Factorio Forums

There are a few things about the way items are carried by transport belts that bother me.

1. Whenever there's a turn, the inside lane can't proceed in full density. You get only a half-dense lane after the turn. If this is a standard belt you can fix this by placing a fast belt in the corner, but this is harder to do if the belt is already fast, and as a matter of principle I think a belt should be able to carry items at full density, even if there are turns.

2. There are sometimes jams, a situation where movement is completely blocked. This can happen when you change the transport belt layout and items are stranded in odd places. It can also happen when inserters try to place items where there is a turn in the belt.

3. When transport belts are merged at a crossing, the merged lane is generally not fully dense. For example, if the destination lane is already half-dense, items from the side belt won't be able to squeeze in at all. (Also solvable with a fast belt at the crossing.)

Are there plans to change any of this? Ideally you wouldn't have to worry too much about these things - items on the belt will simply find their way to flow continuously and at full density.

These limitations seem natural to the belt properties and I learned to live with them.
@high-speed bends - if we get a faster versions of the splitter, you would be able to split the belt before the turn into two and merge it back after it.
If you already have the superfast express belts on the line, cost of that would be likely minor

shouldnt this be in sugestions or bug reports?

MF- wrote:These limitations seem natural to the belt properties and I learned to live with them.
@high-speed bends - if we get a faster versions of the splitter, you would be able to split the belt before the turn into two and merge it back after it.
If you already have the superfast express belts on the line, cost of that would be likely minor

Splitters already work at the speed of express transport belts. They have to be to be usable for splitting fast lines. In fact you could abuse them as a poor man's express line by putting them in a long row, it's cheaper than etb and lower-tech (but is 2 tiles wide).
Edit: I was wrong, that would only help for the speed of covering a distance, but not for increasing density.

Anyway, using splitters to facilitate a turn is difficult because of my point #3 in the OP, merging the lines together isn't perfect.

ficolas wrote:shouldnt this be in sugestions or bug reports?

I wasn't sure if it is a help request, a bug report or a feature suggestion, so I just put it in general.