Any reason not to use fast inserters?

[Tritoch]

Just unlocked them, doesn't seem to be any downside to using them instead of the regular inserters. any reason I shouldn't just use them instead of the regular ones?

[walter]

They are pretty much a straight upgrade, including the costs that come with it - they use more power and it takes more resources to make them.
Both should not be a problem in the long run though.

Using the slow inserters can still be useful (f.e.) if you want to have mutliple processes to draw material from the same source, but you want to give some of them a certain priority, you could use slow and fast inserters to make sure some processes get to draw more than others.
does not happen that often (at least to me), but its an option that can come in handy - the game is about being creative in problemsolving after all.

But yeah, you are right, there is imo no downside to the fast inserters. :)

[SockRats]

Sometimes you only need the throughput of a slow inserter, for example, taking a science packs out of assemblers. They produce way to slowly to necessitate a blue inserter. By using only blue inserters where they are needed to meet throughput demands, you can save materials & electricity, which be either be directly equated to coal or uranium (unless you have solar panels). This principle works with any of the logistic tools in factorio.

[Killcreek2]

If you are using fast blue inserters for a slow recipe, then you are probably wasting power & have spent more on construction costs than you needed to.

I use whatever inserter type is cheapest (power drain / craft cost / space used) but still gets the job done ~ for 1 item per sec a basic yellow inserter is plenty, for 6 /sec a fast blue, for 18 /sec a green stack, etc.

The wiki page has inserter throughput speeds helpfully listed, so it is easy to select the most-efficient inserter for each job.


(Same goes for belts, btw ~ if you only need 10 items /sec, a basic yellow belt is enough. Why waste resources crafting high-tier stuff when you don't need to?)

[starvix]

all of the tiers of logistics have downsides in cost, especially when the specified throughput doesn't necessitate the more expensive version

you'll more often find yourself deliberating between fast inserters and stack inserters

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

引用自 Senpai-kun：

1) Increased power consumption
2) Assemblers don't produce fast enough to necessitate a faster inserter

This is exactly correct. Even on beaconed builds, the outputs are usually slow enough that you simply don't need to expend the extra power and resources on a fast inserter.

[The_Mell]

引用自 Colonel Sanders Lite：

引用自 Senpai-kun：

1) Increased power consumption
2) Assemblers don't produce fast enough to necessitate a faster inserter

This is exactly correct. Even on beaconed builds, the outputs are usually slow enough that you simply don't need to expend the extra power and resources on a fast inserter.

Keep in mind that there is a technology that increases stack size.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

引用自 Morsk：

edit: Er, I only tested this with inserting between chests. Maybe a belt is a bit worse because it takes longer. I might look again.

I just happen to have an array with 704 fast inserters and 704 regular inserters working on belts. I get 1.342 there.

The energy savings by using 704 of each instead of 1408 fast inserters is 1.3 MW. The material savings is 2,816 iron and 2,112 copper.

You could certainly argue that bothering with the yellows is just pinching pennies. On the other hand, a lot of players find their fun in optomising and fine tuning.

Honestly, there's nothing wrong with either approach.

[Horoai]

I use regular inserters for furnaces. There is no way furnaces can ever keep up with a fast inserter and you're going to build thousands of them (where each needs at least 2 inserters) so the cost adds up.

[Kreuz]

引用自 Morsk：

The blue inserter only uses 1.34x power at worst. The tooltips say 13.2 vs. 46.2, a factor of 3.5x, but the blue one swings faster and is active for less ticks. There's also idle draw to consider, but the difference is even less; the blue draws 25% more while idle.

I gave two inserters equally-sized accumulators to see how many times they'd swing. Yellow got 75 swings, blue 56. It's not a big difference. I would stop using yellows ASAP unless a) you have no mall and are hand-crafting both reds and blues from yellows in your inventory, or b) you want slowness for some special reason.

edit: Er, I only tested this with inserting between chests. Maybe a belt is a bit worse because it takes longer. I might look again.

It's not just the number of swings but also the down time you have to factor in. When not in use fast inserters have higher drain than basic (400W compared to 500W). This may not sound like much but this is a constant drain that adds up quickly over your entire base and on longer recipes such as science, steel, engines, etc. For reference, a basic smelting setup for a full yellow belt takes 96 inserters, while it takes 3.5 seconds to smelt. This means any downtime is consuming an extra 9.6kW just from drain for a single smelting line. This is on top of the resource cost and 3168kW of power per swing for the total array. That's nearly 4 steam engines worth of power for inserters that are overkill in the early game - where it will matter the most.

[Horoai]

^ In any case inserters easily end up in my top 5 or even top 3 power consumers. It's just the sheer amount of inserters a large factory uses.

When faced with that stat I can't help but try to reduce their power consumption and the only way to do that is to use the smallest inserter possible (to maintain full throughput) at every furnace and assembler.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

引用自 Yggdrasil：

^ In any case inserters easily end up in my top 5 or even top 3 power consumers. It's just the sheer amount of inserters a large factory uses.

That seems like it would only be right if you're not using beaconed/moduled builds. As a frame of reference, I just finished designing my shiny new GC array for my current 1k spm base.

Output is:
57,600 GCs/min

Input is:
36,735 Copper Ore/min
34,286 Iron Ore/min
1.6 GW of power

It has 880 fast inserters and 880 yellow inserters. They draw 6MW and and 4.4MW respectively. the 1.6 MW saved by using the yellows there is just a drop in the bucket.


That being said, Kreuz does have a point, when you're talking about the early game where steam power is still a thing.

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

引用自 Senpai-kun：

1) Increased power consumption
2) Assemblers don't produce fast enough to necessitate a faster inserter

Thats pretty much it. Some rare instances where fast inserters will starve a competing inserter.

If you intend to upgrade your boiler fuel belt to bluebelt you will have to use fast inserters. Burners will burn themselves out trying to pick off the line, and I dont belieave yellow inserters can pick stuff off either.

[Killcreek2]

引用自 Shadow Raider：

If you intend to upgrade your boiler fuel belt to bluebelt you will have to use fast inserters. Burners will burn themselves out trying to pick off the line, and I dont belieave yellow inserters can pick stuff off either.

Or a different design. eg: using a blue coal (or SF / RF) bus, with splitters that each divert a yellow belt to a section of boilers, using burner / yellow inserters to feed them.

[Apanatchanka]

in the end the answer depends on your map settings, your plan to expand and the menace of bitters.

[impetus_maximus]

引用自 Senpai-kun：

1) Increased power consumption
2) Assemblers don't produce fast enough to necessitate a faster inserter

this ↑

it use to pain me seeing players replacing my inserters with fast ones, or stackers.
i'd ask why they are doing it? 'these are faster'

same goes for replacing existing small poles.