Factorio Forums

This is a thread of five suggestions about smart splitters joined together.
Why did we do this?

- There are nearly every month a new post about smart splitters.
- See post from slpwnd (developer) down, why there is nearly no chance, that they will be implemented.
- See summary by daniel34 : viewtopic.php?f=6&t=518&start=20#p170427
- See viewtopic.php?f=80&t=24061 New Types of Belts (NOT!)

- See https://wiki.factorio.com/Balancers
-- ßilk


having a smart splitter which auto sorts items with personal settings would be great, and it with it like that you could choose if it keeps its left/right orientation, or just comes out evenly

so it'd have a selection box like with smart inserters, on top would just be two boxes (one for left conveyor and one for right) and below those would be six boxes, one fore each section of a conveyor (left right center)

to just have all copper out one side and coal out another, without remembering left/right you put copper on the top left box and coal on the top right.
to have iron on one side of the lane, copper on the other and coal on the second lane you'd select iron on the first from bottom left, copper on third from bottom left and coal on top right, when no boxes are selected then the smart splitter will function just like a regular one

You know how we have smart inverters for filtering products

Can we dev smart splitters so we can have multiple products going down 1 belt
The split to 2 belts
And filter
So copper goes down 1 belt and iron down the second

With the ability for multiple filtering and belt selection
E.g.

8 items enter the factory from a train station
Iron ore
copper ore
Iron plate
Copper bar
Steel
Copper cable
Stone
Oil barrels

Tier 1 splitter
To left Split to right
Iron ore. Stone
Iron plate Oil barrels
Steel Copper cable
Copper ore. Copper bar

Then split down from 4 items on a belt to 2
And finally split to 8 belts with 1 item on the belt


Would be ideal for unloading at train stationes were you can filter and split into provider lines
And make trains stationes easier to build without drones or massive inserted fields of smart inverters filtering

Id like to see more splitter style devices, maybe a merger one that takes multiple belts in and only outputs 1 belt. 2->1 3->1 and 4-> mergers. Alongside the filter type.

it can be achieved with smart inserter.

splitters now can also merge.

This is is numbers 4 (or so?) which requests that splitter have filter function since January.

We must force the players to use more space. With more space between the parts of the factories, there is no need to built condensed factories. No condensed factories, no need to spare space with stupid splitter functions, which can be built with a combination of other things.

I would like to have small splitter to split items from one side of the belt to both sides.
I know that i can use normal splitters for that but it's not elegant and take some space, especially in compact factories.

So we have had quite a five "Splitter suggestion threads" recently. Here is our view on the problem:

- We are happy with the splitter as it is and don't intend to change it.
- When coming up with the splitter design we have considered a "small splitter" (1 x 1 element with outputs in the sides). However there were a lot of technical problems with visualization and bounding boxes.
- The current splitter is actually multifunctional (can be used as a joiner as well or as a "fast shift element")
- Making the splitter "adjustable" would go against philosophy of Factorio when you are supposed to work out your solution from simple components. Different ratios can be achieved by cascading and recombining splitters. Yes, sometimes it is a lot of work, but that is part of the game. So far we feel that "precise splitting" is not used enough to warrant adding other functionality.

I am sure that this has been suggested before, I appoligise to ssilk if it has

Simply, a spliter in which you can configure it to split certain items to the left, and others to the right. For some reason it has always bothered me that inserters were the only smart thing in the game

This has been proposed so many times, the developers already answered it.
This is their response:

If modding wasn't so limited, we could make something like this without bothering them about it.

Zeblote wrote:If modding wasn't so limited, we could make something like this without bothering them about it.

Well. I saw somewhere this mod. Unfortunately as long as I remember it was for 0.11 and wasn't updated to 0.12.

hitzu wrote:

Zeblote wrote:If modding wasn't so limited, we could make something like this without bothering them about it.

Well. I saw somewhere this mod. Unfortunately as long as I remember it was for 0.11 and wasn't updated to 0.12.

It can't be done efficiently with a mod right now. We would need much more access to engine methods and probably also a faster lua, like luajit.

How would it be with this mod: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 20&t=16006

???

ssilk wrote:How would it be with this mod: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 20&t=16006

That is how I envision smart spliters being, just with working graphics.

These are basically Smart Inserters but a little bit more compact.
I like this idea.

Could We Have a Smart Splitter For Splitting Certain Items onto one belt and other Items to another belt. Should Work in a similar way as Smart Inserters.

Was already suggested many times. I joined it with some former topic.

Same reasons why this is not such a good idea here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23415#p147504


I think there is also a mod.

Dakkanor wrote:having a smart splitter which auto sorts items with personal settings would be great, and it with it like that you could choose if it keeps its left/right orientation, or just comes out evenly

so it'd have a selection box like with smart inserters, on top would just be two boxes (one for left conveyor and one for right) and below those would be six boxes, one fore each section of a conveyor (left right center)

to just have all copper out one side and coal out another, without remembering left/right you put copper on the top left box and coal on the top right.
to have iron on one side of the lane, copper on the other and coal on the second lane you'd select iron on the first from bottom left, copper on third from bottom left and coal on top right, when no boxes are selected then the smart splitter will function just like a regular one

Yeah It's because there's this problems when you have 2 different items on one belt and you need to spilt them into 2 belts because you only put them onto one belt temporarily before these two items need to go somewhere else separately to do two different tasks but using smart inserters will not 100% split them up and so we need a smart splitter in my opinion. P.s Smart Inserters for this task could be messy if you trying to 100% split them up. And using buffer chest with the smart inserters will be very inefficient since some resources need to be high in demand.

ssilk wrote:Was already suggested many times. I joined it with some former topic.

Same reasons why this is not such a good idea here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23415#p147504


I think there is also a mod.

I understand but when I read the thread you said the a new splitter / belt system would make the system easier so what if the only way to get the smart splitter is that you need ether or both blue science or Alien Science to be obtained and is like one of the end game researches / Items.

Oblivifrek wrote:Could We Have a Smart Splitter For Splitting Certain Items onto one belt and other Items to another belt. Should Work in a similar way as Smart Inserters.

Why not prevent items from being mixed first place ?