Inserter heartbeats

[DaveMcW]

Inserters never use the power listed in their info box for more than a fraction of a second. They idle at 400W, and peak at full power while rotating. But they vary a lot in between, depending on where they are getting their items.

Here is a ranking by average power use.

kW - Pulling from
4.7 - End of belt far side
5.4 - Full belt far side
5.7 - Cargo wagon center
6.1 - End of belt center
6.5 - 2x2 building
6.7 - Moving belt far side
6.9 - Sparse express belt far side (FAIL)
7.4 - Chest
7.9 - Crowded express belt far side
8.8 - End of belt near side
9.3 - Full belt near side
9.7 - Cargo wagon corner
10.0 - 3x3 building
10.1 - Sparse express belt near side (FAIL)
10.2 - Moving belt near side
10.7 - Crowded express belt near side
varies - Building slower than the inserter


If you graph an inserter on its own power network, it looks like an EKG. And they are all different.


Building slower than the inserter


2x2 building


Chest


3x3 building


Cargo wagon center


Cargo wagon corner


End of belt far side


End of belt center


End of belt near side


Full belt far side


Full belt near side


Moving belt far side


Moving belt near side


Crowded express belt far side


Crowded express belt near side


Sparse express belt far side (FAIL)


Sparse express belt near side (FAIL)

[DerivePi]

Fantastic work! This should mess up anyone who is trying to capture this in a spreadsheet!

[ssilk]

Great, I put this into the wiki... am I allowed to use the pics?

[DaveMcW]

I don't think I can copyright screenshots unless I am the game developer.

[BurnHard]

Hello, i don't want to sound negative, it seems you had some work with this

1.) I think the average-value you posted is not the real average value, your method would only work if each inserter motion cycle is exactely 5s long. Only way to get good results would be, to take one fully charged accu, let the one inserter work till the accu is empty, the calculate the power from working time and accu capacity. Or take at least the one minute average.

2.) ssilk: Regarding the wiki, what value would you say would it have for the average new player that seeks help in the wiki. All this graphs are nice to look at, yes. But all these values don't really help with decision-making ingame, i mean you would have to build inserters anyway when you need them.

[ssilk]

2.) ssilk: Regarding the wiki, what value would you say would it have for the average new player that seeks help in the wiki. All this graphs are nice to look at, yes. But all these values don't really help with decision-making ingame, i mean you would have to build inserters anyway when you need them.

The wiki splits currently up into many parts: beginner tutorials and the current docs. And in then the docs subpages, which explain quite detailed stuff, like this. The wiki is full of such "useless" information.

I don't think this here has no potential for decision making. At least you see, that there are situations where the inserter works predictable and others work non-predictable.

I think you can interpret much more output of those graphs, but I think also, this should not be explained in text form , I think this is a game secret, which makes more fun to find out yourself, cause it is not really game-relevant.

[DaveMcW]

1.) I think the average-value you posted is not the real average value, your method would only work if each inserter motion cycle is exactely 5s long. Only way to get good results would be, to take one fully charged accu, let the one inserter work till the accu is empty, the calculate the power from working time and accu capacity. Or take at least the one minute average.

I did use the one minute average, most of the work was finding a screenshot that matched.

[bobingabout]

The game defines how much power an inserter uses by having a "Drain" (Always consumed) and a running power consumption per movement. if the arm has to move more, it will consume more power.
Furthest from the center doesn't necasarilly mean it consumes more power, since the arm has 2 types of movement, rotation, and extension. if it is grabbing from the far side to put into a machine, it might have to extend less than grabbing from the near side of a belt, therefore use less power.

does this make sense?

[sillyfly]

What doesn't make sense is the fact that an inserter has to move more when taking from the "side" of a cargo wagon - it seems like the game considers a cargo wagon to only have a container in it's center, but that's far from realistic...

[orzelek]

What doesn't make sense is the fact that an inserter has to move more when taking from the "side" of a cargo wagon - it seems like the game considers a cargo wagon to only have a container in it's center, but that's far from realistic...

Take a closer look at cargo wagon with inserters - it's clear that they work on center of it. I'd guess it's simply easier to code and has not much to do with realism.

[MeduSalem]

What doesn't make sense is the fact that an inserter has to move more when taking from the "side" of a cargo wagon - it seems like the game considers a cargo wagon to only have a container in it's center, but that's far from realistic...

Take a closer look at cargo wagon with inserters - it's clear that they work on center of it. I'd guess it's simply easier to code and has not much to do with realism.

Don't inserters always work on the center of the input/output targets except belts? I guess the devs are using the same code for every entity that's not a belt.

[sillyfly]

Erm... yeah - that's my point - they work on the center of the wagon, which makes inserters at the edges work more. I understand this is done to simplify the code, but the graphical as well as the game-mechanic effect is quite bad.