[0.17.74] Loaders only work one way

[ChurchOrganist]

I noticed this behaviour whilst preparing for a modded Pyanodon game.

The standard loaders as found in the editor (I was using a mod which reskinned them at the time) will only take things out of an entity onto a belt - they will no longer put things into an entity from a belt.

The attached vanilla save demonstrates this

[posila]

You didn't place them right. You need to place the one that's supposed to load into furnace as if you wanted to unload from furnace and when on ground, rotate it to swap its direction (to make it load to the furnace)

[ChurchOrganist]

Well! I was fiddling about for ages trying to get it to work!

Thanks for enlightening me.

[Mr. Tact]

You didn't place them right. You need to place the one that's supposed to load into furnace as if you wanted to unload from furnace and when on ground, rotate it to swap its direction (to make it load to the furnace)

*blink* *blink* Someone please tell me I'm not the only person who was confused after reading this explanation.... I guess it doesn't matter, since the original poster found a solution, but I read this very slowly several times and I do not understand it.

[disentius]

Yea... a loader has a "belt" side and a "chest" side .
Trick is:
1. place the loader first with the correct side to the belt/chest
2. set the direction with R.

loader close-up.png (66.72 KiB) Viewed 1774 times

[valneq]

Yea... a loader has a "belt" side and a "chest" side .

To elaborate a bit more:
In the above picture you see the default setup of a loader. It takes up two tiles (2x1) with one short end looking like an outgoing belt. Connecting this side to a belt will connect to belts. Great!

However, the other short side is what connects to entities like chests, assemblers, etc.
By default, the loader is always unloading. No matter how you rotate it before placing it, it will always unload. You can make it unload from the north to the south, or from the south to the north (or east->west or west->east) by pressing R several times before placing it on the ground.
However, after it is placed, you cannot rotate the 2x1 entity any more. Pressing R after it is placed results in an inversion of the direction. Only then will you be able to load an entity.

This behavior is analogous to underground belts. Whenever you place an underground belt, it is always first going downwards.
Only when you connect the second part of the underground belt, will you get a piece that goes back up from underground.
However, if you just place one downwards underground belt and then hover over it and press R, you will get a single underground belt that is coming up without having a corresponding underground belt to go down. While this is not used by many people, some use it for separating the different lines on a mixed belt. See also the corresponding article in the wiki.

As a side note: The modded "Loader Redux" has a more sophisticated snapping logic for the loader that respects the belt direction. If you connect a "loader redux" to an entity it will by default unload again. However, when you connect an incoming belt, the loader redux will automatically revert its direction such that it correctly loads. I am not sure how many other modded loaders adopted that kind of automatic adjustment of direction. Maybe "Miniloaders", maybe "Vanilla Loaders HD", not sure.