Ho to properly calculate needs for inserters?

[D20CriticalFailure]

https://postimg.cc/wyJdSjgx

For obvious reasons having 9 inserters per factory unit is not favorable setup. I guess that factoriolab inserters are using their minimum capacity to grab items. How should i approach this if i want to know how many inerters i need if i have all the top techs - inserter capacity, belt stacking, quality inserter? What formula i can write down in excel to tell me by how much i can slash the amount of arms if introduce one or all techs?

[Hurkyl]

I've not used factoriolab before, but it looks like it defaults to inserter capacity 7 (in "bonuses") and you can set the stack size right next to where you select the belt type (in "Factory").

This isn't something you can reasonably compute: instead you test an arrangement empirically to measure inserter throughput, or you inspect a machine to see if it needs more or less inserters. And there are a number of other issues complicating things for extremely high speed machines.

And you can memorize a few handy numbers for your own quick estimates. E.g. I play the early game a lot and get a lot of use out of the fact a (yellow) inserter can move a hair over 50 items per minute between belts and chests* under typical full capacity situations.

*: Meaning any building with an inventory. E.g. an assembler.

[D20CriticalFailure]

I can chose stack size, but that does not influence inserters.

Now, back at you - because testing every produce with every manufacturer unit with every module with every tech productivity (which all of i need) is not something i can reasonably do. Therefore making a simple calculator that is at least 90% truthful is better idea. I understand that an arm may not rotate with its full speed completing whole trips in desired time because it takes time to collect cargo and then drop it but if i rise quality of inserter and it spins two times faster then if i can approximate it delivers 195% of cargo it is still good outcome to have.

If you can memorize a constant value like 50 items per minute it means there is solid data to type into calculator.

[OneOfTheChips]

Try this wiki page:

https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserters

It has a ton of data and tables that you can use to get all the information you need for every inserter at every research level and every quality.

[jdrexler75]

If you want a formula to calculate this, it will be inordinately complicated.

There are too many factors that all affect inserter throughput in different ways, and they interact in non-linear ways with each other: Is the target a chest or belt or splitter? What speed is the belt/splitter? Is the belt completely free or does the inserter sometimes need to wait for space? If the source is a belt, which lane(s)? What is the inserter hand size? What is the item stack size? For stack inserter, what is the belt stack capacity? And most importantly, what is the quality of the inserter (if you play with quality)? Good luck putting all that in one formula... for most of these factors you'll need a lookup table for each combination so you'll end up with hundreds of lookup values to determine.

The only cases which have a reasonably simple formula is moving items between chests/machines with no belts involved.

[computeraddict]

Try this wiki page:

https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserters

It has a ton of data and tables that you can use to get all the information you need for every inserter at every research level and every quality.

https://wiki.factorio.com/inserters#Inserter_throughput Specifically this subheading. OP can just plug the empirically derived data into his formulas.