Inserter clocking related question

[hornetDC]

I was thinking about inserter clocking and how it can improve ups. What if there was a slider "set MIN stack size" similar to "set stack size"? For example setting it to 12 makes inserter only swing if it can grab 12 items. Would is save ups? It seems too easy to implement, there must be a catch.
Inserter clocking is time based, but "min stack size" will probably check "does input have desired stack size" on every tick or something.
I thought about making a topic in suggestions forum, but I am not sure if it was suggested already.

[NotRexButCaesar]

Even if it didn’t save ups, it would be useful in many places, such as kovarex and multi item train loading.

[blazespinnaker]

Yeah, that'd be rather useful. No clue on how easy it would be to implement though. You'd have to know the code to make that observation credibly. Regressions are always a risk.

[DaleStan]

The biggest issue I see is inserters from belts. How would an inserter pulling from a belt know if it will be able to find all twelve items? Would it simply sit and wait with eleven in its hand if the twelfth gets stolen by the player?

[ptx0]

The biggest issue I see is inserters from belts. How would an inserter pulling from a belt know if it will be able to find all twelve items? Would it simply sit and wait with eleven in its hand if the twelfth gets stolen by the player?

thats how it used to work, and it pissed players off.

[jamiechi1]

I was sure they fixed that. From my experience it seems to grab less than the full stack amount if the belt is not full. I think there is a maximum number of ticks it waits to decide whether to grab a whole stack or less. Recently, I have not seen an inserter get stuck unless the destination is full. Except for burner inserters.
There used to be an issue with the burner inserter getting stuck and I would have to manually fill it with fuel to get it to restart. Haven't seen that happen in a long time either.

[DaleStan]

I wasn't aware inserters used to freeze while waiting for additional items from a belt, but the fact that they now don't is my point. An inserter with a minimum stack is likely to have undesirable behavior when pulling items from a belt. It seems to me that either the minimum stack gets ignored sometimes, or the inserter freezes waiting for more items.

[Beamup]

But if it's an option that can be turned on deliberately, surely that's OK? If you don't want the inserter to wait for more items before moving what it has, you don't set a minimum on it.

[quyxkh]

The value of clocking the inserters is they don't check at all unless the circuit changes, which for full-hand clocks means every clocked inserter gets looked at 12 times less often than the inventory it takes from changes. Getting the inserter to check whether the available inventory's as big as some newly stored limit at every inventory change is moving entirely the wrong direction.

[ptx0]

But if it's an option that can be turned on deliberately, surely that's OK? If you don't want the inserter to wait for more items before moving what it has, you don't set a minimum on it.

because inserters that are waiting for items aren't asleep unless the belt is not moving (backed-up).