Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

[mmmPI]

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I tried other things and came to find it now easier to picture it mentally than to explain it with words to find a rule, but that could get rid of the idea of side of belt or direction of belt and be pictured as a physically accurate representation right ? ( actually furthest quadrant work if you picture them in 'diamond' FOR CURVED BELT ONLY(edited)).

I just picture that now

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it allow to predict each cases

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It is logical and has always been really, it wasn't intuitive for me when i was outside of the game but it has became now !

Edit: OP:

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[SkiCarver]

mmmPI, I think you may be on to something there! good post.

[mrvn]

I don't think that explains anything at all.

With the belt going towards or from the inserter as well as in curved situation the furthest diamond is centered on the belt with both left and right side taking 50% of the diamond. How does that explain which side the inserter picks?

[mmmPI]

I don't think that explains anything at all.

With the belt going towards or from the inserter as well as in curved situation the furthest diamond is centered on the belt with both left and right side taking 50% of the diamond. How does that explain which side the inserter picks?

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Look at the black lanes, they are meant to represent the sides of the belts.
They grey lanes tells which quarter of the diamond belongs to which lane.

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If you only consider Red dropping location, it IS on the middle of the belt. with that 50%50%.

It is the 'furthest diamond', orange is the 'front diamond' if we care about belt direction.

Now if you look at the Blue dropping location, It can only be the bottom diamond.

You can then drawn the black lane from the blue dropping point horizontaly towards the west. 100% of the time no guess.

This means you are sure the blue dropping location belong to the bottom side of the belt.

There is only the other side left for the Red dropping location to belong to the top side of the belt.

You can draw all black lane = you can guess the side for sure, because there is one situation that makes no doubt and draw the others from there.



Another way to understand what i say would be to draw the red line like in the second pic

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It visually explain which inserter drop AFTER the turn and which drop BEFORE. 50% of them every time.

The 1V3 situation Qom explains is not showing with red inserters because it comes from the fact that there is less room to place the inserter on the inner side when they are not long handed.

The underground belt prevent you from using non- long handed inserter to drop directly on the cuved belt whose direction before turning would be to go away from the inserter ( the situation mrvn refers to i think by saying "from" , the "toward" part is dealt with by short inserters).

Edit: so regular and well proportionate it would be a shame not to share.

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[coppercoil]

In L3 if we consider the 'right' side from the belt perspective before the turn, we are supposed to consider it's a horizontal belt going to the west. It then becomes a vertical belt going north.

In L3 the inserter seems to drop AFTER the turn. So as in L8.

L3 and L8 acts like perpendicular using “far side” rule. It's harder to recognize when there are several curved segments joined together with no explicit horizontal/vertical segments in between. But they are here. I recommend to thicken the belts and examine their connection areas.

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[mmmPI]

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[coppercoil]

According my explanation, it doesn't matter before or after droppoint the turn starts. The only important thing - find out where perpendicular part is, and then apply "far side". I failed to understand diamond explanation, maybe I just haven't tried enough . I like my explanation, it works.

[mmmPI]

According my explanation, it doesn't matter before or after droppoint the turn starts. The only important thing - find out where perpendicular part is, and then apply "far side". I failed to understand diamond explanation, maybe I just haven't tried enough . I like my explanation, it works.

True i realised now i made the assumption your explanation needed this before/past thing but your reasoning is based on 'locating the horizontal part' + ' apply far side' , and so you do not need to care at all about, sometimes the horizontal part happens to be before the turn , sometimes after ( which diamon explain)

i also like your explanation because you don't have to mentally picture all side to find the good one like in my thing when you not used to it, maybe it would help predicting the rotation direction of the inserter, because it shows a shorter path between clockwise and counter clockwise contrary to mine, but the diamond explanation may allow you to predict better in which precise order the item will be placed on the belt by perpendicular inserter that insert on the same curved belt at the same time.

[Da8ap]

Hi guys,

Shouldn't the orientation of the inserter determined the position of the item and not the belt direction?

Screenshot from 2019-06-29 12-18-46.png (948.16 KiB) Viewed 5657 times

(all inserters are outputting into the belts)

[Loewchen]

The inserter decides the drop location, the belt decides what this results to.

[mmmPI]

You could see that thread, i was unsure of the logic at first, but i have been convinced since then.
viewtopic.php?t=71523&p=433858

[Da8ap]

I don’t think my point came across as I intended

I’m not questioning if the insertor should place the item up, down, left or right as long as its consistent. All I’m saying Is that the location on the belt should be determined by the insertor not the belt

So if I place a left to right insertor and it places the item at the bottom of the belt (right in relation to the insertor) then a right to left insertor should place the item to the top of the belt (right in relation to the insertor)

To me the direction of the belt is irrelevant

[mmmPI]

I realised the topic was 4 pages long and i should have link to more precise post, or maybe i didn't get your point.

I’m not questioning if the insertor should place the item up, down, left or right as long as its consistent. All I’m saying Is that the location on the belt should be determined by the insertor not the belt

That's what buggued me too, that seemed illogical to me, but in the "ideal" situation the inserter makes a 180° perfect rotation and place the item just in the middle. It then appear like a necessity to "choose" arbitrarily one side over the other, in the game it is "the right side OF THE BELT".

So if I place a left to right insertor and it places the item at the bottom of the belt (right in relation to the insertor) then a right to left insertor should place the item to the top of the belt (right in relation to the insertor)

This is not how the game behave , instead for it the two situation you present are the same situation but rotated.

If you were to switch the bottom lane of belt that goes from left to right, to the opposite, then the inserter would "adapt" and put it on the other side, the new "right side of the belt", the logic is different.

The actual "logic" allow you to rotate things without breaking their relative interaction, but not mirroring them, this is how i understand the choice of this logic over the other one.

maybe this is better than my explanation even though it was made for curved belt. The underground belt where the military science is dropped is what to look at in this context.

[Da8ap]

Thank you for the replay

I understand how the game behaves and I didn’t post this as me asking for help .. I was trying to start a conversation about this topic (that why i posted this in the general discussion forum)

Im just trying to make the point that the orientation of the insertor should be the deciding factor as It makes more sense to me and it give me (the player) more control

[mmmPI]

Im just trying to make the point that the orientation of the insertor should be the deciding factor as It makes more sense to me and it give me (the player) more control

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Bobingabout/bobinserters Now you have total control !

I do agree that it COULD have been the decider factor, i'm not sure it SHOULD be, more control but less easy to use.

[Koub]

[Koub] On a second thought, I'm merging both topics : they are clearly about the same subject, and whoever is interested in the latter will be interested with the former.

[FuryoftheStars]

Im just trying to make the point that the orientation of the insertor should be the deciding factor as It makes more sense to me and it give me (the player) more control

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Bobingabout/bobinserters Now you have total control !

I do agree that it COULD have been the decider factor, i'm not sure it SHOULD be, more control but less easy to use.

I've been using this one: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Side Inserters

[sosofly]

i think the inserter still drop the item to the farthest position when on curved belt ,it is ok
but...
the strangest thing is ..

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[coppercoil]

i think the inserter still drop the item to the farthest position when on curved belt ,it is ok
but...
the strangest thing is ..

Far side rule applies to perpendicular and curved belts. There is another case: parallel belt. That rule sounds different: right side regarding belt direction.

[netmand]

Now that splitters are configurable I wish inserters could be configured too. I'm not going to call the way it places items on the belt logical or illogical. However, to me it does seem consistent, being that it always places the item furthest away, and on the right-side when there is no furthest away.