Factorio Forums

To start with, I'm a total newb. Like, completely new.
So I've been trying to figure out how transport belts move items (to no avail), and while I was at it I thought I might as well ask:
Is it at all possible to have a belt that sends items on the left to the left, and items on the right to the right?

Non, it' not.
Either you have two rows of items on the same belt, and they go in the same direction, either you have to have two separate belts.
It's pretty much like in real life.

Is that it's not possible from a coding point of view or vanilla? I realise my initial post could be interpreted either way.

I've seen a splitter mod that divides lanes on belt. It's in shadows modpack for sure - I don't know the name from memory.
You can also split lanes using underground belt trick. That one is described here:
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ound_belts

Foxy_Boxes wrote:Is that it's not possible from a coding point of view or vanilla? I realise my initial post could be interpreted either way.

I cannot be categoric, but the way I understand it, the way items move when they are on a belt is purely related to the ingame physics. The belt has a direction, and every item moves in that direction. I'm pretty sure there is no way to add a second direction to a belt. There are ways to split, fuse, ... the two lanes of a belt, but when the items move on a belt, they have to follow the only direction of the belt.

IMHO Basically - you usually don't want to want to split lanes.
Seriously, try to plan your factory without doing a full lane split.

Note that the underground belts are used as "lane blockers",
which can be used separately to extract one lane from a belt.
Using that instead of doing the full split is sometimes OK.

If you really have to, then there's officially this:

orzelek wrote:You can also split lanes using underground belt trick. That one is described here:
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ound_belts

Oh I know that trick, don't even need the underground belts. All that is is that the left side of a belt moves onto a right moving belt first then the right, so with a constant supply the right side never gets to move. Problem with that is is the need for a constant supply/backlog. Thanks all for the responses.

orzelek wrote:I've seen a splitter mod that divides lanes on belt. It's in shadows modpack for sure - I don't know the name from memory.

Found it: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... php?t=7161
It's a bit bulkier a solution than I'd like, but it serves the purpose.