Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Allow the reading of lab inventories (flasks, trash, fuel, etc) via the circuit network.

What?

Allow labs to send their inventories to the circuit network. Just sending the items is fine, no need for enable/disable or sending the individual 'levels' of science pack drain. I've written up a mod for it in the meantime, although I should have asked here first :P

Why?

Since 2.0 most every entity in the game has circuit readable inventories, with the sole (as far as i remember) exception of labs. This would bring it inline with everything else.

would be much appreciated

The moderator response was more of a "skill issue just do it better" rather than a technical or design reason why they shouldn't be allowed.

protocol_1903 wrote: Mon Oct 13, 2025 7:36 pm The moderator response was more of a "skill issue just do it better" rather than a technical or design reason why they shouldn't be allowed.

It is still a Duplicate Suggestion; hence the reference to previous threads.

Forum Moderators are not Wube employees; so there is still a chance that the Idea would be accepted by a member of Staff, or share the underlying Technical reason why this won't happen. Especially with more attention being paid to it, and additional rationale for why this would be a useful feature.

I personally think it is a good idea; especially with the increase in Science Pack variety in Space Age DLC it can be a challenge to find the Lab which is "missing" a particular type of Pack at scale. But also there are so many more ways to obtain this information - such as reading the Belts/Chests which feed the Labs.

Good Luck!