Let's see your clever builds

[sckuzzle]

but that requires the belt to be clogged first. Which means that using a fast belt there will not have any benefit anyway.

The fast belt increases throughput. In factorio you generally want to maximize throughput, as the investment in the intermediates is fairly minimal. So while a slow inserter may not grab, it just means there is something at the end of the belt that gets resources that otherwise wouldn't have.

Mixing the belts is definitely the way to go for compactness. Yes, the belt will run out faster - but you have tons of extra room to run even more belts to replenish it when it runs out. Off the top of my head I'd estimate you're looking at 3-4x increase in space efficiency - definitely worth it.

[mooklepticon]

Mixing the coal and ore on the same belt meant that the belt ran down too fast: burner inserters have a hard time grabbing from red belts, spending a lot of their time trying to grab an item as it goes past,

Alternatively, run a main bus line quickly and VERY short parallel lines that clog because they're short.

Code: Select all

>>S>>>>>>S>>>>>
  S>     S>
   B      B
   F      F

> = fast belt
S = splitter
B = burner inserter
F = furnace

[Aru]

I don't really see why people use burner inserters at all. I upgrade from hands to orange inserters, and skip burner inserters. They're so power hungry, and are rapidly outclassed, while hands don't really have a practical limit on throughput. With proper use of the large personal storage, and chests, and ctrl+click combinations, and direct-feeding burner drills into chests and furnaces (and each other for coal mining), I don't see the need for burner inserters.

[mooklepticon]

I don't really see why people use burner inserters at all. I upgrade from hands to orange inserters, and skip burner inserters. They're so power hungry, and are rapidly outclassed, while hands don't really have a practical limit on throughput. With proper use of the large personal storage, and chests, and ctrl+click combinations, and direct-feeding burner drills into chests and furnaces (and each other for coal), I don't see the need for burner inserters.

I don't really see why people use their personal inventory at all. With proper use of belts and burner inserters, I don't see the need for personal inventory.

I'm being silly. So they're not your flavor of ice cream! It's alright

Personally, I like the concept of a Stirling-engine device that doesn't need electricity!

[Aru]

I'm kind of interested in how others use burner inserters in the early game, and why. One of my first priorities is getting a steam engine going for orange inserters and assemblers.

edit: I guess, they're nice because they can fuel themselves with coal. But, routing coal or ore is harder than small poles, so they would still need manual refueling.

[sckuzzle]

I'm kind of interested in how others use burner inserters in the early game, and why. One of my first priorities is getting steam engines for orange inserters and assemblers.

I also skip straight to powered inserters. Saves having to re-set everything up - and by the time you need inserters (for boilers) you have electricity anyway.

I've managed to find one use for burner inserters: backup power. There are setups that check whether power is out through use of a chest and inserters. You need a burner inserter to power a steam engine at the end (as you have no power). However, even that, too, may be made redundant, as there is a new method that uses combinators.

If you use marathon mod, burner inserters are useful. You really need something to slow down how quickly you can obtain electricity for them to be used.

[Aru]

I've managed to find one use for burner inserters: backup power.

I was thinking just about the early game. Even when I switch a large steam array to backup (I have a combinator setup), I still use normal ones. (It works without combinators too, they just make it more robust.)

[joes01]

Mostly just doing it for fun. Some people try bases where they mostly use bots, or mostly use trains, etc. I've just taking a liking to burner inserters of late, and trying to see if I can come up with some "good" furnace layouts, or "good" science builds using only burners has been a fun experience. By posting my furnace layout here, perhaps other people would be inspired, or would have suggestions that could prove useful some time in the future, or for other people who are doing "challenge" type games and serve to help them in their gameplay.

There is no real point to this exercise in terms of a "normal" Factorio game: the regular orange inserters are good, fast inserters are very good, smart inserters and long handed inserters are wonderful. Burner inserters pose an interesting challenge in that they are slower, and do not have a long range.

How could we optimize their use, if they were the only type of inserters we had? What would a "good" factory in that world look like? What if electric furnaces didn't exist?

It's a fun thought experiment, don't get too worked up about it.

[vanatteveldt]

I'm trying my hand at a completely logistics-driven factory. I couldn't find a design for producing red circuits, so I modified an earlier design to work with logistics instead of belts, and I was rather pleased with the aesthetics:

[Aru]

Mostly just doing it for fun. Some people try bases where they mostly use bots, or mostly use trains, etc. I've just taking a liking to burner inserters of late, and trying to see if I can come up with some "good" furnace layouts, or "good" science builds using only burners has been a fun experience. By posting my furnace layout here, perhaps other people would be inspired, or would have suggestions that could prove useful some time in the future, or for other people who are doing "challenge" type games and serve to help them in their gameplay.

There is no real point to this exercise in terms of a "normal" Factorio game: the regular orange inserters are good, fast inserters are very good, smart inserters and long handed inserters are wonderful. Burner inserters pose an interesting challenge in that they are slower, and do not have a long range.

How could we optimize their use, if they were the only type of inserters we had? What would a "good" factory in that world look like? What if electric furnaces didn't exist?

It's a fun thought experiment, don't get too worked up about it.

I'm nowhere near exhausting the analyzing and optimizing part, it will be a long time before I get there

[Cisz]

As you probably know: A tank (the vehicle) ist a freely placeble chest with 4x3 size. It requires precise placement, so you need to test each tank-chest.

I have not been able to find any example of a tank as a chest. Seems not that far off after trains and cars have been used that way.

I made one myself, a train station for sorting incoming cargo:



This is not exactly cheap. Tank chests come at a hefty cost.

It also has some possible speed issues, each side loads with 4 but unloads with only 3 inserters per type, so there could be clogging. (Maybe if I rotate the tanks and use 2 placed as a 4x4 footprint..)

I think it can be expanded to 2 or 3 outgoing lanes per type and side, this version has 1 blue belt outgoing per side and type.

Anyone has some neat tank-chest builds to share?

[pieppiep]

Maybe someone needs to make a mod with a cheaper tank that has a driving speed of 0

[Cisz]

Isn't that a turret?

[AutoMcD]

Isn't that a turret?

Turrets need trunk space! haha

[pieppiep]

Isn't that a turret?

Turrets need trunk space! haha

Turrets do have a trunk, a very little one with only one stack of items that must be bullets.

[Cisz]

Isn't that a turret?

Turrets need trunk space! haha

Turrets do have a trunk, a very little one with only one stack of items that must be bullets.

I used to build a chain around my base, made out of inserters and turrets. They all load each oher and I can refill at any point. Works until the first turret breaks..

[alan2here]

Long term storage for the logistics system.

[AutoMcD]

I usually just drop a pile of storage chests. Can you explain the advantage of this?

[DaveMcW]

It saves space by making chests hold different items. And then it wastes space by making chests use 4 tiles.

[Zaflis]

Using Warehousing (3x3 and 5x5 provider and requester warehouses etc.) and Advanced-Inserters (2 faster tier inserters) i made this for circuits. It's eating a rediculous amount of iron and especially copper:

circuit_factory.png (1.74 MiB) Viewed 7318 times