Distribute N amount of item into one or more buildings or containers

[Openhand]

Hi i'm looking for a mod or a way to distribute an N (custom) amount of items into every buildings and containers under my mouse..

Say i got 1000 coal and got a bunch of burner inserters and smelters, i don't want to input 200 (or even 100) into all of them.

I want to input 50, or say 25, a specified amount, evenly across a lot of stuff.

Is there a way?

I tried using even distributation but when i have a bunch of coal, it just puts in 200 coal in everything! including burner inserters, 200 coal in a burner inserter is waaaay to much.

Even distributation is the behaviour i want when it cannot reach the specified amount, it cannot afford to put 50 or even 25 into them, so the next best thing is to distribute an event amount, lets say 21 coal into all of them, being even is the most important.

It is a huge pain to manually reduce the amounts in every inserter and assembler (using AAI, it has burner assemblers that run on coal and fuel), by right shift clicking 2-4 times, on every single inserter)

This would also be extermely useful for inserting magazine clips into gun turrets, no more than 30-50 ammo in each, quickly and easily for example

I can actually not believe this doesn't seem to be in factorio vanilla, the default behaviour is really inefficient, 200 clips in the first, 150 in the next, 100 in the third, 50 in the last etc.

Half a stack insertion isn't good enough either, it just means it starts at 100 instead of 200, tho in even distributation it starts at 200 regardless.

Also a way to take out an N amount of items, even distributation style would be cool as well, if i by mistake insert 200 into 20 burner inserters, i don't want to manually have to go into 20 burner inserters to extract the amount that is redundant.

This is one of the most essential features i think factorio is probably missing (unless i'm missing something obvious).

[RinDiddy]

There's a couple ways of doing this. Either way you have to add an extra layer inserter.

Even removal of items from a container would require multiple inserters pulling from a container. Max is 3 if you want an inserter to fill the container.

1- Using the example of 1000 coal, set up the Main container with 3 inserters pulling away from it. They will all pull close to the same time and all give an even pull. You could use three belts to distribute the coal or place the smelters next to the inserters.

2 - Limit what is taken. Place a container in front of the inserter going to the smelter. Add an inserter.

So you have: Belt --> Inserter --> Container --> Inserter --> Smelter.

Set up a circuit so that the first inserter ( the one taking from the belt ) only works if the container has less than 50 coal in it. Another option would be to red-out the containers contents. This doesn't require any techs. Open the container, select the X, and move it until only one place isn't colored red. Coal comes in stacks of 50 so this would work well. The arm coming from the belt would never be able to place more than 50 into the container.



All of this is assuming that you are NOT using only burner inserters. I don't think they can pull from belts.

[Openhand]

I was using burner inserters but finally replaced them but i still want the ability to manually N amount of items into buildings, not more or less.

Optimally it would have a number input so you can just write 25 and you can now only insert / withdraw max 25 as long as you hold a hotkey for it (or toggle it).

So 25 coal into 40 buildings that is 1000 coal.

I'm not talking about using inserters to move items, i'm talking about directly inserting into any type of container (or withdrawing from one).

What are our options?

Right clicking with items in hand to place them in a single building, one-by-one.
ctrl+left click on an item to insert as many of that item you can.
ctrl+right click on an item to insert half your amount or half stack max.

then you can also ctrl-click on empty space in an inventory to move as many items you can that is valid, several different types.

There is no way to move N amount of items, except for max stack and half stack.

200 and 100 of an item isn't enough, i want to be able to set max stack to any legal amount and input max stack as it basically.

You could have two different systems tho, it is best to have a toggle key or something to only use this ability when you want to.

This is entirely manual item distributation.

[steinio]

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/even-distribution

Should definitly be vanilla.

[Openhand]

So no more responses, even though this is one of the most annoying things about factorio.

I really should make my own mod for this, i cannot believe no one else is as bothered by this as i am.

Where do i start?

A simple mod that limits how much you can put into buildings and how much you can extract at a time.