whats a good starting strategy?

[n9103]

I don't know what the inefficinecy value/loss value is for electric Inserters. I just know that it has got to be lower than 2.13%.

Pretty sure no one actually answered this question, so I'll take a whack at it.

Burner inserters have a listed 180 kW while running, and when taken through the formulas previously presented, gives a rough approximation of 8MJ of work done in 47 cycles. This is good enough for me to take that 180 kW figure as actual use rate. (Yes, I could go digging through files, but I'm trying not to, and just using math and observed values.

Electric inserters have a listed 13kW while running. But they also have a 50% efficiency penalty from the boilers, so to compare to the burner inserter, just double the use rate to 26kW. (It's probably 12.5 and 25, but let's let the rounding error stay and count it as a conservative figure.)

Now it becomes simple arithmetic. 26/180=x/.0213 or .0213(26/180)=x, x~= .003 or .3%

So yes, much lower inefficiency value in theory.
Easily proven with a similar setup you used to get the 47/coal figure, but having a pump, boiler and engine attached, and putting the coal in the boiler instead.
Factorio uses ideal networks and doesn't simulate heat or transmission losses.
My figure is likely a little bit off, since this method can't really account for the idle drain of electrical devices, but being that there's almost a magnitude of difference in power use, the power drain is negligible for all reasonable values.

And there's N9103's latest contribution to the science of Factorio

[Peter34]

Electric Inserters seem, according to their stats, to have both a power drain for existing, and an additional power value (which rightly should be an energy value - power is energy per time unit, i.e. 1 watt is 1 joule per second) for usage.

I'm going into the game, loading a saved situation, to see what those values are.

...

Okay, Burner Inserter:
Energy Consumption: 180 kW.

Electric Inserter (the yellow one):
Energy Consumption: 13 kW.
Drain: 400 W.

So in usage per second, it's about 13.8 times more efficient, but in usage per item moved it's more efficient than that, since it cycles faster, so that it can do more moves per second than the Burner Inserter. Not like a lot more, but it's maybe 20% or 33% faster, or something like that. So it's at least 15 times more efficient in terms of usage.

It also has a "drain" just for existing, just for being conncted to the electricity grid, but that's only 0.4 kJ per second. Given that 1 Coal is 8 MJ, that amounts to one coal burned per second per 2000 idle Electric Inserter. I imagine I can live with that...

It's just a pity the game interface doesn't show how fast, either in cycles-per-seconds or in relative speeds, the various Inserters are. We know which ones are faster than others, but not by how much. The Factorio Wiki has some figures, but I don't know where they're from, or if they're valid for the current version of the game.

I'm also not sure whether it's good or bad to replace all Inserters with Fast Inserters. They use more electricity, but move stuff faster, but do they move stuff sufficiently faster as to be worth the usage cost (idle cost is the same)? Clearly in some cases you want the fast ones, but in many others you don't. I often find myself hand-crafting a lot of green magic potions, though, and for that alone it might be worth to replace all yellow Inserters with blue ones so I can make the green potions faster. And also to mainly hand-craft blue Inserters because I know those won't get "eaten up" from my inventory when I later hand-craft more green potions.

[n9103]

A couple users have commented that the speed increase out does the power increase, when it comes to yellow v blue.
I haven't done any testing, but I generally handwave all the power issues of inserters since they are all relatively negligible.
Instead I build faster ones where yellows can't keep up with my intended speed.

As for the handcrafting, I would say that you've probably done something wrong if you're handcrafting in single player after the first tech level you're handcrafting. (Multiplayer is a bit different, since there's a minimum doubling in the handcrafting speed.)
I have similar feelings about handcrafting blue inserters. Those should be automated almost as soon as green science, and green science should be a high priority goal for a new game.

[ssilk]

The idea to take the efficiency of the burners into account is good, but look also into these threads: https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ower_usage