Talk:Inserters

[1]

Removed. But eventually helpful. Ssilk (talk) 02:45, 31 December 2013 (CET)

Changes for 0.17

The faster belt speeds probably change the results for some of the entries in these tables. It looks like they haven't been updated yet. --Omnifarious (talk) 14:59, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

They have been updated by Bilka in This revision. --Swan (talk) 17:19, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Inserter speed

I updated this wiki to show ticks per turn in the inserter speed section. My results seem to clash with the previous information about rotation speed (102 ticks = 1.7 seconds, there is a discrepancy between the rotation time of burner inserters most notably). The experiment I performed was done on vanilla factorio 0.14.22. I used two steel chests with varying inserters for each experiment. The inserters were fully powered at all times. The first chest is wired to a combinator which tests for any items in the chest, and outputs 1 signal X. This signal is added to a tallying arithmetic combinator. This arithmetic combinator is wired to itself, and outputs T + X. The value of T at setup is 0. I begin this experiment by placing large stacks of items into the first chest. I place only 201 transfers worth of material into the chest. This will stop the timer as soon as the last item is removed, which occurs after 200 transfers. With this setup I obtained the results as I have reported them. The timer always stopped on a multiple of 200, indicating that the number of ticks per full turn is an integer number. This is why I decided to add a separate column for this value. I may in the future update the other rotation speed metrics to match my results. --Reububble (talk) 18:19, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Which orientation were the inserters? Inserters facing north have lower throughput, might mean they have slower rotation speed. --Artorp (talk) 20:47, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

put the "Inserters And Transport Belt Interaction" examples in a table so they are side by side

i see why that was a bad idea, but i would rather see them side by side if it were possible to make a table that, when the horizontal space it has to display is smaller than all 4 makes it so there are 3 and on another "line" another 1 or 2x2 or all underneath one another like it is now.

I put them in a 2x2 square; I think that's the best way to see all of them at once. -- Bilka (talk) - Admin 13:17, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Problem with translation

Could someone explain to me what it is Extension Speed and why it is expressed in Tiles per Tick.

I'm trying to make a translation and can not find a word - without knowing what it is ;)— Preceding unsigned comment added by JakubSTR (talk • contribs) 08:43, 6 March 2018‎

I'd describe extension speed as how fast the inserter "extends", so in this case how fast its arm gets longer/shorter to be able to reach an item on the far or near side of the belt. It's expressed in tiles per tick because that is a unit of speed, just like meters per second :) An inserter that has an extension speed of 1 tile per tick needs 1 tick to make its arm longer by a whole tile. I hope this helps. -- Bilka (talk) - Admin 11:11, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

Recent Power Usage Edit

The Power Usage section was recently edited by user Queithe1E in a way I find to be incorrect and misleading. I'll break down some of the problems I have with the edit and why I think they're problematic.

Firstly large swaths of context were removed and branded as "speculation". Those are actually very important contextually as inserter behavior is unusual and not what you'd expect. I'm okay with the section being rewritten for the sake of brevity (in fact I'd probably recommend it as I was perhaps too verbose originally), but only if it's concise and accurate.

Which segways directly into my second point, which is that the new information that took its place seems to show a misunderstanding of the original information, and is incorrect at times. For example at one point it says "The maximum power consumption as shown in an inserter's tooltip assumes that both types of movement take place at the same time", but that's not actually true, and the previous explanation explicitly communicated a completely different idea. Inserters maximum power usage is absolutely not the sum of rotational and lateral movement costs being expended simultaneously, and there's absolutely nothing to even suggest that might be the case anywhere, neither in the games data or the empirical data that was gathered.

And that once again segways neatly into my next problem which is I find the inclusion of the games lua data to be misleading and problematic, with the reason being that it's not actually accurate. Empirical testing shows the real values are very different from what the game claims in its lua data, which is something I went to great length to identify, explain, and quantify. The inclusion of the games lua data in such a position of prominence right at the top of the section, and with absolutely no disclaimer, is very misleading due to the discrepancy with actual measured data.

There's also some other information that I don't really know what to make of. They mention part of the inserters initial power draw is used filling an energy buffer. I'm not aware that electrical inserters even have an energy buffer, as far as I'm aware that's just the burners, and how he can confidently attribute this power draw to this buffer is anyone's guess. It's really just idk, it could be right but I have no clue what he's basing this on. Also later he does an equation seemingly based off the graph and the lua data which does seem to check out, but it's completely at odds with the empirical data that was collected. This actually made me question my sanity so I went back and reviewed my original data and confirmed that my findings ultimately also agreed with the games power panel when averaged over time (this is cited in my forum post as 8.8kw of operational cost for red inserters during testing), and combined with the fact that it's a larger data set with more stringent analysis I'm more inclined to believe my tests accuracy over a low detail in game graph and some numbers I know to be inaccurate.

Also as I was reviewing this before hitting publish having already written everything further down I realized even the subject of the above paragraph is in self contradiction, because if you apply the equation he gives to extension/retraction using the value from lower down on the wiki you end up with 0.0457 * 5 * 60 which equals just 13.71. If you add drain that becomes 14.11, so it seems like the internal buffer he alleges is the remaining 0.89. But then he turns around and I guess to get that 21 max power equals these two numbers he takes 15 and adds the 6 he calculated, meaning he essentially adds this buffer as a second source of drain or something during extensions or during peaks? It just doesn't add up, it's very strange. I pulled that 0.0457 from further down on the wiki so it's possible that number is actually approximately 0.03 too low, in which case his formula for max power would add up properly, but of course then his buffer theory would disappear. Anyway remember the paragraph below this is meant to follow the paragraph directly above this one.

And this is another important problem with the change, because now the entire section feels incoherent and self contradictory. It was specifically written to show these empirically derived numbers that differ from what the game claims, but now the original game numbers are present and conflicting with and undermining the empirical data, which most importantly is more accurate.

And I could keep nitpicking about little stuff or how the little context around the burner was removed, but ultimately I think I made my point. The two main problems with the change are that it says certain things at are provably wrong, removes certain important context, and ultimately confuses the issue by prominently asserting a separate data set that was tested to be inaccurate, and is in direct contradiction with the data set directly below it. I'm gonna be rolling back the change for these reasons, since I believe the prior version was more accurate and less confusing. If you disagree or have questions please reach out as I'm happy to discuss the topic further

--GregFirehawk (talk) 01:01, 13 April 2025 (UTC)