Factorio Forums

TL/DR

Inserters should wait with items in hand, instead of with empty hands.

Description of Change

I propose to make the inserter always grab items immediately, even if the assembly machine has the required amount of items, but then wait with inserting them into the assembly machine until it has used up enough items.

Reason for Change

This is an attempt to solve the problem where inserters insert new materials into an assembly machine too late, because they wait until the assembly machine has used up enough items, and then it takes some time to grab new ones.

Other proposals have been made to increase the number of items the inserter wants to have in an assembly machine, but this has been rejected for various reasons.

Pros: Items are inserted as quickly as possible with just a small additional buffer
Cons: The item buffer is increased by the amount grabbed by the inserter

All in all however, I believe this would be the optimal trade-off.

How do they know what to pick up, if the belt or chest or other has multiple items on/in it?

The inserter is ordered to grab something when the place where the something is needed asks for it. And that's totally OK

How can the inserter know what item will be needed the next time an item will be needed ?

Koub wrote:The inserter is ordered to grab something when the place where the something is needed asks for it. And that's totally OK

How can the inserter know what item will be needed the next time an item will be needed ?

Yeah, I clearly didn't think this through, sorry for that.

Of course it could be made to work if the assembler started asking for items earlier etc... but that would get us right back to the already rejected proposals. Nevermind then.

Koub wrote:How can the inserter know what item will be needed the next time an item will be needed ?

It's pretty easy! The game is determinated, it means you can know what here will be in future. The manipulator can have 10-60 seconds information about future and use it for item preparation.

darkfrei wrote:

Koub wrote:How can the inserter know what item will be needed the next time an item will be needed ?

It's pretty easy! The game is determinated, it means you can know what here will be in future. The manipulator can have 10-60 seconds information about future and use it for item preparation.

However, if the inserter knows the future and acts according to it, it will break causality, effectively creating a new future.