Factorio Forums

Minimal save file for easy reproduction included.

Reproduction

1. Load the save file provided, which has 2 labs, one fed by loaders and one fed by stack inserters.
2. Power the loader lab, let it run for a while.
3. Unpower the loader lab, power the inserter lab, let it run for a while.
4. Compare the consumption graphs. The loader lab will appear to have a lower consumption (though in reality the consumption is the same).

More details

Going tick-by-tick in the editor, it looks like that after a loader inserts a new pack, a different pack is then swapped out for 2 ticks (the "% remaining" appears different for 2 ticks). I'm assuming this somehow causes packs to merge durabilities together at some point in that swapping, causing the lower visible consumption.

Why

Someone has reported this to us on the SE discord. The graph difference is especially visible for very fast labs like the ones available in SE.

This sounds like 83579

Yeah I'm pretty sure it's the same, the description from Rseding of the interaction between loaders and durability stacking matches was I was seeing.

You can close mine as duplicate.