Factorio Forums

Is there a way to specify preferred pickup/dropoff target for an inserter that is pointing at two intersecting entities? Ideally I would like entity prototype to specify inserter_priority (similarly selection_priority) or something like this.

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FWIW I found a workaround, but it’s far from ideal. I’m setting drop_target/pickup_target at runtime in the following manner:

• Inserter built ⇒ check entities in inserter pickup_position/drop_position and choose an appropriate target.
• Inserter rotated ⇒ same.
• Length of a configurable inserter has changed ⇒ same.
• One of the potentially overlapping entities built ⇒ find all inserters within a radius of N tiles from it; check if they are pointing at the entity; if yes, choose an appropriate target.

This works... more or less. But I’m not happy with this solution:

1. The last step relies on a hard-coded maximum inserter length, while in reality it’s not limited.
2. This is not compatible with other mods that allow changing inserter pickup/dropoff location dynamically, because there is no event for that.
3. I’m concerned about performance (haven't tested on a really large base yet).