Everything You Didn't Know About INSERTERS | Factorio Tutorial/Guide/How-to

[@Nilaus]

All Master Class Blueprints are available on FactorioBin Overview and direct links to all Blueprints: nilaus.atlassian.net/l/cp/HBEUm524 (Pastebin links no longer work)

[@NONAME-ey6qs]

1200 hours and I find something new every time. Factorio isn't a game, it's a lifestyle.

[@Nortonius_]

A culture, even 🤣

[@raingaming8]

Always worth replaying another Factorio game, it's different every time

[@GrantH2606]

I can't get into it I've spent around 40 hours playing it and got up to working with trains but I'm just finding it too overwhelming to enjoy. There's way too much going on at once and I don't think my smooth brain works for how this game is supposed to be played. I like things to be tidy and knowing where everything is and Factorio just doesn't seem like it can ever be neat and tidy, or at least I'm finding it extremely difficult to make things neat. I'm about ready to quit.

[@NONAME-ey6qs]

​@@GrantH2606 I feel you, man. My first attempts to launch a rocked failed exactly for the same reasons as yours. My first complete playthrough happened when i decided to step over my pride and turn peaceful mode on. It really relieves you from constant pressure of prepearing for attacks. It also removed the need to constraint your build to a small base that was constantly lacking production power. IMO you just have to turn on peaceful mode when you're just starting the game. And please, don't compare your base to someone's who played this game for 5k+ hours. You can wake them at night and they will tell you exact ratio of ingridients for a red circuit. Their bases look clean, because they already know how much of ingredients and machines they need. You, however, can take their blueprints and figure out how they work. Why this inserter is here, and why we need a splitter here. Just turn on some nice tunes in the background, turn off biters and enjoy the process. Don't feel stupid, because your designs are messy. Trust me, when you improve, you will feel like you the smartest person in this universe

[@DanielHartz]

*hobby

[@omniaesthetic1256]

It's been a long while since I played, but I remember burner inserters being useful in one specific case: Filling boilers for your steam power. Since they fill themselves with coal, and their only job is to move coal, they're very dependable in that role. Most importantly, if your power grid goes down, they keep working to help keep your power grid going as long as there's coal.

[@imyourdj]

I could have used this tip yesterday.

[@RequiemRelentless]

There is an issue where if your coal starts running low, burner inserters can struggle to grab coal from red or blue belts and they'll end up running out of fuel and you need to manually fill it in that event. I've done this before, and eventually find that I've got idle boilers due to the inserter running out of fuel. That kind of spot maintenance is more of a problem than having to kick your entire operation back into gear if you run completely out. I'd rather manually load a few boilers than have to hunt down and fill the inserter that ran out of juice. A compromise design would be to have a few burner inserters scattered throughout your power station in addition to the electric ones as an emergency backup. if your power runs out, the coal would accumulate and the burner inserters will jump start your system with that coal.

[@omniaesthetic1256]

@@RequiemRelentless That's some good info, thanks. I've never tried running a boiler cluster with anything above basic belts before so I didn't think of that. I wonder if it'd be reasonable to leave your boilers on basic belts after the rest of your factory has gone to red or blue? I haven't played in a very long time so I can't think of the ramifications.

[@RequiemRelentless]

@@omniaesthetic1256 well, this is all by memory, but coal is 4 MJ of energy, and a boiler will consume 1.8 of that at full burn. A full yellow belt is 15 coal per second, so mathematically you could only have 33 boilers going at full burn per yellow belt input. Further, a water pump can only service 10 boilers, as a boiler can make 120 units of steam and a pump is 1200 units of water. So I would suggest that if you wanted to do it that way, that you make it so that you have a red belt that splits into two yellow belts, each servicing a standard 2 pump/20 boiler/40 engine setup. That way you could get the full burner inserter set without making things excessive. Doing it that way would also allow you to mix in some wood without issue due to the excess.

[@Hej5468]

@@RequiemRelentless Fyi a water pump can service 20 boilers

[@poobslag]

I watched the first 2 seconds of the video and learned that red inserters are faster than yellow ones! Oh no

[@whitedawn2122]

Orks from 40k were right about something it seems

[@termitreter6545]

Yeah honestly, thats already a pretty big surprised to me xD Makes sense though. Basic inserters are so slow, if red ones were the same speed, they would be near unusuable besides blue inserters.

[@hansmayer3521]

Haha same

[@trexrawrrrgaming]

ono

[@MasterJMR1]

I know right? I have 1200 hours in the game and still thought red and yellow inserters moved at the same rate.

[@roastedrye719]

Every single time I think "You know, I'm kinda burnt out of factorio, I'm gonna take a break and play something else," Nilaus comes along with some crazy video that reinspires me. Now I'm trying to play Satisfactory and the whole time I'm thinking about how I'd make my designs in factorio

[@xXR3DRAG0NXx]

For me Satisfactory and Factorio is like you compare apples and pears. Yes there are conveyor belts in both of it but they work different and the perspective are different. In both of the games you build a factory but the way to do it is different. Sorry for my bad english.

[@redpepper74]

@@xXR3DRAG0NXx “comparing apples to oranges” is the common saying :)

[@skilz8098]

Try adding Dyson Sphere Program into the mix...

[@crezzyt]

@@redpepper74 seems like hes german, the saying goes „aepfel mit birnen“ in german so he translated that, meaning apples with pears ;)

[@stainville3123]

@@skilz8098 the system reqs for that game make me cry

[@tobias-brandt]

I already knew a lot more about inserters than I should. I don't play factorio anymore. I still watched your video and of course learnt something new and would have left a like anyway. After many years I continue to like what you are doing. Not only your factorio videos. Thank you very much Nilaus.

[@SireSquish]

Indeed. In fact it was Nilaus that I was following along with way back when I started factorio in ~2015 or so.

[@enire8477]

I knew a lot of them but not all of them, can't believe I liked a 30 minute master class on inserters so much.

[@smurphy1354]

You need to have a combinator between the counter and all the connected inserters to actually get a UPS benefit. There is a cost for each entity on a wire every time a signal changes value. If you have the inserters directly connected to the counter they see a signal change every tick. Instead have a decider combinator connected to the counter which sends 1 when the counter rolls over and 0 otherwise. This means the inserters will only see two signal changes for each counter cycle.

[@James-gd3sp]

I really wasnt expecting the farther side to be faster than either both or the inner side.

[@JuddMan03]

Like a CD Rom reading faster from the outside edge of the disc than the inside, inserters have a constant rotational speed so the further out they reach, the faster the hand moves, and the more items it can grab

[@scialomy]

@@JuddMan03 That actually makes so much sense! That's not some quirk in factorio's code, it is emergent property! OMG

[@5Y5T3N]

@@JuddMan03 I was thinking in terms of parralax but your description is much better!

[@zerosumgame5700]

@@JuddMan03 I was gonna say, but you already did. I didn't think about Disk reading speed, but fixed rotation speed was right on topic.

[@kylaxial]

I've figured out on my own that 2 red inserters are barely faster than 1 fast inserter

[@Anson_AKB]

with 15k+ hours from the beginning of 0.13 to the release of 1.0, i knew all the details that were shown in this video (AND available before 1.0). but there were a few new things after 1.0 and 1.1, and most of all, knowing all the details is not good enough if you are missing some tricks on how to use and combine all those details. and over time it's also easy to forget about some of those details or tricks even if you once had discovered them yourself. *thus i always like to watch videos like this. **_BIG THANKS_** !!!*

[@kerb755]

Holy Crap !!! I already expected this video to blow my mind, but this is INSANE

[@ronaldheffler8491]

Yes, I love it :D

[@kerbiljoe]

This is great. I also love the fact that your voice works very well at 2x speed, for efficiency.

[@prome3us550]

Thank goodness I'm not the only one.

[@R.Daneel]

Yeah. Who knew this'd become a "plus" for videos. They need to add it to "The Algorithm"™®©2021

[@GHOST25938]

Love the KZbinrs who allready Talk at 2x Speed

[@DavidLindes]

and it's still quite understandable, mostly, at 2.7x, as well. :) (which I'm currently set to... perhaps, though, from an earlier video? I think I can go to 3x with Nilaus?? I forget... and it depends on how tired or not I am, how much I want to make sure I catch everything, how new the concepts are to me, etc.) Thank you for speaking so clearly, Nilaus!

[@morienbendinelli1554]

Wait...did you place beacons around your youtube or something? 😂😂😂

[@claudioproy9489]

nilaus is really proud that he has 6000+ hours of knowledge. i learnt something now, so i leave i like

[@fatelvis1473]

we need the same kind of master class for pipes, pumps and fluids.

[@ikitclaw7146]

I hate pipes so much! lol

[@bkdguitarist]

Game: you cannot connect pipes with dissimilar fluids Me: HOW IN THE **** ARE WATER AND WATER DISSIMILAR yes I’d go for a class 😂

[@doggo_woo]

@@bkdguitarist hot water + cold water = atomic bomb according to factorio.

[@FunkyAbigail]

I learned so much from this, despite 1700+ of hours of game time. My hat is off to you sir.

[@Turtledud3]

Many probably know this, but you can use inserters as signal providers for all kinds of signals on the red and green automation wires. If you attach a wire to an inserter, you can check a box in its menu that says "Read Held Item" or something similar. This way, whenever the inserter picks up an item that particular item will be sent as a signal. It will also send a number with the item to show how many it is holding. This concept has a crazy number of uses, but I will give you a fun one in particular that I use all the time. Have a belt feed satellites to an inserter. The inserter is feeding your rocket launching platform. Set the stack size to one. Set the signal output to read the held item. The inserter will sit there with the satellite in its hand and wait for a rocket to show up from the platform. When the rocket does show up, it drops the satellite into the rocket and whips around to get another one. There is a second there were it doesn't have a satellite in its little claw, which means it is not outputting anything. As soon as it picks up another single satellite, it emits the satellite signal again. Hook up a single wire from the inserter to a speaker. Set the speaker to pulse and the signal controlling the speaker to a satellite equal to one. Pick any alarm you like. Now whenever the inserter whips around and picks up another satellite you will get a loud alarm telling you when your rocket is launching. If you are playing with a bunch of friends, you can set it to global playback and let everyone know that they are about to launch their first rocket. The entire thing only costs you an inserter of any kind except burner inserters, a single green or red wire, a single speaker, and a power pole while providing you with a cool rocket alarm.

[@jobro3381]

High quality content! Nilaus is kind of the benchmark for technical factorio videos. Mad respect for the detailed knowledge.

[@AahfaenDetteorkerjegikke]

He's like a showman with his well trained inserters, doing tricks for us

[@fuzzygenius]

"Maybe I have not yet shown you something you have not seen before" My mind has been blown with each one of these examples!

[@TheKarolans]

Regarding the first tipp - inserters WILL actuall grab items from the far side if there is not enough on the near side. In your example the belt is always full, but that doesn't mean you can use stack inserters to only grab from one side of the belt. The easiest solution for that is a filter inserter.

[@padreigh]

wow that was fast - yesterday switch stream design - today inserters galore. Niiiice.

[@buckcherry2564]

around 9:00 : I find that the color of the inserter matches the fastest belt it can reliably scoop from (doesnt really matter if your belts are full, as you stated). A good quick thing to not if you are just setting up and may not have constant full belts, or if your yellows and reds are suddenly not keeping up with production after you upgraded to all blue belts.

[@honordevs]

I was looking in the comments and saw someone say this was a 30-minute video. Wow, that was a shocker. That time just flew. Thank you for the quality content.

[@hanli427]

There were a few new things for me to learn here. I would like to add a few things however. The burner inserter has a very high active power consumption, twice the fast inserter, and less than the stack inserter. But it doesn't have an idle power consumption, so if used very rarely it would consume less power than using a regular inserter. Also, because of this, as long as it is only used to carry burnables there is never a risk of it running out. It only consumes power when it lifts an item, and as long as it is a burnable it will prioritize refueling itself before the target. As such I find them useful for refueling boilers and steam engines. Especially when they are used as backup power sources, to only connect to the power grid when accumulator levels get low, then they can be completely passive until that happens. Also, they don't require dragging power poles, which may be useful in some cases. In early game, I will create defensive outposts with 4 turrets fed by burner inserters from a box with bullets and fuel. It won't require power poles and can stand by itself far from the main base if necessary. When grabbing from near and far sides of belts, I knew it preferred near side, but I never considered using the underground belt. I also didn't know it was faster to grab from the far side. I will remember that when I have two things on the same belt, to keep the one with highest consumption rate on the far side. I would have planned the opposite instead if not for this. When you measured the speed though, you didn't consider the rate of grabbing from the underground belt, which is slower than picking from the far side when I tested it, but still faster than the near side. There is also a difference if there is a continous flow on the belt, or if it is blocked. In general it is faster to pick if the flow is blocked, especially from the near side of the belt. Although grabbing from an underground is actually slower if it is blocked than not. So if you really want to grab quickly, use a splitter to peel off a short section from the main belt that will not be fully consumed and grab only from that.

[@MayankMrug]

Yeah I was wondering why he said the burner inserter will never power itself - that's just incorrect.

[@hanli427]

@@MayankMrug That is not really what he said though. He said it will not feed itself once it has run out of power, which is correct. It starts with a buffer of power, and as long as it has power and fuel available it will feed itself, but once its energy buffer is empty it is dead and has to be refueled manually. This can happen if it feeds from a belt with fuel on one lane and something else on the other, especially if the fuel belt runs out. That is why I only use it when there is nothing other than fuel on the belt, like for boilers.

[@TheJacklikesvideos]

They can permanently stop when used on a belt only carrying fuel, if the belt is fast and not full. The inserter will try and fail to grab until dead.

[@kylaxial]

I remember figuring out that inserters output chest loot evenly when I was playing Factorio for the first time, and I even used it as a splitter before I knew what the logistics research did.

[@theghoulishgay8943]

I’ve been using Bob’s inserters, because it helps my small brain make better designs. It’s really fun, but I learnt plenty of new things today, thanks! (Also, small video idea that I know I would love. You might have already done this, but just like. Little things that you can do to make your life easier, for example adding filters to cargo wagon slots, and other such things)

[@tistelnilsson]

The there are 100 other thing you can optimize. They are really crazy.

[@bigalex52]

You should also check out Trupens channel for those tips, he has some videos up covering a lot of different stuff but not in as great length of detail as Nilaus does them. But a neat way to learn new tricks either way :)

[@captainbloodloss1]

burner inserters are really useful if you use them for power, theyre only really reliable if theyre inserting a flammable material so they can be used to fill up steam boilers regardless of if there is power

[@davidx620]

Inserter > Sorter :) Very interesting masterclass, so many small details, small quirks!

[@iestynne]

Yeah, the weird edge cases in Factorio lead to a much wider variety of builds than in DSP, where everything is so cleanly designed for convenience that you just always end up using the same optimal build everywhere :(

[@N8Maple01]

For the last one, imagine the power spike if you fire all 10k inseters at once. Of course you can choose the count that each one fires on. Maybe 100 per tick.

[@tiko_-zz7dd]

Started to play the game with a friend two weeks ago and watched a lot of videos from your channel. I finally subscribed now an hope I have a lot of time to watch more of your great videos. Keep up the good work!

[@lucidmoses]

That far side of the belt one got me.

[@canebro1]

Pulling from the far side of the belt being faster was news to me. Some of the corner stuff I didn't know was also new, but I also refuse to interact with corners for that very reason.

[@jordanhyde2752]

Some of the loader/unloaders I have seen before but with you explaining how they work and what their uses are, I’ve learned quite a fair bit

[@kevinflummi2822]

Me watching this with 7 hours playtime be like: "Oh wow, the Burner Inserter can fill itself up with Fuel!" All jokes aside, great video! Glad to learn these things before doing everything wrong :D

[@simonmcneilly55]

Doing it wrong is Half the fun...

[@Kaeresh]

I knew most things up until the patreon self-plug. Everything after was new knowledge for me. Even after 2 years. Thank you very much!

[@scialomy]

Thank you! I hoped to see this masterclass someday when you ❤️ed its request, but I've never hoped it that soon, and that thoroughgoing into "the inserter rabbit hole". And yes, I've learnt new tricks. 👍

[@LightPhoenix7000]

Hit the like button at the start - I knew I wouldn't know all of it, especially with circuits. With the UPS reduction trick, I'm curious where the 200 and 143 numbers come from to use them in other scenarios. I assume the calculation is based on stack size and crafting speed converted into ticks rather than seconds.

[@fakjbf3129]

18:22 I like that even when you make a mistake, you're still showing something new

[@JuddMan03]

Burner inserters fuelling a power plant can't run out of fuel because they always fuel themselves first, and if there is no fuel on the belt there is no work to do anyway. Just don't use them to move anything other than fuel. However, in an overloaded power grid, electric inserters can sometimes receive so little power that they slow down and cant supply enough fuel to keep a boiler running, which makes the power shortage even worse, and the whole system comes to a halt.

[@kazaakas]

Yep, if anything, burner inserters are the most reliable option for loading fuel for power plants. No cascading failures

[@StormCrow42]

Burner inserters can fail to pull fuel off a partial red or blue belt, causing them to eventually run out. A yellow belt of coal or wood is insufficient to feed 40 boilers at full power.

[@JuddMan03]

@@StormCrow42 that makes sense.

[@shocknaw4146]

First, I LOVE your streams and master classes. Second, I have played for at least a thousand hours and with watching a ton of your video's, I was sure I was going to know all these tricks. Third, I almost made it 😅, you got me with 1 trick, the one where the filter inserter will leave items in the box (it makes sence, I just didn't think it would work that way) Thanks Nilaus, it's always great to learn something new and you make amazing videos 😁

[@KaroJhe]

A fairly new player here. I've found a small use of burner inserters. If you use steam power plant, or steam and solar but it's night, and the power goes out, a regular inserter won't be able to restart the plant. But a burner inserter will still keep on going and kickstart the plant again. So in my steam power plant I use one burner among my regular ones, and it's saved me a few times. Nice video!

[@samfischi]

That was one of the most interesting boring videos I've ever seen and I mean that as a compliment. Kudos for always being a joy to watch!

[@dimlockfork5170]

interestng and boring hmmmmmm

[@LeighzerCuber]

Mindblown multiple times. Great explanations, easily digestible, and really neat behaviors pointed out!

[@AirmetSierra]

Wow, I had already figured out that inserting onto a splitter parallel to the belt direction didn't work so I just stopped inserting onto splitters entirely, but I didn't know that inserting onto a splitter from the side was actually faster, but I guess it makes sense now that I think about it. I'm going to have to start using this.

[@thorwrigglesworth5116]

Never like videos when asked, you are an exception! This is a really thorough deep dive into the mechanics and nature of Factorio! Excellent work, thank you!

[@buschmerano4616]

Crazy that you can fill a 30-minute video with things as basic as inserters and still keep it interesting. Very cool! The negative filter in the filter stack inserter broke me. (1200h)

[@erumaaro6060]

Curved belts are placed facing into the new direction, so it makes sense that the belt going towards the inserter would recieve items on the far side and the belt going away on the right hand side in the direction of travel.

[@andidevlin3361]

thought this was going to be a crap video but im on 12 hour night shifts so needed to keep yself awake. errr, yeah - learned about a hundred things i didnt know!! will def use that unload trick!! glad i watched it now!!!!!

[@dasaniwaterbottle6247]

Thank you so much! The inserter clocking at the end was really helpful because I want to put that in my megabase to improve UPS

[@matsv201]

There is one very anying quirk i think you missad. The inserter start picking up first when the assembler tells it to. This introduce a lag that can be quite significant. Having a inserter and a box than a inserter eliminate this lag. One more thing. I dont know if its true any more. But at least at some point pricking up from a underground belt was faster than a normal.

[@elaron2537]

Some excellent bits of new-to-me information in this video. Thank you!

[@matuphon]

Wow 30 minuts of knowledge about inserters! Well done, thanks.

[@Baladucci]

I learned about the corner inserting, and the faster grabbing from the outer half of belts. I still have a ton of learning to do with circuits, but I plan to learn to implement D-flip-flops using NAND gates. Thanks for showing off the self-resetting counter though, that will likely be a much easier implementation than a set of D-flip-flops each slowing the clock rate by a factor of 2.

[@laugh8574]

I was actually looking for that -10 stack size for kovarex yesterday and wasn't expecting that to be the solution

[@captheobbyist6434]

3:19 one use case for burner inserters is feeding heaters for boilers before electricity in the early game. then as soon as you get regular inserters and stable power, just replace them and forget about burner inserters for forever

[@78325a]

I started using Bobs inserters and miniloaders long before started to worry about the finer points of inserter mechanics, so I avoided many of there weird quirks without even knowing. Thank god for that, i'd probably lose my mind trying to figure out why my perfectly symmetrical build is outputting different amounts on each side.

[@hornetdc]

Full red belt going directly into stack inserter is going to be (almost) evenly consumed from both sides. Also you are doing inserter clocking the wrong way, you need another combinator to separate clock from inserter, otherwise it will calculate on every tick.

[@brohvakiindova4452]

man I usually don't fall for any kind of "press the like button" shenanigans but I'm totally sold with this deal approach, let's see edit: man who was I kidding ofc my noobie brain would learn more than one thing, take the upvote you earned it

[@c4garula]

Very good! I need more of this! Quirks and advanced tricks I don't about far into the game

[@bingusbongus9807]

i didnt learn much and had figured out or heard most of this stuff, but definatly a few things like inserting onto a splitter being faster where news to me!!

[@reda29100]

21:00 this trick is the very fundamental behind train loading and unloading. Because inserters can take from row 1 to odd rows, inserters can only drop to odd rows, even using red inserters. The only way around this is with cars. Shy this is useful, cuz trains are placed in a special grid (2-block-based grid), they only vanilla way to transport items between trains without relying on belts is with cars. It's a bit tricky to make a bp of it, but with belts forcing them to park a certain way, it's possible to automate.

[@ZevihexIII]

Hey Nilaus, I believe that the burner inserters actually fuel themselves with coal if it is available in the chest they are taking from

[@Whistler-007]

Yes. That is why I use them for boilers, because they're really easy to restart without power

[@RolandWolf]

Only 450hrs, but thought i had you.... until the -10 filter - didn't know that. Liked, as per the agreement.

He got me on the same thing :D It makes sense, just haven't ever seen it before!

[@johnnykniffin9203]

I tend to only use 1 burner inserted at the start of my steam power set up, as a kind of "safety" if power shuts off.

[@PhatBeetzGaming]

This is amazing! I've been wondering about using this game to teach engineering concepts. Thanks for all your tutorials!

[@Baer1990]

18:10 I'd say they output on the far side, looking at the origin of the belt. Basically the same as you said but easier to understand/remember

[@DemethansKeep]

This is why I keep watching your vids. TIL!

[@samserious1575]

Yeah, more than I can count rn that I didnt know about inserters, belts, and circuit networks. Good tutorial.

[@Aidiakapi]

I thought for sure I'd know all of these. Then you hit me with the inserters going to sleep even though they're connected to the circuit network! I was pretty sure that a circuit connection kept the connected entities alive, but I guess they must've optimized it since I last played :).

[@stefsmurf]

Burners are awesome for boilers, though. Anything really, that needs to filled up with fuel, burners are probably the best or 2nd best choice based on insertion speed needs. Because they'll fill themselves up before filling up the item that needs the fuel.

[@TheReaverOfDarkness]

I knew just under half of these. But I have one for you. You pointed out in the beginning that burner inserters can get locked if they are allowed to run out of fuel. But there are use cases in which burner inserters are the only type which cannot get locked. If you have a steam power setup with electric inserters putting fuel into the boilers, and the fuel line runs dry causing the power to go out, the inserters will lock up, and you must insert fuel manually into the boilers in order to restart it. But if you have burner inserters at the boilers, they will still be powered even without electricity. You can mix burner inserters with other types, as long as you have enough burner inserter to be able to restart the power. One per boiler is usually enough. A burner inserter can only lock up when it is pulling both fuel and non-fuel items from a belt and the belt runs out of fuel items, or when the belt is moving too fast for the inserter to grab fuel. A yellow belt containing only fuel will never lock up a burner inserter.

[@Jonathanschwa]

High quality educational entertainment with a great personality!

[@tricorius9653]

I like using burner inserters for temporary things. For instance, early game you can make a four-turret pillbox with walls. A wood chest in the middle with some ammo and coal / wood. burner inserters filling each turret. It will refill ammo for you so you don’t have to babysit turrets as much. But it only lasts for a bit until elution ramps up a bit. (It’s there to defend early before I can go out on the first biter extermination expedition.

[@khatharrmalkavian3306]

Hey. You can use burners to move coal into furnaces and boilers. They don't consume fuel when they're not moving, so even if the fuel dries up they don't need reset. This also protects you from needing to manually refuel a boiler if the power goes out.

[@Templarfreak]

11:42 as far as my understanding of how this issue was goes, basically: 1. Before, Inserters would not insert onto a belt even if there was open space if the open space was not quite big enough. 2. undergrounds accept ANY amount of items placed on top of them by inserters as long as their inventory was not full, regardless of how fast they are being placed on top of the underground. 3. the trick worked because undergrounds would always spit the items inside its inventory out at the exact-correct time to fully compress the belt, eventually meaning that inserters would wait for an open space in the underground's inventory to immediately put inside instead of waiting for an open spot on a non-underground belt which under some circumstances before could never happen. the first point was fixed, effectively eliminating the need for that trick. now the behavior is that items can be pushed out of the way to make room if an Inserter decides it wants to place an item in a not-quite-open-but-open-enough spot. you can spot this behavior of items being moved if you watch very carefully, setting game speed using /c game.speed command can also be helpful in spotting it easier too.

[@TheFinagle]

I dint know the insert onto balancer is faster thing, but it makes sense. You effectively have 2 belts to carry away material as the arm drops it. Seems like it could be super useful for loading a belt and using the inserter to balance simultaneously

[@psugab]

Burner inserters will power themselves if there is fuel in front of them. This is why they are great for feeding boilers or early smelters.

[@stayfunsteven2207]

Thanks man really appreciate the tips and stuff I didn't know a lot of the things you said really helpful

[@kazaakas]

3:19 You never ever use burner inserters? I don't use them much, but for loading fuel into things they're perfect. My main use for them is fueling boilers and maybe trains.

[@StormCrow42]

The problem with burner inserters for fuel hits when you upgrade your fuel belt to red or blue. At that point if the belt isn't saturated the burner inserter will run itself out of fuel by failing to grab fuel as it passes by.

[@carlpult5235]

@@StormCrow42 I tend to use a buffer of wooden chests there to be less vunerable to supply bottlenecks, It's less space efficient and it means your Coal econ will always hog an additional ~20 per Boiler + In addition to gobbling up some extra coal. But unless you're staved for burnables that rarely is an issue.

[@CODENAMEDERPY]

These are going to be so useful. Thank you!

[@unitrader403]

i always use some burner inserters in my power plants to enable black start capability in case of a power outage. My usual design is to have one at the end of the belt to feed the boiler (in combination with more efficient regular inserters) and also this has only one steam engine, which does feed in its own micro grid feeding the other inserters and, if possible, the coal mines. it is intentionally not connected to the main grid, so a power outage doesnt affect the power plant itself. For Nuclear Power i follow a similiar Approach, but obviously a bit more complex (internal power for the reactor is generated by a pair of turbines which can be fed by a chest=>burner inserter=>boiler combo for backup and startup purposes, but it also uses tapped off steam of the power plant itself)

[@coltonhart7660]

now knowing that a stack inserter is much faster when grabbing from the FAR side has increased my factory's efficiency. Thank you.

[@dzyu]

You got me on the inserters grabbing faster from the far side of belts. +1 Great vid!

[@Derzull2468]

I ALWAYS use burner inserters to fuel boilers and trains, since they insert fuel I've never ever seen any of them get stuck and having your train and coal power infrastructure not rely on the electricity grid is invaluable. How many time did you run out of power then had a hard time of booting everything back up because the electric inserters are too slow on insuficient power to get out of the down spiral? Burner inserters are made for the job. Same thing with trains, you are out of coal at your power plant and your electricity shuts down but you have a train full of coal but the unpowered yellow inserter can't put the coal in the locomotive to save the factory. Burner inserter, perfect use case still the best in end game.

[@michiel97531]

Can't believe I just watched a 30 minute video about inserters and not thinking at any point it was boring

[@lipgloss202]

Thank you for putting out these videos. Very much appreciate it!

[@hydralicious9315]

Editor extension he says at 2:07 and already I've gotten an answer to a question I've had for about 1k hours out of 1.6. Thank you, sir. Edit: Oh wow...

[@kyokajiro1808]

i am genuinely shocked at how much this taught me

[@Neil_SM]

Wow, I learned a ton of things here, thanks! Why is it that at 5:00 it never takes from the outside lane, but in the test at 6:25 the bottom belt inserter takes mostly from the bottom and one from the top lane on every grab?

[@卜仁宁]

Because the belt is flowing at full speed in the second example, but is backed up in the first one.

[@Neil_SM]

@@卜仁宁 What? It's running at full speed in both those examples

[@DFPercush]

I think they can only grab one type of item at a time. Since the first thing it grabbed was iron, it can only stack iron, and the top lane was copper.

[@Neil_SM]

@@DFPercush Both examples I'm referring to are when both lanes are iron. I'm talking about the inserter taking off from the double-row of iron at 5:00, vs the very bottom belt at 6:25. Both cases are the full blue belts with 2 rows of iron.

[@DFPercush]

@@Neil_SM Oh, my bad. The only difference I can see is the starting condition. One was placed on an already full, running belt. The other was placed, then the belt was started. You'd think it would stabilize on the second swing though. Not exactly sure.

[@YaGirlJuniper]

Burner inserters are definitely useful when you're working with boilers because they will always take something for themselves first and then feed it into the boiler. As long as there's fuel for them to work with, they'll never end up in a situation where they stop working completely and have to be manually restarted. They never burn fuel while idle, only while moving, so they're the only inserter with a minimum energy usage of 0, and they ironically don't make any pollution or contribute to pollution in any way. The problem with them is, they don't work well with faster belts, since they'll try to pick something up, fail, and be wasting fuel the whole time they try. The cool thing is, you don't have to use burners for your entire lineup if you don't want to. You can just put them at the ends so that they never have to chase anything, so their only job will be to jump start the power grid in case the power goes out, because then the others WILL slowly come back online. They do have an upside though, because if you haven't got solar up yet, I actually find that if you run out of fuel long enough for your boilers to run dry, you're going to be restarting the whole power grid from a blackout, and your inserters will ALL go offline, so none of them will be able to move until you load the boilers with fuel yourself, which is a lot more annoying and potentially devastating. Burner inserters, though, will be just fine. If the boilers go dark, then a new shipment of fuel comes in, the burners will still be active and will load themselves first and then load the boilers. They also just so happen to work at just the right speed to keep up with a fully-running boiler. They're not useless even once you have electricity, but I'd never use them for anything other than shoveling coal.

[@PhilRezanow]

5:45 This assumes the belt is always full, correct? Otherwise, in my experience, it will grab whatever is available, regardless of side.

[@TubeNewrome]

Most interesting point from video - I actually knew a lot about inserters)))

Burner inserters: yes for the no ;-) on using them in most cases. But for power plant, where the *only* item on the belt is fuel, it's perfect. As a backup. Because it will always grab fuel for itself first, and *then* fill the boiler. If it runs out of fuel, the inserter just doesn't fill the boiler anymore. As soon as sufficient fuel is coming, it first (if needed) fills itself and then the boiler. For this very reason, as long as I have steam backup power (I usually go all solar at some point, not a fan of nuclear) I use all burner inserters there. If power runs out, burner inserters still work to get me back, for other inserters you need *some* power source. Yes, slow inserters are so slow you better forget your power. Especially when biters are attacking, those slow inserters (and the are SLOOOOOOW) will get you killed.

[@mukkie]

That was fantastic! Thank you so much. I'm sure this will help my UPS problems.

[@meterola2420]

I use burnner inserters for boiler and send coal back to coal miner, they don't slow down when power is low. So I can keep some power output to build more steam engine set if the power is low.

[@breaknet]

I love burner inserter for making plates from ores. Since furnaces need coal as fuel anyway, I have to run a coal line with my ores. So burner inserters get a supply of fuel to use and I dont have to worry about power lines. I'm just starting out, I'm about 40 hours in the game.

[@FrostByte112]

I have played factorio for over 1800 and I did not know that red inserters were faster than orange inserters. So yeah, I had to hit the like-button before even a single word was said.

[@MacManChomp]

Burner inserters won't run out if they are inserting fuel btw. They always prefer fueling themselves over normal insertion, and can complete a small number of insertions without fuel. Also, wow on the inside lane vs outside lane pickup. It looks like on the inside belt the items are out of range so fast with a blue belt that it gets confused. I wonder just how worth it it would be to orient materials according to this in instances where using half and half belts to increase insertion stability and possibly sleep time. I'd love to know what you would think about that.

[@StormCrow42]

They will run out of fuel if they're trying to pull fuel off a partially full red or blue belt, because the belt moves too fast for them to actually grab the fuel but they waste some fuel trying to grab it.

[@arthour051]

The advantage of a burner inserter is that, if there's fuel, it will refuel itself before doing anything else which is why when I do use them in early game, its literally only to transfer fuel. Everything else gets set up for directy insert into its end home if it can be, and I resaech the next one up asap If I *have* to put an insert on a corner, I'll check if its struggling first (blues done usually) and if it is, I'll put a slower belt on that corner specifically

[@shadowcharly]

Wow, very nice tricks indeed!