just curious, why no Smart Long Handed Inserters?

[taiiat]

this seems like an Inserter type that would exist alongside the other existing ones.
but all i'm curious as to right now, is if there's a reason it doesn't already exist.

yes, there's some Mods around that have exactly this Inserter (though they include ridiculous things like L Inserters, K Inserters, and freeform grid Inserters), not the point.


to get an idea of why this seems to be 'missing' to me, what i'm trying to do:

_

at this Outpost, the intention is to have Trains come up, be loaded with Oil Barrels, and have empty Barrels unloaded.
throwing the barrels in the Train is fine, but taking them back out would require a Smart Inserter to only take the empty Barrels and not take the Oil Barrels back out.

so this seems to only be able to be solved with a Smart Inserter, but i have the Train only on the outside for security reasons, except that means i need a Long Handed version.
i could redesign my entire rail network, and have trains with one extra car than they have now - but the Inserter type that seems to be 'missing' doesn't seem like an issue to me.


again, just wondering if there is a reason why it doesn't exist.
if i run into enough need for it i'll see about doing something about it myself. for now i've compromised security slightly and added Turrets to (probably) cover the problem.

[Griffon0129]

For that matter why don't fast long inserters exist? I don't really use smart inserters often (although they are very useful when needed), but I've found several needs for long inserters and wish they were faster.
And once again this does exist in certain mods (yuoki and I think 5dim has a smart fast long inserter even).

What you could do is use an underground belt and build the wall around the smart inserter, btw you can build gates on train tracks so the double wall isn't really necessary if you do that.

[Koub]

Why don't you build gates to let the train in, and just do whatever you want yith smart inserters ?
I feel you're trying to achieve something like :

not easy task

[Evan_]

i'm curious as to right now, is if there's a reason it doesn't already exist. (...) if i run into enough need for it i'll see about doing something about it myself.

You don't have to go too far: I know about multiple 'big' mods that have a plethora of exotic inserter types. Long smarts are just one of the more mundane ones you'll find. I know that Bob's Mod and 5Dim has these, maybe others too. Also these mods are 'modular' in nature, so with a bit of reading around, you could skip installing most (or all) other features.

But to tell my opinion about the original question - the best fun in Factorio is to solve logistic problems, both big and small scale alike. The vanilla game provides an inflexible, but totally adequate toolset for that. Vanialla solutions might not be as fast or space-efficient what you can achieve with modded belts, inserters and pipes, but in my experience, when a player feels the need to for a tool that's not in there, it can be done -somehow- with the stock parts.

In your case it's easy. A train can be loaded by 6-7 inserters on each side. It can't be too tricky to make one side load barrels, while the other one is unloading them. But even if you lack space and can only use one side of wagons, you can use 3-3 smart inserters that reach different belts. (note: you can specify what item you want loaded in wagon slots by middle-clicking in them)

All and all, I don't mind mods that grant me extra convenience - I use a plethora of those. But I dislike mods that give me new tools, as solving the problems without them is more fun. And I'm yet to run into a task that was impossible without (for example) a left hand near inserter. Or a long smart.

[taiiat]

use gates and 6 inserters per car

i could, but that looks really cool. i can do it the most efficient way, but wanted to make it work the depicted way.

[Griffon0129]

i could, but that looks really cool. i can do it the most efficient way, but wanted to make it work the depicted way.

If you really wanted to do it efficiently (and probably the way i'd do it, even though you don't seem interested in efficiency) then have 2 train cars and load it up with fast inserters like @Evan_ was saying, but I usually have the inserters put into chests when unloading and pickup from chests when loading (to get that inserter stack bonus). I said use 2 train cars because 1 will only be for filled barrels and the other for empty barrels so you don't have to worry about using smart inserters at all.

something I designed quickly

train_stop.png (1.12 MiB) Viewed 3312 times

Right now it don't do much since what you see is all there is, but anyways you get the point. The belt coming in will be the filled oil barrels and the belt going away is the empty ones and I left enough space in front of the train for laser turrets (eventually going to need them).