[15.40] Inserters don't fill empty ASM input

[wpirobotbuilder]

I've attached a save which explains the issue, and how it's impacting gameplay. For this example, my machines are crafting Science Pack 2.

Buffer Testing.png (2.27 MiB) Viewed 3382 times

The buffer for Science Pack 2 in an Assembling Machine is 12. See the assembling machine on the far right.

I noticed that if the assembling machine runs out of ingredients for Science Pack 2 (transport belts and inserters), and it has more than 1 Science Pack 2 in its output buffer, the inserters feeding the assembling machine will not engage. This causes the assembling machine to stall, however it still has room to craft. In the save I've provided, there are two assembling machines which have 2 and 3 SP2 in their output buffers respectively. The inserters are not feeding them more crafting ingredients. If you bring the count of SP2 to 1 in the output buffer, then the inserters begin feeding the assembling machine again.

The impact is that if I want to circuit control when the output inserters remove items from the assembling machines, the assembling machines will stall if there are ever 2+ SP2 in the output buffer, even if the output buffer is not full. This is exemplified in the circuit controlled setup pictured. The circuit tells the inserter to engage every 840 ticks (14 seconds). It takes 19.2 seconds to fill the internal buffer of the assembling machine from 0 to 12 items. Therefore, the output buffer should never fill up. However, the assembling machine still stalls due to the aforementioned input inserters not engaging.

I would expect that input inserters only stop inputting items when the output buffer is completely full.

The only required mods are Creative mode.

[Rseding91]

Thanks for the report however that's working fully as intended. The inserters will not add more ingredients when the output slot has >= 2x the results of the recipe.

[wpirobotbuilder]

Thanks for the report however that's working fully as intended. The inserters will not add more ingredients when the output slot has >= 2x the results of the recipe.

Thanks for the quick turnaround. Is this behavior likely to stay the way it is?

[Zavian]

My understanding is that they have tweaked the limit, so it now also takes into account recipe completion time. That way a requestor with a fast recipe and speed modules/beacons will grab more items before the limit kicks in. That should prevent the assembler stalling whilst inserters are swinging in 0.16.

Also I think the actual limit for how many items an assembler can hold in its output stack is one stack of the item in question. If you manually load the assmebler it will produce up to that limit. The inserter stopping loading is so that an assembler that can't output doesn't consume lots of potentially expensive resources unnecessarily.

[impetus maximus]

why not just remove the product from the assemblers?

[wpirobotbuilder]

My understanding is that they have tweaked the limit, so it now also takes into account recipe completion time. That way a requestor with a fast recipe and speed modules/beacons will grab more items before the limit kicks in. That should prevent the assembler stalling whilst inserters are swinging in 0.16.

Wasn't that just for logistic request buffers? https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-213

why not just remove the product from the assemblers?

I'm using the circuit network to control the output inserters, so there's no guarantee that the output will be removed in the next few ticks.

[Zavian]

See viewtopic.php?f=6&t=50086&start=60#p309796 .

Note that if you disable the output inserters then the input inserters will still stop. If you want to prevent that then you need to unload the assembler into a chest or something to act as a buffer.