Stack

< Stack

A stack is the basic element in Factorio to store Items.

Don't mix a stack up with Slot of power armor or other the slots for the modules (and planned slots for vehicles and other devices)! There is an affinity to liquid stacks.

Usages of stacks

Stacks are included into nearly every device, which can handle items, but they are also at some (not so awaited) places. Full list of slots:

• The player stacks
  • inventory-stacks
  • toolbelt
  • tool-, armor-, weapon- and ammunition stacks
  • The players hand (is also a stack)
• Vehicles contain also some stacks for Fuel
  • Vehicle/Car (contains most stacks in game)
  • Vehicle/Train (the wagons, but also the locomotive)
• Chests: eventually the best known example of stacks. Basically chests are nothing else then a group of stacks.
• Devices
  • Furnaces: Burner-, incoming and outgoing stack
  • Assembly and Chemical plant: Some in- and one outgoing stack, dependent of the assembly-type
  • Labs
  • Burner-based: Boiler, Burner mining drill, Burner inserter
  • Roboport (filtered for robots and repair packs only)
  • Gun turrets
• Special
  • Inserter and Robots (they have some limited stacks, see stacksize bonus), so that they are able to move some items between stacks at once.

How does it work?

A stack can store a number of (identical) items.

The first inserted item determines which item-types can be stored.

That determines also, how many items can be stored (the number of items per stack depends on it's "size").

Only items can be stored; you cannot not put the car - all stacks fully loaded - into a stack. The stacks of the car would be emptied before that. The same with chests (till v0.9 mining a full chest, if you don't have enough stacks left in your inventory leads to the so called "chest explosion").

Filtered stacks

There are also filtered stacks, either by default (for the burner/furnaces, or roboports) or manually set for the wagons or toolbelt (normally set vial middle-mouse-button, see Keyboard bindings).

Damaged items

With identical we mean: Currently when you have a wall with different damage, they are two different items and so stored in different stacks.

Physically?

A stack is some hightech hyper-space technology: Inserting the item transfers it to hyperspace-energy which can be reverted easily. So a stack also compresses items, physically in the game (and in your computer RAM).

How a stack compresses so much items, is one of the Mysteries of the Factorio World, but obviously it's some kind of high-tech. The basics of this ultra-high technology is learned by children in the kindergarden, when they have to put away their toys.

The amount, how much items a stack can store, depends from the item. A train uses one stack, but you can put up to 500 alien eggs in a stack.

Stack size bonuses

• Inserter item stack size bonus,
• Logistic robot cargo

Insertion limits

• Inserters don't fill the stacks to the limits

Stack limitation

In some devices the number of stacks, In which Inserters or Logistic robots can insert is limit able.

In most cases this is used to limit the number of items, that can be inserted. This is useful, if you want to store some number of items, but not a full chest, and it can replace the combination of a smart Inserter with circuit network or logistic network.

A big red X as the last "stack" enables you to that: press the red X, then the number of stacks you want to limit. The selected stacks are marked. (Some pics missing)

• Inserters or Logistic robots cannot insert into these limited stacks, but they can take items out of it.
• The character (You) is still able to put items into the limited stacks.
• These entities have stack limitations:
  • Chests
  • Wagons

There is a known issue (v0.10), that it isn't possible to copy the chest limitation to another chest, but you can copy it with blueprints.

Different number of items for different item-types

For example: A stack with Resources is limited generally to 50 items. But Intermediate products like iron plates stack double (100 items/stack). This is important, if you want to store or transport items by train. See also Transport/Compress by Pre-production.

Handling with stacks

There are some Keyboard binding (not all are listed there!) to handle your stacks fast. Like moving half the stack to another stack.

History

In v0.9 the number of items, which can be stored in a stack changed for most items from dual numbers to decimal (base 2 vs. base 10). This was mainly made, because it is easier to calculate numbers based on the base-10-system (20 stacks á 50 items = 1000 items, 18 stacks á 64 items = ??? items) and because there have been stack-numbers, which where already based on decimal and there is no need - like in minecraft - to split up stacks by hand to half-stacks (that is, what automated crafting is thought for).

Example: before that change, a stack could store 64 iron ore, after that only 50. This has created a lot of discussions in the forum (TODO: find some). In the end there are now not much players anymore, which say, they want the old stack-numbers back. But if so, there is also a mod, which does that change!