Big problem on how to load ovens with coal

[astroshak]

An underground, or a splitter, both work well. One costs 17.5 Iron Plate, the other 16 Iron Plate and 7.5 Copper Plate.

Underground belts are 17.5 iron for a pair, so only 8.75 for a single used to block a lane, and clearly cheaper than the splitter.

Yes, they do come in pairs.

Meaning, you spend the 17.5 Iron Plate for both, you cannot spend that 8.75 plate for just one. If you use the one, and hold onto the other, you’re still tying that Iron Plate up, and it cannot be used for something else.

Seems to me that the whole issue is rather insignificant however.

[mrvn]

An underground, or a splitter, both work well. One costs 17.5 Iron Plate, the other 16 Iron Plate and 7.5 Copper Plate.

Underground belts are 17.5 iron for a pair, so only 8.75 for a single used to block a lane, and clearly cheaper than the splitter.

Yes, they do come in pairs.

Meaning, you spend the 17.5 Iron Plate for both, you cannot spend that 8.75 plate for just one. If you use the one, and hold onto the other, you’re still tying that Iron Plate up, and it cannot be used for something else.

Seems to me that the whole issue is rather insignificant however.

Note though that the build uses 2 splitters or 2 underground belts. So it all works out nicely.

Another reason to use the underground belt is that it's half the size. The splitter sticks out to each side by one tile. If you want to tile the furnace builds that wastes 2 tiles per row.

PS: To tile with underground belts make sure they are placed so they don't connect to the next row.

[starlinvf]

They are both infinitesimal in comparison to an entire factory. If you're playing on some crazy limited resource game sure it could matter I suppose, but in a typical game of Factorio you should never even notice the difference.

Exactly this. Typical starting smelting column has 48 furnaces and products 15 iron plates per second. You talk about saving production of less than a second. Sometimes perfectionism of Factorio players goes a bit foo far, in my opinion.

I guess this is Factorio's version of L33T Raiders and their efficiency meta. "Your Factory is 2% Sub-optimal. KICK!!!!"

oh god..... Now I'm starting to wonder if people will demand Mega Factories as Kill Proof, before your post is considered valid.