Splitters

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Revision as of 05:03, 23 December 2013 by Ssilk (talk | contribs) (→‎Other Usages)
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Overview

belt-type factor speed speed (tiles/sec)
Basic splitter 1 1.875
Fast splitter 2 3.75
Express splitter 3 5.625

See also Transport Belt/Physics to dig deeper.

Behavior

The behavior of splitters looks simple at first glance. But they are not that simple. Splitters have an astonishing amount of uses.

  • splitters have two input-belt-sides and two output-belt-sides on which you can connect any belt or underground belt
  • splitters don't shuffle the lanes on the belts; items on the left input belt lane don't change the side to the right lane (and vice versa).
  • Splitting
    • if two output-belts are connected, then every input-item is put alternated on one of the two output-belts. Or in other words: it is guaranteed, that the inputed items are output in a ratio of 50% on each belt.
    • if one of the output belt lanes are full, then it tries to output on the other output belt. This is useful to fill belts.
  • Joining
    File:T&T Belt04.jpg
    Feeding from side is only a good use, if you want to make a queue - e. g. for mines, some output-buffer
    File:T&T Belt03.jpg
    Better: The capacity of the output belt is fully used.
    • splitters can be used to join two belts into one. This has a much higher throughput than only side-inserting.
    • as with splitting, the belt lanes aren't mixed up.
    • Use faster splitter if you want to feed into a faster belt, because otherwise your splitter is the bottleneck!

Special behavior

  • Splitters/Priority: when both input belts are at full capacity, then the splitter prefers the left input, or in other words: the right input is only taken to fill gaps in the left input. This can be used to priorize an item-source, for example a storage.
    File:T&T Belt08.jpg
    Left side: A splitter cascade to let only the unused items into the storage. Center: A simple storage. Right side: The splitter prefers taking the input of the upper (left) belt, so the input from the storage is lower priority.
  • Splitters/When is a faster splitter needed?: a basic splitter can keep up with the input of one fast belt, if the two output belts are connected and empty.

Other Usages

When you feed a belt from the side, the throughput is limited. With v0.7 this has been improved much, but it is also simply the fact, that you feed only one side of a belt.

  • Splitters/Wormhole Trick: items disappears on input side and dive up on output side, "jumping" over half a tile, which is when stacked up in a line of splitters like a wormhole. (Completely untested, just waked up and known that it must be like that - ssilk)
  • Splitters/Constructions: Examples of using.

See also