disentius wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 10:26 pm
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.