Stack
< Stack
A stack is the basic element in Factorio to store Items.
Don't mix a stack up with Slot of power armor or other the slots for the modules (and planned slots for vehicles and other devices)! There is an affinity to liquid stacks.
Usages of stacks
Stacks are included into nearly every device, which can handle items, but they are also at some (not so awaited) places. Full list of slots:
- The player stacks
- inventory-stacks
- toolbelt
- tool-, armor-, weapon- and ammunition stacks
- The players hand (is also a stack)
- Vehicles contain also some stacks for Fuel
- Vehicle/Car (contains most stacks in game)
- Vehicle/Train (the wagons, but also the locomotive)
- Chests: eventually the best known example of stacks. Basically chests are nothing else then a group of stacks.
- Devices
- Furnaces: Burner-, incoming and outgoing stack
- Assembly and Chemical plant: Some in- and one outgoing stack, dependent of the assembly-type
- Labs
- Burner-based: Boiler, Burner mining drill, Burner inserter
- Roboport (filtered for robots and repair packs only)
- Gun turrets
- Special
- Inserter and Robots (they have some limited stacks, see stacksize bonus), so that they are able to move some items between stacks at once.
How does it work?
A stack can store a number of (identical) items.
The first inserted item determines which item-types can be stored.
That determines also, how many items can be stored (the number of items per stack depends on it's "size").
Only items can be stored; you cannot not put the car - all stacks fully loaded - into a stack. The stacks of the car would be emptied before that. The same with chests (till v0.9 mining a full chest, if you don't have enough stacks left in your inventory leads to the so called "chest explosion").
Filtered stacks
There are also filtered stacks, either by default (for the burner/furnaces, or roboports) or manually set for the wagons or toolbelt (normally set vial middle-mouse-button, see Keyboard bindings).
Damaged items
With identical we mean: Currently when you have a wall with different damage, they are two different items and so stored in different stacks.
Physically?
A stack is some hightech hyper-space technology: Inserting the item transfers it to hyperspace-energy which can be reverted easily. So a stack also compresses items, physically in the game (and in your computer RAM).
How a stack compresses so much items, is one of the Mysteries of the Factorio World, but obviously it's some kind of high-tech. The basics of this ultra-high technology is learned by children in the kindergarden, when they have to put away their toys.
The amount, how much items a stack can store, depends from the item. A train uses one stack, but you can put up to 500 alien eggs in a stack.
Stack size bonuses
Insertion limits
Different number of items for different item-types
For example: A stack with Resources is limited generally to 50 items. But Intermediate products like iron plates stack double (100 items/stack). This is important, if you want to store or transport items by train. See also Transport/Compress by Pre-production.
Handling with stacks
There are some Keyboard binding (not all are listed there!) to handle your stacks fast. Like moving half the stack to another stack.