I am stuck with chaotic inventory. How do you play this game?

[SirHannes]

Hi,

when building belts I often find errors, I am a beginner, learning that game, which is fun!

But when there are already items on the belt, I get them in my inventory. I don't like that. It's chaotic with ores, products, things I don't need and I get headache searching for stuff I actually really need to continue sth.

Small workaround was to have chests anywhere. And fixing an error like above (or improving a belt) go to the next chest and throw everything in which I don't want to carry.

1. I am loosing resources
2. it is not nice, it feels like I have to implement trash cans in this game!

Do I miss a technology. Or am I unaware of an shortcut to handle this situations more efficient?

Thank you

[Beamup]

Getting random stuff in your inventory when working on belts is normal. I just stick them in whatever the belt was feeding - so if I was working on the belt carrying iron ore to the furnaces, put the ore into the furnaces when I'm done.

And the quickbars are a great way to handle organizing your inventory overall, so that you don't have to hunt for the stuff you want. It's always in the quickbar slot you assigned to it.

[SirHannes]

Ok, the first phrase is also my approach. I didn't find it useful, some furnaces are already full of coal, or they accept Carbon only. I find myself spending too much time on running around to get trash out of my inventory. :-.(

Okay, I will have a deeper look into the quickbar. Thx

[Serenity]

For now just have a central area with some steel or storage chests to store extra stuff. Later on you get logistics robots that can automatically recycle stuff. They take unwanted items from you and put them where they belong. You can also sort storage chests (at least for new materials) by filtering them

And you can manually put lots of materials into machines by holding CTRL-left mouse, dragging the cursor across the machines and releasing. Very easily done with coal or ore into furnaces for example

Recycling raw materials is simple:

Recycling.jpg (29.49 KiB) Viewed 2928 times

Put an underground belt into the line and a splitter with input priority activated. Then all the material from the chest is preferred and it will eventually empty. That also works without logistics robots. You can manually move some stuff from your central trash area if you feel like it becomes too much

[Bilka]

Hey, you say you are a beginner but you mention "carbon" which doesn't exist in vanilla, so you must be using mods. Looking at your other posts where you provide screenshots confirms that. Have you considered playing vanilla and learning its concepts before playing with big modpacks like Angels + Bobs + AAI Industry? Those modpacks really aren't made for first time players :)

[coppercoil]

You can build a small (or large) waste processing setup that sorts every kind of recycled item, then buffers and distributes them to corresponding consumers. That's fun, even if I have no need to save resources in the late/postgame.

[Beamup]

Ok, the first phrase is also my approach. I didn't find it useful, some furnaces are already full of coal, or they accept Carbon only.

Vanilla inserters won't fill furnaces (or assemblers) with as much as they can hold (IIRC it's five units of fuel for furnaces, three copies of the recipe for assemblers?). A fact which is very helpful in this regard. And serves as reinforcement of Bilka's point - mods may be contributing materially to your situation.

That said, the coal to solid transition does exist in vanilla and has the same effect (if a furnace has taken in some solid fuel, extra coal can't be dumped into it). But I wouldn't dream of messing with my fuel supply belts while that was in progress - I find that a strict hands-off policy until the last of the coal has worked through the system prevents weirdness. It's not like I don't have other stuff to do to fill the time!

[Serenity]

That said, the coal to solid transition does exist in vanilla and has the same effect (if a furnace has taken in some solid fuel, extra coal can't be dumped into it). But I wouldn't dream of messing with my fuel supply belts while that was in progress - I find that a strict hands-off policy until the last of the coal has worked through the system prevents weirdness.

It really shouldn't be an issue. The furnace will use up the last bit of coal and then load solid fuel. They use little fuel, so this doesn't cause any interruptions. I also put all my wood on the furnace coal belt. They take whatever they can use.

[orzelek]

Ok, the first phrase is also my approach. I didn't find it useful, some furnaces are already full of coal, or they accept Carbon only.

Vanilla inserters won't fill furnaces (or assemblers) with as much as they can hold (IIRC it's five units of fuel for furnaces, three copies of the recipe for assemblers?). A fact which is very helpful in this regard. And serves as reinforcement of Bilka's point - mods may be contributing materially to your situation.

That said, the coal to solid transition does exist in vanilla and has the same effect (if a furnace has taken in some solid fuel, extra coal can't be dumped into it). But I wouldn't dream of messing with my fuel supply belts while that was in progress - I find that a strict hands-off policy until the last of the coal has worked through the system prevents weirdness. It's not like I don't have other stuff to do to fill the time!

You are not taking bugs into account.
If material that is used as fuel can also be used in furnace recipe it goes bonkers. Inserter will load that material into fuel slot until it's full. This happens in Bob's/Angel's with some of materials and only way around it is to prime the furnace with different type of fuel first and ensure it's supply.