Factorio Forums

This was a nice feature to have because it allowed distribution of fuel away from your main base using the same trains that carry materials toward your main base. Something like: Base <-> Iron plates <-> Iron Ore.

If the goal is to prevent certain types of fuel from being removed, the player could use a filter inserter. We should allow as many options to players as possible within the capabilities already in the game, not arbitrarily remove them.

The only way I would accept this is if the Filter Inserter was required, and has to be set specifically to the fuel type for it to be able to take it out. And even then, I am not so sure it is a good idea.

I'm really glad they got rid of this feature.

Exactly. I see why they might want it, but it is really niche. You should have coal available at at least one train stop, so refueling is easy. If you need to transfer coal elsewhere, then use a traincar. I mean, you should be doing the same for things like walls, repair packs, and so on for wall maintenance.

Was removed in 0.9 (or so?) and surely will not be reintroduced.

The whole inserters being able to remove fuel from a locomotive, I thought, was a mechanism to make train station building more interesting. Now it appears like a 1-size fits all solution will be the norm as you only need to refuel the head locomotive anyway, but now can have shorter trains pull into longer stations.
Part of me is glad it's gone, the other part is not.

TL;DR

Add a checkbox to locomotive GUI to allow unloading fuel.

What ?

Add a way to allow inserters to unload fuel from locomotives. For example a checkbox in the locomotive GUI.

Why ?

Before 0.15 you could unload fuel from locomotives with inserters. This was useful to supply Mining&Smelting outposts with fuel for non electric smelting, without the need for another cargo wagon / filtered cargo wagon slots + filter inserters.

This was removed in 0.15?

Jap2.0 wrote:This was removed in 0.15?

Yes in 0.15.7.

TL;DR

To let us intelligently keep the best fuel in our trains, we should have the option to let an inserter pull fuel from a train.

What ?

At some point, train engines were changed to only let fuel be added by inserters, no removed. While I can see the point of this, we should have the option to enable an inserter (or only let filter inserters) remove fuel from trains. Maybe a flag on either the train or the inserter (the latter makes more sense to me).

Why ?

I just got nuclear for the first time, and just started producing nuclear fuel. I'd like to be able to supply my trains with it, but have rocket fuel as a backup. If my nuclear runs out, the rocket fuel gets inserted. But, then I have to wait for that fuel to run out to get it replaced. If I could setup an inserter to remove the rocket fuel if my nuclear fuel was available, then the only waiting I'd have to do is the current fuel rod that's burning.

+1 -- it's silly that we can't automate an upgrade from trees to coal or whatever. I was quite surprised to find it didn't work anymore, was there a reason it was removed?

It was removed by request from community :
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6430

I love it when there is two sides to an opinion and one just happens to be the one currently implemented. The other side will ask to change it, it is changed, and then suddenly the former side is unhappy. But then the maintainers go "yeah we're not going to keep going back and forth like this, and we don't want to add complexity with a config option". This happened numerous times in the past where I was perfectly happy with software, for example Firefox, then they changed something on request, and then a lot of people became unhappy but it was never changed back or made configurable.

In this case, we have a perfectly good middle ground, by which the player can make it unequivocally clear that they intended to take fuel out of the engine: filter inserters. Is there any reason, other than "meh we don't feel like it", for which this is not implemented?

Koub wrote: ↑Mon Feb 05, 2018 8:38 am It was removed by request from community :
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6430

So 4 to 5 poeple are the community?
Just wondering.

steinio wrote: ↑Wed Jan 02, 2019 11:37 pm So 4 to 5 poeple are the community?
Just wondering.

There has been no change ever that was unanimously supported by the whole 100% of the community.
Some people from the community argumented, and the devs decided it was a legitimate request, and it was better to do things like that.

Preventing fuel and modules from being removed by inserters seems like an arbitrary limitation to please a minority that doesn't want to think too deeply. In turn it prevents those how like to come up with overly complicated automations of doing so.
It should be failry simple to please both sides by adding a toggle "allow fuel removal".

It feels good when you figure out things that are not obvious at a glance. Daisy chaining labs for example, in older builds we could daisy chain boilers.

To be honest, I dislike the idea that an inserter can take an item from something that's not either a logistic "thing" (chest, belt, ...) or an output.
That's why I dislike inserters being able to grab science packs from a lab, or fuel from locomotives, furnaces, boilers, or whatever.
That's the way I see it, and has nothing to do with mental laziness. I could see things the other way round by saying that the ability to daisy-chain fuel/science packs or remove fuel from locos is just a request from a minority that doesn't want to think too deeply (by setting up a proper delivery route).
In the end, it's a design choice, neither good, nor bad.

It must be allowed for filter inserters, but not by common inserters.

The main reason it was disabled for locomotives is so a train stopping at not-the-intended-stop or anywhere that does offloading doesn't have all of its fuel removed. For example: a 3-headed train stopping at a 1-headed stop and then the unloading inserters intended for the cargo wagons remove the fuel from the back 2 locomotives.

It didn't make for interesting enough gameplay to warrant the annoyance of polluting the output and disabling a train every time it happened.

Rseding91 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 04, 2019 12:02 am The main reason it was disabled for locomotives is so a train stopping at not-the-intended-stop or anywhere that does offloading

Did you see the suggestion about filter inserters? Your scenario doesn't really work in that case.

There is one scenario where, even with filter inserters, it could go wrong: if you have a filter inserter which is set alongside the tracks in the right direction to the specific kind of fuel used by the train and have a train stop precisely there and you park it there in manual mode (in automatic, cargo exchanging is closed when it stops before its destination). I can see that happening, given a large enough sample size of players and time. The question is, what is more common: the rather unlikely scenario as described, or players trying to daisy chain loading?

It somewhat limits the use that there are no long-handed filter inserters, but I guess allowing it only for filter inserters would be the optimal solution using only existing inserters.