Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Allow inserters to insert and remove modules from mining drills

What?

Allow inserters to insert and remove modules from mining drills, just like beacons.

Why?

I want to build a mining outpost that turns on quality modules when there aren’t enough quality items.

iloveidea wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2026 11:15 pm

Why?

I want to build a mining outpost that turns on quality modules when there aren’t enough quality items.

You can use a power-switch controlled Beacon to selectively transmit a Speed Module (which penalizes Quality).

Good Luck!

iloveidea wrote: Sun Sep 20, 2026 11:15 pm Allow inserters to insert and remove modules from mining drills

I like the idea of being able to do this, but I think that a circuit condition is a better way to implement it. What do you think?

viewtopic.php?p=684150#p684150

You can also put quality modules in every other mine, leaving the rest without them, and selectively activate either the odd or even mines depending on whether you want to produce quality items or not.

I just found this thread, and it looks like the developers don't want to implement this feature.
viewtopic.php?t=103876&p=576188

iloveidea wrote: Mon Sep 21, 2026 7:23 am I just found this thread, and it looks like the developers don't want to implement this feature.
viewtopic.php?t=103876&p=576188

To me it look like someone filed a bug report at the time and it was moved to suggestion, about the possibility to remove module from mining drill with the same clicking hotkey AND with inserters as if they were beacons.

With beacons though you can't "insert" modules in them with inserter, you can only "remove" them as far as i know, you would have to power or unpower them with a setup similar to what eugenekay linked, so your suggestion is a bit different imo. It is occasionnally suggested by players for beacons, less often for mining drill that inserters could do both insertion and removal of modules.

I think you are correct overall that it's not a feature devs are looking forward to implement, but it's just a feeling, i have no evidence.

mmmPI wrote: Mon Sep 21, 2026 9:16 am With beacons though you can't "insert" modules in them with inserter, you can only "remove" them as far as i know, you would have to power or unpower them with a setup similar to what eugenekay linked, so your suggestion is a bit different imo. It is occasionnally suggested by players for beacons, less often for mining drill that inserters could do both insertion and removal of modules.

Inserting works totally fine with beacons, same for removal. It's been used plenty of times for various setups.

Silari wrote: Mon Sep 21, 2026 1:02 pm Inserting works totally fine with beacons, same for removal. It's been used plenty of times for various setups.

Thank you for correcting me, i think it used to be the case that you could only remove them and i haven't been using the feature recently. Maybe it could be done for the mining drills to afterall.

My main issue with this idea is that you really, really want drills to be tightly packed on ore patches. Even as a staunch proponent of quality mining of ores, I'd never sacrifice patch density for automating module modifications. You're talking about reducing patch density by up to 50% just to make this work; that's a big sacrifice.

I'd just use upgrade planners to add or remove quality modules as needed, and add alarms to tell me when it is needed. Or just employ the car-on-train-track method of disposing of excess quality stuff.

Alfonse215 wrote: Mon Sep 21, 2026 5:04 pm My main issue with this idea is that you really, really want drills to be tightly packed on ore patches. Even as a staunch proponent of quality mining of ores, I'd never sacrifice patch density for automating module modifications. You're talking about reducing patch density by up to 50% just to make this work; that's a big sacrifice.

I do not think the same at all .

I know people usually have trouble with this, i was packing my drills as dense as possible for a few years and wondering why some megabaser did different, had to read lenghy explanation to understand, and the hardest part was to change my own entrenched instinct, but you don't necessarily want mining density ^^ In early game you can see a patch as a finite quantity of ressource, whose life expectancy depend on how many mining drill there is tapping onto it, and i want to maximize the longevity of my mining drills. If on an outpost you place twice as many mines, you will deplete it twice as fast, for the same amount of ressources in the end, you have used also twice as many ressources yourself, including modules, and it means each mining drill is covering less ore, it means intead of building a mines for say 1 million ore, you build a mine for every 500K. So in the course of the game you will be required to move or replace more often any individual mining drill, or that they will deplete more frequently on average.

The less tightly packed your mining drills are , the less of a problem this become, each mining drill you build last "longer" for the same amount of ressources, this would be the same as playing with "richer" ore, but smaller ore patch, each outpost is less work, and more long term value. I personnaly find it preferable in my games.

All that being said, i would not in my own game use mining drills that do not cover fully the ore patch, i would only leave 2 tiles gap between them unless i use beacon, not 3 as that leaves some ore uncovered and force a shuffling of the mining drill to mine it all which is "work", but if you're going to have some due to the module swap mechanism, you may as well do it under the form of an extra drill i thought, it act similarly. And eventually you don't have to walk there and work on the outpost again to mine it all.


I could only find the opposite suggestion and not the moment when the inserter gained the ability to add module to beacon, but still think i remember they were not able to insert module, only extract them for a long time, and it was some oddity, i suppose it was introduced in 2.0 that inserter could also insert module into beacons. viewtopic.php?p=634014 , i don't think any negative of the suggestion, i just wanted to propose some ideas