Simple Questions and Short Answers

[Engimage]

If I play in a vanilla save, install mods, then load up the vanilla save, will it be converted to a modded save?

Savefile itself is not modified during load process.
However the game will become modded at that point so any further saves will contain this information (if you are bothered by achievement progress)

[PlanetX]

What does this red sign mean?

[orzelek]

That there is no power provided to the drill.
You'll need to connect some to it - double check that your pole line is continuous up to steam generator.

You can click the pole to check power statistics to check if there are any generators on the network.

[The Eriksonn]

It is the yellow Icon that says it is not connected, the red means it is connected but no Power is produced.

it means that your steamengine is most likely out of coal or water(usually coal)

it is also red when you try to use solar panels in the night for example.

[olafthecat]

Run into this problem whenever my miners run out of coal to mine.
The coal is piped to the power generation system, which burns it to produce power.
This means that the system suffers a loss of power and I have to scrounge up some coal to get it back on line from another system.
This can mean that my furnaces, which have coal automatically inserted into them, have less fuel.
The butterfly effect of this could shut down your entire factory.
I suggest that you have multiple backups, battery banks, solar, to keep the factory running when this inevitably happens.
Or you could just go nuclear, that's another option.

[Bauer]

From early to mid-game (after 1 h into the game, so not very early):
I run the coal miners and the inserters in the power array on a seperate power grid. Just a few steam engines or solar panels solumely for the purpose to keep the the power production going even if the consumption is higher than the production.

[Zavian]

Personally I like to build my power plant beside it's own patch of coal, with it's own dedicated miners. Then I add a box and an inserter that takes coal from the coal belt, so I have a nearby stash of coal to restart things in the event of a loss of power. I also arrange my power lines so that somewhere near that box of coal is a critical power pole that connects the boilers + steam engines + coal mining to the rest of the base. So in the event of a power outage caused by insufficient coal reaching the boilers, I can just remove that pole (to instantly remove 98% of the load), and turn the inserter around (to get coal flowing quickly onto the belt). If needed I can grab some coal from the box, and manually add coal to the nearest boiler or two. Once things are stable I can add some more boilers + steam engines and/or mining drills and replace the removed power pole. That power pole also makes a decent place to add a switch to enable the steam engines as backup power if/when I move to solar.

[Selvek]

Is there any clever way for a circuit network to detect biters?
The majority of my base's power usage is currently going to idle laser towers, and the spikes during an attack are surprisingly small.

I'd like to make peril-sensitive firebases that bring additional guns online when there is an imminent attack. Trying to measure the draw from a sentinel turret and bringing more guns online after the shooting has already started would not be responsive or very effective.

Rather than doing something complicated to detect when your laser turrets fire, what if you use an ammo turret as detection? It is pretty straightforward to detect when an inserter triggers, so as soon as an inserter tries to reload the turret you can turn on the lasers. Possible downside - it takes a little while for a gun turret to deplete a single clip, so this may be too slow depending on how nasty your biter attacks are.

[Cribbit]

Is there any clever way for a circuit network to detect biters?
The majority of my base's power usage is currently going to idle laser towers, and the spikes during an attack are surprisingly small.

I'd like to make peril-sensitive firebases that bring additional guns online when there is an imminent attack. Trying to measure the draw from a sentinel turret and bringing more guns online after the shooting has already started would not be responsive or very effective.

Rather than doing something complicated to detect when your laser turrets fire, what if you use an ammo turret as detection? It is pretty straightforward to detect when an inserter triggers, so as soon as an inserter tries to reload the turret you can turn on the lasers. Possible downside - it takes a little while for a gun turret to deplete a single clip, so this may be too slow depending on how nasty your biter attacks are.

Detecting when a laser turret fires would be much faster but by that point he thinks it wouldn't turn on the additional turrets fast enough to respond.

Junkie, you can use detection on a flamethrower turret. It doesn't require power (so no weird setups to give it power but not the lasers) and you can easily detect when it's firing by checking the fuel input. It has a longer range than laser turrets so your turrets will turn on before the biters are in range.

[PlanetX]

My inserters fail to grab stuff, they move a bit when an item comes along but they don't actually grab the item. How do I solve this?

[joon]

My inserters fail to grab stuff, they move a bit when an item comes along but they don't actually grab the item. How do I solve this?

Are you using Yellow or grey inserters and red or blue belt? cus you would need to upgrade the inserter to at least blue to have them work

[PlanetX]

My inserters fail to grab stuff, they move a bit when an item comes along but they don't actually grab the item. How do I solve this?

Are you using Yellow or grey inserters and red or blue belt? cus you would need to upgrade the inserter to at least blue to have them work

Yellow inserters and yellow belt. Are you saying that yellow inserters aren't programmed to work?

[joon]

They should. Can you post a picture of the setup? Inserters only grab 2x the recipe needed for the machine that they are grabbing for.

[PlanetX]

They should. Can you post a picture of the setup? Inserters only grab 2x the recipe needed for the machine that they are grabbing for.

It's about the left belt. Yes, there are also long inserters but they fail as well from time to time.

[daniel34]

My inserters fail to grab stuff, they move a bit when an item comes along but they don't actually grab the item. How do I solve this?

Most of the time the issue is that you don't have enough power. Hover over the inserter (or any power pole) and check if the Electricity bar on the right side is green/full. If it's not then make sure your power setup is working propwrly (e.g. all boilers have fuel), expand it if necessary.

You can also left-click power poles to open the Electric network info window for more details.

[PlanetX]

My inserters fail to grab stuff, they move a bit when an item comes along but they don't actually grab the item. How do I solve this?

Most of the time the issue is that you don't have enough power. Hover over the inserter (or any power pole) and check if the Electricity bar on the right side is green/full. If it's not then make sure your power setup is working propwrly (e.g. all boilers have fuel), expand it if necessary.

You can also left-click power poles to open the Electric network info window for more details.

Thanks, that helped!

[PlanetX]

How do you guys make screenshots with the alt-key on?
Everytime I click printscreen with Alt on it shows the picture without Alt on...

[joon]

For me it's the windows key and Prtsc button

[PlanetX]

Also, can anyone tell me why my assembly machines (3 in the center) aren't working?

(No idea why my screenshot is successful, I would still like to get an answer to my previous question)

[DaveMcW]

Your inserter for iron gear wheels is full of copper plates.