Factorio Forums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP3jbxdHoP4

The pickup and drop positions of inserters are not persistent.
I'm using a mod for freedom of those positions which made it very noticeable, but I tested it with all mods disabled and it gives the same result.
steps to recreate:
- place an inserter pointing toward the beginning of a belt, so the drop position will be on the right side.
- copy the inserter and press 'H' or 'V' to mirror it and place it in front of the beginning of another belt.
now it will drop to the left side.
- select another type of inserter and place it on top of the second one to replace it, this will 'reset' to the original drop position for the replacement, being on the right side again.

Using an upgrade planner to replace the second inserter by a construction bot does NOT reset the positions, but doing the stuff described above after a bot replacement still activates the bug.

I encountered this behaviour too, and it is a bit annoying. I wanted to replace my yellow inserter with a blue one, and almost did not notice that the lane used was changed.

That is the intended difference between fast replacing and upgrading.

Duplicate: 134682

I have looked at the other report and as I understand correctly the difference means that a mirrored inserter ( recycler or burner drill ) drop position is just a side effect of the mirroring behavior?
And that the arrow of the cursor inserter will show you where the drop position will be.

But I don't think that's the case, because in this picture here I have my standard setup aligned in a way so that I can upgrade the whole setup before I have bots by just running alongside it without having to rotate the cursor the whole time.
And if I hover the cursor blue inserter over the old yellow one, the arrows are visible directly in front of and behind the cursor.
Not at the position where they will be eventually, mirrored or not.
I just expect them to be on the same place as where they were before.
So if it is about consistency, then the arrows of the adapted pickup and drop positions should be visible at the definitive position, just like the recycler or burner drill.