Burner Inserters

[Goose]

With the new assembler energy consumption streamlining forcing higher tier assemblers to use more energy per craft, I believe it makes inconsistencies with other entities (ie. many early game burner devices). It would be understandable to keep the energy consumption of stone furnaces and arguably burner mining drills as they are (due to how important they are in the experience), but I think it could be interesting to have the choice to use burner inserters more early game with things like smelting arrays. Or do you disagree? I want to hear your opinions.

[Koub]

[Koub] Moving the topic to Balancing.

[leadraven]

I never use burner inserters. First few minutes I move materials manually, then with yellow inserters.

[bobingabout]

With the new assembler energy consumption streamlining forcing higher tier assemblers to use more energy per craft

This is new? I'm sure this has been true for however long I've been playing.


in any case, as burner inserters are right now, there are still instances where you want to use them.

please keep in mind that an electric powered inserter has a DRAIN, meaning it consumes energy even when it isn't being used, where a burner inserter does NOT, so when it goes idle, it consumes no energy.
The best place to use a burner inserter is for fuel insertion. Powering those burner mining drills and more importantly furnaces in the early game is a good use for them.

Inserting fuel into boilers is another good use. if for whatever reason you enter a low power state, an electric powered inserter will slow down. This could delay adding fuel to a boiler, which in turn causes your electricity production to be reduced, which slows them down even further, until eventually everything grinds to a halt. Using burner inserters for this critical job solves the issue.

Possible issues that could cause this brown out low power spiral are usually... Expanding your base while neglecting to increase the size of your power plant, or your base being attacked while you're defending with laser turrets. Laser turrets are a primary-input where most of everything else is a secondary-input, so power will be diverted away from your vital boiler feeding inserters to power the lasers.

Of course this doesn't fix the 3rd issue. you ran out of fuel.

[Koub]

With the new assembler energy consumption streamlining forcing higher tier assemblers to use more energy per craft

This is new? I'm sure this has been true for however long I've been playing.

It is (0.17 vs 0.16):

AM1 : 75kW vs 90kW
AM2 : 150kW vs 150 kW
AM3 : 375 kW vs 210 kW

in 0.16, AM2 => AM3 : going from 150 to 210 kW was a 40% consumption increase for a 66% increase in crafting speed (0.75 => 1.25)
in 0.17, AM2 => AM3 : the consumption increase is 150% (150 to 375 kW), for the same 66% increase in crafting speed.