Freshness Sorter
An inserter that routes items based on their % freshness — automatically separating fresh stock from spoiled goods on your production lines.
How It Works
The Freshness Sorter is a bulk inserter variant that reads the spoil percentage of the item it is currently holding and decides where to drop it:
- Match — item freshness is at or above the threshold → dropped in the visual facing direction (same as a normal inserter's drop side)
- No-Match — item freshness is below the threshold → dropped to the left or right of the facing direction (configurable)
Pickup and Drop Flexibility
The Freshness Sorter is a standard inserter at its core, it can pick up and drop items from and to any combination of:
- Belts
- Chests
- Machines (assemblers, furnaces, any entity with an inventory)
Filters, stack size override and spoiled priority also work as usual.
Settings
All settings are startup settings and apply globally.
| Setting | Options | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freshness Threshold in % | 0 – 100 | 50 | Items at or above this freshness % go to Match. Items below go to No-Match. |
| No-Match Side | Right / Left | Right | Which side of the visual facing direction the No-Match output is placed on. |
| Non-Spoilable Item Route | No-Match / Match | No-Match | Where to send items that cannot spoil at all (e.g. spoilage, iron plates, coal). |
UPS Impact
The Freshness Sorter is designed to be lightweight:
- The tick handler runs every 5 ticks (12 times per second at 60 UPS), not every tick
- While the inserter hand is empty, no work is done at all
- Per active inserter the handler performs ~8 simple API reads and one position write
Estimated cost at 60 UPS:
| Sorter count | Approx. cost per tick |
|---|---|
| 100 | < 0.1 ms |
| 1 000 | ~0.5 – 1 ms |
| 10 000 | ~5 – 10 ms |
For typical factory sizes (a few dozen to a few hundred sorters) the performance impact is negligible. Only at very large megabase scales with thousands of sorters would it become relevant.
Recipe
Unlocked by the Freshness Sorter technology, which requires Bulk Inserter and Agriculture.
| Ingredient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Bulk Inserter | 1 |
| Advanced Circuit | 5 |
| Processing Unit | 2 |
Research cost: 200 science packs (Automation + Logistic + Agricultural)
Compatibility
- Requires Factorio 2.0 and the Space Age expansion
Credits
Mod concept & design by Morlot.
Implementation developed with the help of Claude (AI assistant by Anthropic).