Did circular belts always halt on full load?

[freeafrica]

I haven't played in a while and I stumbled upon something weird (for me at least). When I just build a simple circular belt, entities stop moving if the belt gets to fully loaded state.

Reproduce:
1. build a simple circular belt (no beg, no end, as they are connected together forming a circle)
2. fully load it from a chest

Was it always behaving like this? I mean even though it's full, I don't understand why should the movement of items on the belt stop (from game-design aspect). I wanna build a rotating nutrient/spoilage belt.

[Rseding91]

Yes. They stop because the way belt movement works is: go to the front of the belt and try to move the items forward. In a loop on a full belt they can’t move forward because there are items in the way (the items on the back of the belt) and so it can’t do anything and stops trying to do anything until some item is removed.

[kpreid]

The classic solution to this problem for “sushi belts” is to count the items on the belt and use circuit-controlled inserters to only add more if the item count is under a limit.

If you like purely belt-based solutions or want an easy mixed quality/trash belt, you can put a faster belt somewhere in the loop:

Screenshot 2025-07-17 at 22.22.53.png (221.85 KiB) Viewed 212 times

As long as items are only loaded onto onto belt segments with speed less than the maximum speed in the loop, there will always be gaps in the higher speed section, allowing items to continue circulating.

[Panzerknacker]

To get back to OP's question: Did circular belts always halt on full load?

I don't think so. At least I remember countless situations where the items would keep circulating even is the belt was completely filled. I also remember this behavior changing at a certain point. This was 4 years ago or something tho. And maybe it was only the case with really big loops.

[Rseding91]

To get back to OP's question: Did circular belts always halt on full load?

I don't think so. At least I remember countless situations where the items would keep circulating even is the belt was completely filled. I also remember this behavior changing at a certain point. This was 4 years ago or something tho. And maybe it was only the case with really big loops.

As far as I remember (having worked on Factorio for 10 years now) they have always stopped moving when 100% full. I’d welcome being proved wrong though - you can download older versions of the game from the website and test.