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Something that struck me as a little silly and inflexible is how inserters, despite the fact they seem fully capable of swinging in a full circle, can only take and place from in front/behind and move things in a straight line.

At first, I thought what's really missing is a half-turn type of inserter that turns 90 degrees to the left or right, but that would require 3 new inserters for each of the existing ones- a 'straight' one, a 'clockwise' one and a 'counterclockwise' one, which is a bit messy.

My second thought was, like rotating, be able to toggle through those 3 different orientations when placing or highlighting over an inserter (much like you can rotate belts after they're created), which is a lot tidier UI-wise. You'd probably need a new key for it, but at least it doesn't create all sorts of silly new items just so they can point in different directions.

For instant solutions, you can use this mod https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=3622 which is exactly what you suggest in the first section.

What if you just select the pickup and dropoff tiles from an UI you get by interacting with an advanced full-range inserter? This way you can configure it however you like. It could start out with only 1 tile range and no filter/network capabilities, but you could research upgrades to increase the range and add wireless/logistic functionality or even speed. Displaying Alt-info might be tricky as it doesn't have a fixed facing direction (maybe just a circle).

syneris wrote:What if you just select the pickup and dropoff tiles from an UI you get by interacting with an advanced full-range inserter? This way you can configure it however you like. It could start out with only 1 tile range and no filter/network capabilities, but you could research upgrades to increase the range and add wireless/logistic functionality or even speed. Displaying Alt-info might be tricky as it doesn't have a fixed facing direction (maybe just a circle).

Not currently possible due to game design choises and game mechanics. It can only be done if the whole system of defining entities is done, which I don't think it will be touched anytime soon.

Man, I was looking through all the mods to make sure it didn't exist, I must have missed that one.

Still think it should be a core feature though- the mod has to hack it in via different item types, which explodes the number of inserters (burner, regular, fast, long, smart = 5 -> 15 with the variants, more if you start modding inserters).

Going by the animation, inserters can move between arbitrary points (if you're off center with a furnace or an assembler, the arm still moves to the center, so there's no reason we couldn't just have a circle and select an input/output location. The reason I suggested just the toggle is it's a lot simpler UI-wise- you only have 3 states and one key to cycle through them. Being able to pick spots means a whole new UI mode and storing those spots for each and every inserter...

Might make sense with a special type of long-armed inserter, perhaps, but for all the short-arm inserters you don't need something so complex.

There are mods for that.

DyTech implements many sorts of inserters,
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=3622, already mentioned
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... =14&t=1631