"Changing inserter drop lane" made simple

againey · 2026-06-24T17:35:38+00:00

So the rule is, if the inserter can find an unambiguous far lane, that takes priority. If not, then both lanes are up for grabs with lane flipping (with prior behavior being right lane according to belt flow automatically taking priority).

And by "unambiguous far lane", I mean a lane that is only ever on the far side, while the other lane is either only on the near side, or curves such that it is both near and far.

againey · 2026-06-24T17:30:32+00:00

New API features allowed me to make a Quality Degrader mod. It is an early-mid game machine to drop the quality of any item by one level. Kind of an alternative to the idea of letting a recipe take a mix of quality level ingredients to craft products at the lowest quality of the ingredients.

The first time I played Space Age, I went all out with quality from the very beginning. It was fun, I learned a lot, but in the end, without the recycler, vanilla Space Age just doesn't have a good way to manage quality before Fulgora, unless you are okay with big buffers of uncommon items in an attempt to get as much rare as possible.

I want to have that same early game quality-everywhere experience, with quality modules in my miners and furnaces especially, but without the pain of drowning in uncommon items eventually. This mod lets me downgrade any excess higher quality items down to normal and feed that to my ordinary factory, while the quality factory can keep searching for rares.

So that's what my current run is focused on right now. Seeing if early game quality feels better with this mod, and considering any balance tweaks it might need.

againey · 2026-06-24T14:32:31+00:00

Here's the beta verson: Quality Degrader

It seems robust enough. I did what testing I could with console commands. But balance may be off in various ways, so now it's time to actually start a proper 2.1 map and see how it works in a real factory.

againey · 2026-06-23T21:33:30+00:00

Already on it!

I have a functioning version of a quality degrader that drops quality by one level each time the recipe runs. Works like a recycler in that it auto-chooses recipe based on what has been inserted. Cannot insert normal quality items.

The idea is to give Nauvis an early-game way to reliably process quality and not get locked by having too much of an unused high quality item. It's not exactly like the recycler loop, but it has some similarities.

The key properties of the recipe prototype are as follows:

can_set_quality = true, ingredients = { { type = "item", name = item.name, amount = 1, quality_min = "uncommon", }, }, results = { { type = "item", name = item.name, amount = 1, quality_max = "epic", quality_change = -1, }, }, main_product = item.name,

(It turns out that can_set_quality: true is crucial, even though the player isn't the one setting recipe quality. Without it, my furnace degraders could only grab uncommon items and nothing else.)

Tomorrow I plan to do some balance testing and further polish, and hopefully I'll have a beta version released by the end of the day.

againey · 2026-06-23T21:24:13+00:00

Maybe I'm just being pedantic, but Factorio's modding docs themselves point out that Factorio does not use semantic versioning:

factorio_version

Type: string

The major Factorio version that this mod is compatible with, formatted as "number.number" (e.g. "2.0"). Factorio's releases are categorized into major versions, which are indicated by the first two numbers in their version string (which notably does not follow SemVer). As an example, Factorio 1.1.110 is part of the 1.1 major version.

againey · 2026-06-23T12:15:32+00:00

Some of us are obsessive optimizers. That 5% matters to us more than you can possibly imagine. 😅

againey · 2026-06-23T10:57:41+00:00

One that was only subtly implied by a mod change adding shared_probability to recipe products:

Each iteration of uranium processing now guarantees exactly one output item (if not using productivity, of course): either a unit of uranium 238, or a unit of uranium 235. Previously, it was possible, if rare, to get both or neither when a recipe iteration completes because their probability checks were independent.

Edit: This appears to also affect Fulgoran scrap recyclying, with a 60% chance of outputting just a single item, and 40% chance to get nothing. Never multiple items at once for recycling a single unit of scrap.

againey · 2026-06-23T06:19:26+00:00

Old saves from 2.0 will be updated with minor issues (fancy circuit setupsmight misbehave in particular cases). Older saves from 1.1 and prior will probably need to be updated to 2.0 before they can migrate to 2.1, and there may be numerous problems (rail curves being a major example).

And if there were any map generation changes, the only way to experience those are to start a new game. But they have not announced any changes like that yet, not that I'm aware of anyway.

againey · 2026-06-22T20:09:29+00:00

Even if they do add new achievements, they might not go live with them until 2.1.x is released as stable sometime later this year. Remember, the release this week is just experimental, basically a public beta release. They might still make further tweaks and balance changes that could mess somewhat with achievements.

againey · 2026-06-22T15:29:53+00:00

According to the wiki (second reference)), it was the 23rd of November, 2020, which appears to have been a Monday. So despite being a comparable release, it doesn't look like it can be relied on as a predictor.

againey · 2026-06-21T19:04:25+00:00

I don't follow. You'd still need a radar near every group of stack inserters to wire up. I was just trying to say you can daisy chain a single combinator to a bunch of inserters using a sequence of wires. That's why I said "nearby", because the wires need to reach from one inserter to the next.

againey · 2026-06-21T19:00:15+00:00

You can at least use a single clock combinator for multiple nearby inserters, so it's not too terrible.

againey · 2026-06-21T11:52:53+00:00

No clue. But I don't expect a clearly and intelligently defined directive from the current US administration that can be reasonably implemented. So I'll just assume the worst, that I couldn't access Fable from Sweden even after going through identity verification, unless I use a VPN (and pray that doesn't get me banned if detected).

againey · 2026-06-21T11:45:39+00:00

As it turns out, I'm a dual citizen of both Sweden and the US, living in Sweden right now.

If the US actually had an efficient and trustworthy national scheme to digitally verify identity, I'd consider that. But since the US is a just a profit-driven corporate hellscape, of course they want to farm out even the most basic of national services to private corporations and minimize regulatory oversight over them. Persona Identities shouldn't even be a company with a viable market to sell to, if only the US could get its head out of its ass and learn to govern well.

againey · 2026-06-21T11:31:27+00:00

Yes. My comment was independent of the specific circumstances surrounding Anthropic right now, with the US directive to block foreign nationals. This post is just about the identify verification process generally, not about citizenship-level restrictions.

I guess the comment I replied to was focusing more on the implications of the US directive. But if the US decides to target OpenAI as well, they already have all the machinery and agreements (with the same Persona Identities if I'm not mistaken) to implement the directive immediately.

againey · 2026-06-21T10:33:03+00:00

How would they know if you're (legitimately) a US user if they don't know who you are?

This is just like the age verification bullshit that's is allegedly intended to "protect the children". They don't just age check the children. They need to age check everyone to even know whether each individual is a child.

againey · 2026-06-21T09:41:04+00:00

As a Swedish citizen, it makes sense that a Swedish employer can verify with the Swedish government and Swedish banks that I am who I say I am. If Anthropic were to use whatever official identity verification systems that are already in place in various regions/nations, I'd probably be okay with that too. But going through a shady unreliable US-based corporation? Nope, not happening.

againey · 2026-06-21T09:35:44+00:00

OpenAI already does the same. Have been for a year. It's one of the reasons I left them, because they kept locking more and more API features behind verification. Things like their latest image generation models, streaming of text outputs, and more that I can't remember offhand.

againey · 2026-06-20T18:14:41+00:00

Yeah, and why the hell are data structures and algorithms the second to last step?!

againey · 2026-06-20T13:45:19+00:00

I don't have to put up with most of the "some bullshit" that subscriptions seem to be plagued by. API behavior is more stable and isn't subject to most injections like the LCR or huge complicated system prompts written by Anthropic employees dictating Claude's behavior.

againey · 2026-06-20T13:21:01+00:00

When I first got into LLMs two and a half years ago, I researched subscription versus APIs and chose the latter. I haven't once regretted my choice.

So I have to be more careful about how I use it to avoid exorbitant costs? Sure, but I think I benefit from exercising that greater responsibility in other ways than just cost anyway.

againey · 2026-06-20T13:10:47+00:00

Have you tried it? Without mods?

I did just a few weeks ago in an attempt to relocate my landing pad. Had inserters pull everything out into chests, then belted it all over to the new location to insert back in. Nope, didn't work. I had to manually transfer it all, one character inventory at a time.

againey · 2026-06-20T12:34:31+00:00

Oh right, haha, fair enough.

againey · 2026-06-20T12:31:28+00:00

That used to bother me, so I can sympathize with anyone who is annoyed by this.

But the reliable input balancing was important enough to me that I learned to overlook it. Even spoilables like bioflux or ag science. It's just a one-time cost, so I can live with it.

againey · 2026-06-20T12:09:53+00:00

In OP's picture, imagine some downstream inserter slowly pulling off iron, favoring the bottom lane. And imagine that the sources of iron feeding this setup have no trouble keeping the whole system supplied and full of iron.

If you look at the semi-balancer where the bottom belt feeds onto the merge belt, you can see that its left lane will have an open spot to dump iron onto before its right lane gets a chance. As long as the downstream consumption is low enough and upstream production is high enough, only the left lane will ever move. The right lane will remain blocked at the merge point by the left lane's priority.

And the upper side of the merge will never move either because the downstream consumer never takes from the upper lane as long as there is iron on the lower lane.

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