Swapping out ammo types in turret walls...

[Jeffreyac]

Hi folks,

So, giant automated turret wall, hundreds of turrets long, belt fed. Red ammo.

Got green ammo, swapped out the logistics so the belt is now filled with green ammo.

Is there a simple, fast way to unload all the red ammo in the existing turrets so they'll relopad with green ammo?

I guess I could cut+paste new turrets in, but I was hoping for a better solution...

[PunCrathod]

Turrets have like 10 seconds worth of ammo inside or even less if you have shooting speed research. The red ammo will be gone in an attack or two. But if you really want them out you can just use filter inserters to take them. Then later put a deconstruction planner in your inventory and right click set it to only deconstruct filter inserters and deconstruct those.

[Premu]

Empty the belt by standing at its end and pressing F until it is only filled with green ammo, and after that run along your turrets and Ctrl-click on all of them to collect their inventory. Now green ammo should be loaded in.

But in general I don't think it's strictly necessary unless your turret line was struggling to keep off the attacks. In such a case you could just wait until the red ammo is used up. In the "hotspots" at your wall you will soon see green ammo being used. In other areas there no natives pop up the turrets might keep their red ammo for a long time, but this shouldn't be a real problem.

[knighttemplar1960]

If the red ammo has been keeping the bugs off you can just do nothing and wait until the turret uses up the red ammo. The inserter will then use the only ammo that is available (the green stuff).

You can use a deconstruction planner to pick up just the turrets and then a blue print to put the turrets right back.

If you have an exoskeleton or 2 in your power armor it will be faster to run along the row of turrets and hold CTRL and left mouse. You will have to run back along the turret row a second time to take out the ammo that was in the inseters hands to clean all the red ammo out.

[astrosha]

Unless you need the red ammo for something (such as being recycled into green) simply letting the turrets fire it off is the simplest solution.

[Level 9 Hamslayer]

Depending on how your factory is set up I would use a filter inserter to either insert into a provider chest to be moved by bots or onto a belt that would lead to the uranium ammo for recycling. Or into temporary machines nearby that upgrades the rounds to help be fed back in. Either having one side of a belt new ammo and the other recycled or onto the same belt wire the belts so one down the line will read for ammo and if there isn't any to turn on a belt or two higher which would be the new ammo so it prefers recycled. This is needed because you will forget and we don't want a bug breach. Whenever you remember to check and it's clear it's just remove the temp machines and wires.

If it's an 'active line' you may need to play several filter inserters so just incase if the line gets for whatever reason, gets the ammo mixed you will still be filtering out ammo. If some parts get pure.

At hundreds turrents it may take awhile but it's automated and large bases are more like a living thing with medication it takes a while for tiny changes to take a large effect. It sounds like you're getting there so I would wait, 5, 10, 30 minutes to an hour before looking for "real" results.

[Katitoff]

Originally posted by Jeffreyac:

Is there a simple, fast way to unload all the red ammo in the existing turrets so they'll relopad with green ammo?

Yes, it involves biters swarm.