Balancer (like splitter)
Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2016 4:53 am
I usually keep 2-lane bus for iron and copper and when something forks, I add a splitter right after so items can be recombined if one of belts runs dry, but it does not solve the problem completely, it mostly rebalances things only when one of belts is full, only then stuff starts getting to the other lane. I know there are balancer constructs, but they are quite large to keep them within bus system and don't scale well to 3 or 4 parallel belts (case - output of mines before ore gets to train crates). What I propose is a balancer belt item that is 1x1 tiles in size and can be put in parallel to form 2x1, 3x1, 4x1 rebalancing structures. What it does - whenever an item arrives at any of inputs, it is dropped in round-robin fashion to outputs. Left and right lanes are treated together, that is - putting such 1x1 tile balancer will automatically equally fill both lanes when stuff arives only at left side for example (current solution via splitter is lane-sensitive or too large, and does not balance well when belt is not 100% full). It's discussable if a balancer required that treats left/right lanes separately, but I think it's not for its main purpose is to rebalance stuff that arrives on several parallel belts - i.e. same items on both sides.
P.S: I also think it would be nice for splitter to be a 1x1 item so you can obtain 3x1 splitter with its splitter logics by putting several such pieces together in parallel.
P.S: I also think it would be nice for splitter to be a 1x1 item so you can obtain 3x1 splitter with its splitter logics by putting several such pieces together in parallel.