Inventory Trim

Inventory Trim ===========

You know when your main inventory is jammed with slots containing small numbers of surplus items? You've picked up few pieces of belt and a chest, and now you've got slots containing 2 extra Inserters, 6 pieces of damaged Wall, 9 spare pieces of Iron Plate and ... well, junk.

This mod enables inventory trimming: your main inventory is scanned periodically to see if there are slots that are being used inefficiently, and throws their contents into the logistics trash. Hurrah, no more clicky-clicky to get rid of the clutter!

Updated for Factorio 2.1

Features

• Trims away items in small stacks that are taking up slots.
• Identifies less useful items to trim first (eg damaged items).
• Keeps at least 10 slots free (configurable) by trimming more assertively, and tries HARD to keep 2 slots free (also configurable).
• Won't remove your last stack of any item, unless you tell it to.

Rationale

I keep finding, from around mid-game, that my inventory is always sort of full, and that many slots are occupied with just a few items. I can set logistics maximums to get rid of things, but they feel like a heavy-handed solution. I don't mind having 50 Inserters (1 stack) or 100 (2 stacks) but I do mind having 53 - also 2 stacks - and then finding I'm out of space. This mod aims to fix that, whilst being more sensitive to the overall state of the inventory: if it's very full, it tolerates less excess.

Trimming is only meaningful in a world where you have logistics and auto-trash, so it is assumed that you are at a point in the game where carrying small items of stuff isn't so critical. Much of your inventory content is likely to be under automated configuration anyway. The aim of trimming should be to deal with the annoyance of never having much space and continually having to prune the junk.

See the gallery images above for a "before" and "after" view.

FAQ

I want it to get rid of crappy items like Sulfur and Copper Wire, but it always leaves at least one stack. Is there a trick?

Why yes! Normally, it never trims away your very last stack of anything, because we can't tell if it was something you actually wanted to keep. But if you set a logistics request for the item with a _minimum set to zero_ (which is normally meaningless), the trimmer will know you really are happy for a minimum of zero slots and will clear them out.

This is different from setting a max of zero, which will auto-trash completely. The trimmer will only clean you out if the stacking is clearly inefficient and you are under space pressure.

I want to move lots of Rail (or landfill, or belt etc) from this chest to that chest and it keeps emptying my inventory! Help!

Temporarily turn off the _Logistics requests and auto-trash_ checkbox (on the Logistics UI). If you find you do this a lot and it's annoying, there's a setting to decrease the number of slots being kept free (default: 10). There's another setting ("Consider fullness a key factor...") that prioritizes retaining fuller stacks - I've not played with it much, but if you feel adventurous, try increasing it, 1.2, 1.5, 2.0.