Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Bacteria on a belt or any new item with a desireable spoil outcome could have its spoilage timer accelerated by heated pipes near the belt.

What?

Unless I'm mistaken, the current way to handle automated bacteria into ore production is to use some sort of buffer to give time for the bacteria to spoil to assure bioreactors do not get backed up waiting for that spoilage. Here's a goofy example of a belt-based bacteria -> smelter buffer;
Here's an example that same buffer augmented by pretend-heated pipes, where the heated pipes could accelerate spoilage by say, 5x when heated to 100°C? just pretend the pipes are hooked up to a heating tower nearby!

Why?

Although there's many ways to handle the buffer required for bacteria spoilage loops as it is now, adding another method that effectively makes the buffer required smaller could make for more base designs while fitting how chemical reactions sometimes work in real life; accelerating cell death or decay when hotter. It could even be used as a sort of miniature preview of the heat mechanics used in Aquilo, though only if the player happens to use this theoretical mechanic.

No.

This has at least 3 layers of added performance cost so i know it wont happen:
1/ belts would have to keep track of heat pipes around even on surfaces that do not use freezing logic.
2/ belts would have to iterate items in their range every tick to update their spoil state
3/ changing spoil tick has non trivial cost to it.

This could be also devastating on aquilo if there are spoilable items on belts since belts there have to be in range of heat pipes.

For this stuff I use steel boxes:
Bacteria or Ore -> inserter -> Steel box -> Inserter with ore filter -> belt.
10 steel boxes are good enough early.

Belts with bacteria
Inserters
Chests
Inserters with ore filter
Belts with ore, continuing to furnaces.

Alternatively you can use belt weaving so it spends enough time on belt that it spoils before reaching furnaces.

If it hasn't spoiled when it reached a smelter, it will just sit on the belt until it is.
Since everything coming behind that is even fresher, it wouldn't help to get it there faster, it would be counter productive.

Either have a box where it can "spoil" or increase time on the belt (belt length or speed)

In Gleba, It's all about time.
Have you tried using the most "rotten" jelly/mash, so the bacteria inherits it's freshness?

Better off adding a composting type machine (basically a chest with accelerated spoiling).