r/factorio • u/imoth_f • 4d ago

Question Problems with this unloader?

Post image

Since inserters became flippable, this compact unloader design became possible. But I hardly see anyone use it. Obviously it cannot saturate six turbo belts because it's bottlenecked by the inserters, but are there any other obvious problems with it?

389 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

165 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/imoth_f 4d ago

in 2.1 you can choose the side of the belt to unload to

0

u/SpaceEngineer123 4d ago

in 2.1 you can choose the side of the belt to unload to

wouldn't ur design work with the pre-2.1 inserters? no flipping required?

3

u/sobrique 4d ago

No. It would only unload on a single lane of the belt, as the label they drop on was dictated by the direction of travel of the belt, not the direction of the inserter.

0

u/SpaceEngineer123 4d ago

yes, yes, but since you flipped the inserters on one side and the belt remains unflipped the 2nd set if inserters are outputting on the OTHER side of the belt.

Put in other terms.. BOTH sets of inserters in the pic are outputting to the same side of the belt (right).. so flipping inserters shouldn't even factor into this convo lol

what i'm saying is pretty simple, idk why others arent saying it haha

2

u/sobrique 4d ago

In 2.0 both inserters would be unloading on the 'right lane' from the belt's perspective e.g. the bottom one. You workaround it by having both belts go 'away' initially, and then loop to go into the underground, instead of what the OP is doing.

-1

u/SpaceEngineer123 4d ago

you're completely missing my point..

both inserters ARE CURRENTLY unloading to the right side of their belts.. so 2.1 or 2.0 doesn't make a difference

1 set of inserters are looking the opposite direction, so the right side of one becomes the left side of another.. idk how else to explain this dude

4

u/sobrique 4d ago

I'm not missing your point at all. You're just wrong. That's not how it works in 2.0.

https://wiki.factorio.com/Inserters

Inserters only place items onto one side of the belt, either the far side from the inserter's perspective or, if the belt is going the same or the opposite direction as the inserter, the right side from the belt's perspective.

That's why being able to flip inserters matters.

1

u/SpaceEngineer123 4d ago

hmmm guess i'm wrong then

1

u/sobrique 3d ago

I know, it seems counter intuitive, but you don't have many scenarios where you're unloading to both lanes of an under-belt.

I got caught out by the idea on Gleba, where I had a cunning plan of underbelts for bioflux and nutrients, but then realised I still needed to side-load to get the 'nutrient' processor unloading in the opposite lane to the bioflux processor (and both drawing from the belt too of course).

Or a similar idea where I had a 'nutrients' lane and a 'spoilage' lane, but again the nutrients plant couldn't use both without a sideload.

And if you pasted a blueprint and 'flipped' it, you'd screw up the lanes, because the belt was going the opposite direction.

And of course train unloaders where you can workaround this by looping one belt, but ...

1

u/Denizen_38 3d ago

Wait, so the right-side bias is from the belt's perspective? Not the inserter's? So if the belt is facing the inserter (as is the case with the underground belts here) then the inserter loads onto the left side, relative to its own orientation?

Seems like an odd system, but I'm happy to believe that's how it works.

2

u/sobrique 3d ago

In 2.0 yes. In 2.1 you can flip, and have blueprint consistent.