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Why do inserters prefer the far side of the belt instead of the near side? Is it aesthetic? A technical reason?

I am fine with how they work, I've just been wondering this for a while.

If you watch inserters taking items from a belt that's using both lanes, you'll see that an inserter takes a little longer to grab an item from the near side of the belt. This is because it needs to retract a little to reach those items.

Now, I don't know if they were designed that way for a reason, but with the way inserters currently operate, it's faster for them to take and place on the far sides of belts.

Nemoricus wrote:If you watch inserters taking items from a belt that's using both lanes, you'll see that an inserter takes a little longer to grab an item from the near side of the belt. This is because it needs to retract a little to reach those items.

Now, I don't know if they were designed that way for a reason, but with the way inserters currently operate, it's faster for them to take and place on the far sides of belts.

This then makes it silly that they prefer to take from the near side of belts

Not really. The knowledge of this makes your factory more efficient.

huwp wrote:Why do inserters prefer the far side of the belt instead of the near side? Is it aesthetic? A technical reason?

I am fine with how they work, I've just been wondering this for a while.

Cuz...REASONS!

.....so why did the devs decide they would only place on the far side?

My guess is because you can easily place on the near side using a belt T-junction, so with the inserter as well you have a way of placing on either side

Nemoricus wrote:If you watch inserters taking items from a belt that's using both lanes, you'll see that an inserter takes a little longer to grab an item from the near side of the belt. This is because it needs to retract a little to reach those items.

I don't know if that used to be true, but it certainly isn't generally true as of the current version.

When an inserter wants to pick up an item, it basically grabs the first one its arc reaches, when picking continuously from a compressed, stalled belt as it rotates it first reaches the near lane, it picks up an item and rotates back - this results in less than 360 degrees (total) rotation, probably something like 330 degrees total, because it turns less distance it inserts faster when picking from a compressed, stalled belt - to be precise a fast inserter inserts 8.7% faster from the near side.
When the items on the belt are moving, the inserter will generally track the item, pick it up (unless it's too slow) and "windmill", it will turn a full 360 degrees. An inserter which windmills inserts at the standard speed, also in some cases they swing 180 degrees then back again. So usually these near side speed advantage only occurs if the items aren't moving (at least not moving when the inserter is ready to take one).
There can be exceptions to the rules on corners and belt terminuses, a belt terminus corner can even result in an extra-fast insert, but usually terminuses are treated as far side.

Here is the post where this was experimentally determined viewtopic.php?f=18&t=23409#p146902 in particular the section "nearside inserting vs farside inserting"

Reason probably is not faster/slower because we have mods with faster near inserters but performance.
Native length of inserter reach outside line so it need additional movement to grab items from near line (in past versions insertes had to stretch). Each additional movement is additional calculation and when you had big factory with thousands of inserters, it could drop few fps.
So making inserters taking from far line was more profitable then taking from near line. Of course it'a only my guess.

My bet is it was just a coin flip

British_Petroleum wrote:My guess is because you can easily place on the near side using a belt T-junction, so with the inserter as well you have a way of placing on either side

that makes some solid sense.
i'll go with that too.