Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

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Should inserters always drop on the farthest right quadrant of a belt - including a curved belt?

The inserter behaviour is correct and logical - leave it alone.
33
43%
The Inserter behaviour seems illogical and should be changed.
29
38%
The Inserter behaviour is illogical, but it adds character to the game and should be left alone.
15
19%
 
Total votes: 77

mmmPI
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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by mmmPI »

anothertry.jpg
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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
diamondtheory.jpg
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it allow to predict each cases
feelconfirmed.jpg
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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:
oriquest.jpg
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Last edited by mmmPI on Mon Jun 17, 2019 4:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by SkiCarver »

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

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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by 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?

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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by mmmPI »

mrvn wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 2:16 pm
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?
diamond lane2.jpg
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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.

oriquest.jpg
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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
anothertry.jpg
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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.
diamondextended2.jpg
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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by coppercoil »

mmmPI wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 3:09 am
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.
CurvedL8.png
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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by mmmPI »

CurvedL82.jpg
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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by 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.

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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by mmmPI »

coppercoil wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 8:26 pm
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.

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Inserters orientation makes no sence to me

Post by 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
Screenshot from 2019-06-29 12-18-46.png (948.16 KiB) Viewed 4783 times
(all inserters are outputting into the belts)

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Re: Inserters orientation makes no sence to me

Post by Loewchen »

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

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Re: Inserters orientation makes no sence to me

Post by 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

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Re: Inserters orientation makes no sence to me

Post by 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

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Re: Inserters orientation makes no sence to me

Post by 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.
Da8ap wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 12:36 pm
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".
Da8ap wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 12:36 pm
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.

Image

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Re: Inserters orientation makes no sence to me

Post by 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🤓

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Re: Inserters orientation makes no sence to me

Post by mmmPI »

Da8ap wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 3:07 pm
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.

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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by 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.
Koub - Please consider English is not my native language.

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Re: Inserters orientation makes no sence to me

Post by FuryoftheStars »

mmmPI wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 5:48 pm
Da8ap wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 3:07 pm
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
My Mods: Classic Factorio Basic Oil Processing | Sulfur Production from Oils | Wood to Oil Processing | Infinite Resources - Normal Yield | Tree Saplings (Redux) | Alien Biomes Tweaked | Restrictions on Artificial Tiles

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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by 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 ..
未标题-55.jpg
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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by coppercoil »

sosofly wrote:
Fri Jul 19, 2019 8:04 am
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.

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Re: Question - Is Inserter item drop position intuitive?

Post by 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.

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