limit assembler ingredient buffer

[Fatsack]

tl;dr
Allow limiting the input ingredient buffer to multiples of the recipe.

06-18-2026, 15-34-02.png (97.57 KiB) Viewed 134 times

What?

Setting 0 would be only filling the ingredient buffer when it is done crafting. setting to 1 would allow 1 times the amount needed to complete the recipe to fill the buffer. This would be similar to the limit stack size option on the inserters.

Why?

Current assembler 'set recipe' by circuit behavior doesn't allow you to change the recipe until all the ingredients from the previous recipe are gone. A zero setting would make it so there were no ingredients in the input buffer to clear when the recipe changes after producing an item. Can also be used to make more responsive production lines by preventing the first assembler sucking up everything to fill its input buffer before the following assemblers can get some of the ingredients. Or vice versa, allow setting this all the way up to the maximum stack size for ingredients such as when the player manually adds ingredients, allowing more of a buffer and more time for ingredients to arrive by train before the assemblers go idle, etc. Could add this to furnaces too I guess.

Thanks,
Fatsack

[ichVII]

It is already possible to "read contents", wire that to an inserter and limit how much the inserter is allowed to input that way. So if you want to limit downwards, it is already doable. Increasing upward is not possible currently.