Increase number of filter inserter filters

[richtopia]

TL;DR

Currently the Filter Inserters support five resources to filter. Increasing that limit would help advanced base design. This could be unlockable with the advanced Inserter technologies

What ?

The Filter Inserter and Filter Stack Inserters have a limit of five resources to filter against. That limit should be increased.

The Red and Green Wires have channels for all items in the game. If you send signals for more than five items a Filter Inserter ignores all but five (and I'm unsure the logic of what is ignored; I suspect the Filter Inserter ignores the newest signals).

In case it is not clear when I say 5 item limit, here is a screenshot stolen from XKCD forums:

WHAT do you suggest? What is your idea that should be changed? Explain in detail your idea.

Nothing fancy, just ability to handle more filters. If people consider the five filter limit a core constraint to the game, perhaps make it an unlockable tech.

Ultimately, allowing as many filters as items would remove headaches when integrating to a Red or Green Wire network

Why ?

Troubleshooting why a Filter Inserter wasn't collecting all of the items signaled on a Green Wire was frustrating. The five items feels like an arbitrary limit and I would like to see it removed.

Note:

You may notice this is my first post, and I have only built one factory so far. Looking through some screenshots of other people's factories I may have built it "wrong", but I really would like to see if I can finish the game with my design. However what could be a single "request" bus on Red Wires quickly gets saturated thanks to this five item limit. I am working around it but it is very tedious.

Lastly, sorry if it was already suggested; I didn't spend very long searching for this idea.

[BenSeidel]

FYI: the order is determined by the order of the items that appear in the crafting/signal selection menu. Items in the first group/at the top/to the left are picked over items later on.
That means that Yellow belt will be selected over red belt, etc.

[deer_buster]

I guess can you give a specific use case that you cannot currently overcome with current vanilla capability?

[richtopia]

Here is my current use case. I'm trying to have a feed back loop in my base. In front of each assembler I have a buffer chest which is tracked for inventory. When that chest loses inventory (assembler loaded), it sends a signal to the filter inserter in front to fill the chest. This works well.

The feedback section is a red circuit bus which connects to the exit of all my assemblers. It combines all of the individual assembler requests and sends it to the unload filter inserters. That way, if no gears are needed none can exit that assembler, and my belts aren't full of excess gears.

In the below screenshot, you can see that my engine assembler has a red long inserter exiting instead of the standard filter inserter. This is because I had just realized that the filter inserters were full of their five requests, and engines were not being requested.



Yes there are ways to work around this. You can see on the right hand side a series of arithmetic combinators; these isolate the raw material requests (one multiplies iron plate by 1 and delivers the iron plate signal; the others request copper plate, steel, and plastic) so that my raw material line can have a similar feedback loop and not get hung up. However this is very time consuming to set up.

I haven't thought of additional examples yet but I return to my original statement that with the circuits supporting signals for all items in the game, it would be nice to see similar support for the filter inserters.

[deer_buster]

if I understand your problem, you might be doing this the overly complicated way anyway...I could be completely missing the point (very likely)

Why not use fast inserters on your assembler output, and have it set to enable when the item's signal > 0 (in your example, when engine signal = 1), and have the combined signal run to the fast inserter?

Advantage is you don't have to worry about setting a filter (and besides, what else is the engine assembler going to output besides engines???) and you don't have this limit to worry about. When an engine is needed, engine is set to 1 (or more), and the engine is output

Am I missing the point? If I am, maybe a video/gify would help

[richtopia]

if I understand your problem, you might be doing this the overly complicated way anyway...I could be completely missing the point (very likely)

Why not use fast inserters on your assembler output, and have it set to enable when the item's signal > 0 (in your example, when engine signal = 1), and have the combined signal run to the fast inserter?

Advantage is you don't have to worry about setting a filter (and besides, what else is the engine assembler going to output besides engines???) and you don't have this limit to worry about. When an engine is needed, engine is set to 1 (or more), and the engine is output

Am I missing the point? If I am, maybe a video/gify would help

That is actually very clever. However it does not completely solve my problem.

In the picture you can also see two sets of belts running vertically (left hand side of picture). One has a filter for science: I have a similar feedback loop specifying science specifically (see how I've already filled by buffer of red and green science?). The other filter is my trash loop: I pull everything off the belt slowly with regular inserters but return items demanded by my red bus to the belts. This handles any stray material that accidentally finds its way onto the belts and allows me to balance a surplus of materials between loops.

However, ultimately this thread is a suggestion for expanding a game mechanic, and not fixing my factory design. I think that allowing filter inserters to handle anything supplied by their red/green wire will allow more flexibility to the player and enable creative solutions beyond my factory.

[Zool]

Tbh, all that I'm missing is the "not" condition for a filter inserter, so it can for example grab everything that is not iron, copper, coal.

[mp0011]

I have used wagon on 2 pieces of tracks for this, instead of chests.
In wagon, You can set up to 40 different filters

Then, inserter do not pick from belt anything that do not fit into wagon, and you can use any cheap inserters...

[deer_buster]

Tbh, all that I'm missing is the "not" condition for a filter inserter, so it can for example grab everything that is not iron, copper, coal.

You should put in a suggestion for a blacklist filter ala deconstruction planner

[deer_buster]

if I understand your problem, you might be doing this the overly complicated way anyway...I could be completely missing the point (very likely)

Why not use fast inserters on your assembler output, and have it set to enable when the item's signal > 0 (in your example, when engine signal = 1), and have the combined signal run to the fast inserter?

Advantage is you don't have to worry about setting a filter (and besides, what else is the engine assembler going to output besides engines???) and you don't have this limit to worry about. When an engine is needed, engine is set to 1 (or more), and the engine is output

Am I missing the point? If I am, maybe a video/gify would help

That is actually very clever. However it does not completely solve my problem.

In the picture you can also see two sets of belts running vertically (left hand side of picture). One has a filter for science: I have a similar feedback loop specifying science specifically (see how I've already filled by buffer of red and green science?). The other filter is my trash loop: I pull everything off the belt slowly with regular inserters but return items demanded by my red bus to the belts. This handles any stray material that accidentally finds its way onto the belts and allows me to balance a surplus of materials between loops.

You should discuss this in Gameplay Help or on Reddit...a lot of people smarter than me on both of those.

However, ultimately this thread is a suggestion for expanding a game mechanic, and not fixing my factory design. I think that allowing filter inserters to handle anything supplied by their red/green wire will allow more flexibility to the player and enable creative solutions beyond my factory.

Granted, but if others don't see the value in your suggestion as given, the devs might not either.

That being said, your last sentence there clarified your desire

[BlakeMW]

Tbh, all that I'm missing is the "not" condition for a filter inserter, so it can for example grab everything that is not iron, copper, coal.

The NOT condition is really easy to do with circuit network. Wire the belt (set to read contents: hold) to the filter inserter (set to set filters), then wire a Constant Combinator to the filter inserter and set it to "iron= -10000", "copper= -10000", "coal= -10000" : a negative value prevents the filter being set.

[ssilk]

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=14741 Inverse filter setting (Is not filter, take all except...)

[Lonemax]

I looked through the forums and didn't see anything like this, so I apologize if I missed it. This is equal parts unexpected behavior/bug and feature request, so I figured I'd post it in the suggestions forum.

The problem arises when controlling a filter inserter's whitelist/blacklist via a circuit connection that has more variables than the inserter has filter slots. The expected behavior is that, when the filter is forced to choose, it will pick the 5 largest variables on the circuit network to set its filters. Instead, the inserter selects (and I'm speculating here) the first 5 variables that show up in the prototype listings. Below is a picture to illustrate the issue.

Bug.PNG (578.17 KiB) Viewed 3741 times

A combinator has 10 variables with values ranging from 1-10 and is attached to a filter inserter. I would expect pipe, transport belt, sulfur, wood, and electric engine to show up in the filters since they have the 5 largest values. Instead, landfill, wood, and iron plate show up.

Alternatively, if the filter inserter blacklisted/whitelisted any number of items, rather than just 5, that would also aid my overly engineered circuit network sushi train stops.

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into older thread with suggestion trying to deal with the same issue.

I looked through the forums and didn't see anything like this, so I apologize if I missed it.

There are two universal rules : "it's never aliens", and "it has already been suggested in the past" . But it's OK .

[rfvgyhn]

Any chance this idea can be reconsidered now that we have the quality mechanic and circuit controlled assembler recipes? I know the current limit is five for performance reasons but perhaps these big changes are enough to warrant another look. Maybe something like an opt-in checkbox per inserter or a new "mega" filter inserter that wouldn't affect all existing inserters.

Circuit controlled whitelist/blacklist are the obvious way to separate input/output/trash for dynamic recipes. You are either limited to five signals per assembler and not being able to use quality modules, or having one item take all slots to account for all qualities (though this one could be fixed by being allowed to specify "any" quality on the signal). Personally, the five item limit really makes dynamic assemblers more of a hassle than not.