Overlap producing and consuming assemblers along a belt OK?

[Usul]

Hi!

Let's say I have a row of 20 assemblers producing product X on one side of the belt, and a row of 7 assemblers consuming product X on the other side of the belt (ratio 20:7). Do I have to place 1st consuming assembler *after* (downstream) of the last producing assembler to maintain the ratio? Or is it OK to place the 7th consuming assembler exactly at the same height as the 20th producing assember?

Thanks!

[valneq]

Well if the crafting speeds and recipe durations give you a ratio of 20 producers to 7 consumers, every consumer can (and has to!) consume the output of 20/7 = 2.8571429 producers. So what you have to make sure is that each consumer has about 3 producers upstream that the other consumers would not be able to consume from. An easy solution is to place all consumers after all producers. But you can of course place the last consumer alongside the last producer.

You could also decide to place the consumers more spread out so that each consumer has three producers in front of it. Of course the last consumer will only have two producers, but it will get the produced items that all the previous consumers did not manage to consume.

Whether or not such a spread out layout will work flawlessly might in the end depend on inserter positioning, though. Rule of thumb: Consumer inserters should pick up downstream from producer outserters.