Factorio Forums

I'm like 90% sure this is a bug, but if I put a burner inserter into a powered area, it works without requiring fuel. If this is true, that means that normal inserters are essentially useless except for chain builds.

Let me revise: my inserters just ran out of gas. However, it appears that the inserter has some time of initial power when I put it down, so it will do some work before running out of fuel. This still seems quite odd.

This is intentional. A burner inserter starts with enough energy for a few movements so that it can fuel itself automatically if it is placed to grab from a chest/belt/... that contains fuel, no matter if the area is powered by electricity or not.

This means you could run your entire factory without power! Just keep putting burner inserters down and picking them back up!

(I"m joking of course. Well I'm not. It's true. I'm jokingly "realizing" it as an exploitable bug now)

Note also this works with Robots. Pick them up when they're trying to charge at your roboport (but can't because you've got 0 battery power), and they will happily take off again, fully charged and ready to do the next queued task.