Factorio Forums

Situation:

When transporting biter eggs on a space station for making science.

I set the biter egg inserter to spoiled only.

Expected result : The eggs with the shortest timer gets processed first.

Actualy result : the last egg to enter the spacestation gets processed first ( the eggs get selected right to left, bottom to top )

Reproduce :
Use spacestation and put eggs with different timers in there and observe eggs being removed.

Thanks for the report however I can't reproduce any issue. Are you sure you're not running into the same thing as this report? 126807

Rseding91 wrote: Wed Oct 08, 2025 6:48 pm Thanks for the report however I can't reproduce any issue. Are you sure you're not running into the same thing as this report? 126807

I looks similar, But i basically have it on demand. I looked for the spaceship hub so didnt find the landing pad thing.
If they are the same item code wise then it might he the same bug.

I can provide save that will have it happen every time, though i did provide every step in the description.
Only saw it today, running the latest released version, but it could have been there before i just noticed it.

The hub and landing pad work identically when it comes to inserters. Can you check the inserter directly after it removes an item (look in the inserter GUI) and verify the spoilage amount in the inserter?

If you can provide the save I can look as well but at this point I’m almost certain it’s the same confusion and that it’s working correctly.

Rseding91 wrote: Wed Oct 08, 2025 10:39 pm The hub and landing pad work identically when it comes to inserters. Can you check the inserter directly after it removes an item (look in the inserter GUI) and verify the spoilage amount in the inserter?

If you can provide the save I can look as well but at this point I’m almost certain it’s the same confusion and that it’s working correctly.

Yea its the same confusion, though it is inconsitend game design compared to every other chest in the game.
Other chests dont resort themself, even if multiple of the same item are in the chest because of spoilage it wont even merge them.

Would be nice to change this undocumented feature to not resort stacks.

Shadowhawk wrote: Thu Oct 09, 2025 6:09 am Would be nice to change this undocumented feature to not resort stacks.

That would make platform hubs almost unusable

Shadowhawk wrote: Thu Oct 09, 2025 6:09 am Would be nice to change this undocumented feature to not resort stacks.

There's no gameplay disadvantage to sorting the inventories, and many gameplay disadvantages to *not* sorting the inventory. There's only the slight confusion here, but it's doing what you're asking it to do.

Rseding91 wrote: Thu Oct 09, 2025 1:30 pm There's no gameplay disadvantage to sorting the inventories, and many gameplay disadvantages to *not* sorting the inventory. There's only the slight confusion here, but it's doing what you're asking it to do.

Well, in the off chance of someone dropping Bioflux to Gleba hub and under-consuming them with a fresh-first inserter, the behavior would result in slightly less fresh science.

Is the merge utilized to accelerate inventory access with a binary search or something?

h.q.droid wrote: Thu Oct 09, 2025 3:02 pm Is the merge utilized to accelerate inventory access with a binary search or something?

The merge is so you don't have to micromanage available slots in a building with limited slot availability that both sources and sinks items. Likely the only reasons trains and buffer chests don't do this is they aren't required to beat the game, and it's easy to just build more. Platforms are both required to beat Space Age and there are many fewer of them so that the inventory sorting is a much smaller performance hit.

Fun fact, you can technically turn off the character's inventory sorting, but I haven't seen a single person do so.

computeraddict wrote: Thu Oct 09, 2025 3:34 pm Fun fact, you can technically turn off the character's inventory sorting, but I haven't seen a single person do so.

I sometimes turn sorting off in order to set up inventory filters, which requires that there not already be a different item sorted into the slot I am filtering.

(Now you're going to say “I haven’t seen a single other person set up inventory filters on their character inventory”…)

Rseding91 wrote: Thu Oct 09, 2025 1:30 pm

Shadowhawk wrote: Thu Oct 09, 2025 6:09 am Would be nice to change this undocumented feature to not resort stacks.

There's no gameplay disadvantage to sorting the inventories, and many gameplay disadvantages to *not* sorting the inventory. There's only the slight confusion here, but it's doing what you're asking it to do.

But there is in some cases where you have spoiled items, if you collect bitter eggs and send them to your space station they will get a shorter shelf life then expected. Depending on how many and how fast this can reduce the spoil time, you can only reduce this by making more eggs spawners and logic to extract them all just in time. Sending 1000eggs with just 5 spawners reduces the lifetime you can travel with them to about 27 minutes compared to 30.

But it does behave different then other chest in that regard, now it is possible to end up with a chest that refuses new items because it is full to only contain 100coper or iron ores. And not by you just doing that manually but just during gameplay this happens sometimes. Quite funny to see a chest with stacks of 2-3 ores in every slot yet not helpfull

So while i can agree that the sorting is nice in most cases it is not consistently implemented through the game, and with spoilage it just gives unwanted side effects. Then again spoilage doesnt work with any chests and gives unwanted side effects so this is hardly a difference.

kpreid wrote: Thu Oct 09, 2025 4:24 pm I sometimes turn sorting off in order to set up inventory filters, which requires that there not already be a different item sorted into the slot I am filtering.

(Now you're going to say “I haven’t seen a single other person set up inventory filters on their character inventory”…)

I usually just use slots from the end of my inventory (which unfortunately clear if you lose inventory bonus); or turn off logistics, set down a dump chest, and shove stuff in it until I've got filtering done.

Open a gameplay help topic if you want to discuss this further.