I need not complains about performance that are just false. (logistic robots can search hundreds of chests for items but +3 items for inserter is a problem?). What I need is what we all need, a new era of factorio, new era of entertainment. I shall lead the charge.

[ssilk]

Ok, how should the inserter know, if it needs to put the item on the ground or hold it in the air until the next inserter grabs it out of its hand? What should happen, if 2 or 3 inserter are pointing to the same tile? Who is served first? And some more questions…

[ickputzdirwech]

I feel like some images could help understanding the problem you are facing and maybe even finding solutions that already exist in the game.

[loptos]

Ok, how should the inserter know, if it needs to put the item on the ground or hold it in the air until the next inserter grabs it out of its hand? What should happen, if 2 or 3 inserter are pointing to the same tile? Who is served first? And some more questions…

If space on ground or in chest put it there otherwise hold it in air just like right now. (0 changes)

What should happen, if 2 or 3 inserter are pointing to the same tile?

Not sure what are you exactly asking but here are some of mine assumptions as to what it could have meant.
If you have multiple inserter as outputting into one block they should all follow point one, as they already do.
If you have multiple inserter inputs it it would work the same as it works now except it also check what are other inserters holding and take from them if posibble (i think it's reasonable to have priority to take from airborne inserters and ground/chest after that.)
Possibly you wanted to ask what would have if you had a single item, well the same thing would if there was only one item on the belt/in chest.

TLDR: all these decisions have already been implemented because its just like adding one more item to the ground/chest. Only thing that needs to be added is to treat those airborne items as pickable as if they were on the ground/in chest.

I feel like some images could help understanding the problem you are facing and maybe even finding solutions that already exist in the game.

This is a feature request for a feature that doesn't exist in the game. Yes you can overcome it by using different design. But how productive is it to say just design it differently when this should work, because why not? Why shouldn't this work?

[ickputzdirwech]

I honestly just don't understand your description of the design you have an issue with - but I would like to. That's why I was hoping for some images.

[loptos]

pain-agony-misery-torment-twinge-affliction-convulson-distress.png (315.93 KiB) Viewed 2322 times

But this can also be useful with assemblers where you need 3 inputs so you put 2 on belt and one from inserter. Please for all that is holy do not say just do half coal belt, because that's not the point. I was in a predicament where i didn't have enough space to do that.

[Loewchen]

But this can also be useful with assemblers where you need 3 inputs so you put 2 on belt and one from inserter. Please for all that is holy do not say just do half coal belt, because that's not the point. I was in a predicament where i didn't have enough space to do that.

This can easily be solved by existing mechanics and even with the proposed feature this would end up with iron plates on the coal belt the moment the inserter takes coal from the belt.

[loptos]

This wouldn't be a problem since it still has access to both resources anyway.

[boskid]

No.

This would make inserter a lot more complex because technically it could be woken up by belt OR inserter that tries to drop at that belt piece. That would make inserters a lot more complex in the implementation. Also there may be multiple inserters trying to drop at the same belt piece which means an inserter waiting in some cases would need to sleep on more than 3 objects which right now is a hard limit in how entities can sleep to not consume any CPU while not being active. Consider this to be a part of the challenge. You can solve this easily by making one of the belt lanes to not contain the coal.

[FuryoftheStars]

pain-agony-misery-torment-twinge-affliction-convulson-distress.png

But this can also be useful with assemblers where you need 3 inputs so you put 2 on belt and one from inserter. Please for all that is holy do not say just do half coal belt, because that's not the point. I was in a predicament where i didn't have enough space to do that.

1. Remove the output inserters from the iron plate smelters.
2. Push the coal belt right up against the iron plate smelters.
3. Add red/long-handed inserters to take from the iron plate smelters and deposit to the steel plate smelters.

Problem solved, with the added benefit of being able to transfer faster (1 swing of a red inserter (which is naturally faster than a yellow) vs 2 swings of yellow inserters).

[mmmPI]

My life story (prepare tissues): I just made a very cool steel smeltery where there is full belt of coal in the middle (between iron and steel), the sad thing is it doesn't work because the second inserter cannot grab item from the first inserter without it being placed on the ground. (the coal is on the belt on the ground)

You could argue just put coal on half of it. Yes, I will do that, is what I would say, if I was being unreasonable. My creation is perfect the way it is, it's just the game has a flaw.

" What if we had inserters, except instead of placing item on the ground, we would just throw them in the air for no reason at all".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlQSFdO7Kt4

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/lob

this is a legit use case !