search

KirkMcDonald / kirkmcdonald.github.io

Simple web-based calculator for the game Factorio.
Apache License 2.0
547 stars 146 forks source link

Inserter count #68

Open henrik-lindqvist opened 6 years ago

henrik-lindqvist commented 6 years ago

The calculator display the number of belts required. A great addition would be to also include the number of inserters required, with an Settings for "Preferred inserter" and maybe an option for "To belt/chest".

When trying to maximize throughput the limiting factor is often the inserter not only the belt.

RustyBlade64 commented 5 years ago

Inserter speed between chest-like entities (aka anything that has single tick pickup and dropoff) should be easy. Calculating precise inserter speed from and to belt however has significant problems. Even if assuming maximum stack size for every swing, there is a lot of factors that will influence the throughput of a single inserter, many of which will be affected by the specific setup you're using. Some of the setups are documented on the wiki, but there is even more craziness you can do with sideloading and by using splitters. Personally I would prefer numbers for chest-like from/to belt setups not being provided at all rather than them being wrong all the time.

Now that support for modded gameplay is coming to the calculator this will bring up a whole lot of other issues. Inserter speed with modded inserters will need to be calculated rather than hardcoded. Also things like Bob's Adjustable Inserters pose an interesting problem due to their configurable pickup and dropoff locations.