TL;DR
Implement true flipping behavior for inserters and buildings with a direct output to allow flipping them without risk of breaking functionality.What?
Allow inserters and buildings with a direct output (mining drills, recyclers etc.) to choose whether they drop items on the left or right side (not close-far, just left-right) so that they can be correctly mirrored when flipped.By default, the current behavior can be preserved, whereas the override may only get auto-enabled and configured appropriately when placing a larger selection which includes a building that drops items on a belt facing towards or away from it which does not terminate in the side of another belt.
Alternatively
If a functionality change is not deemed appropriate, add auto-detection with some sort of warning for the problematic setups, to inform the player that they may unexpectedly break.Why?
The current behavior causes certain setups to break when flipped, which means that the flipping operation is not fully reliable. As far as I've found, this is the only such case in the game - all other cases where a configuration cannot preserve its behavior with a perfectly mirrored layout when flipped seem to be blocked, e.g. blueprints with train stops can't be flipped.A "flipped" inserter or output of a building is effectively unchanged or rotated 180°, which means that flipping a blueprint which relies on dropping items on a specific side of a belt oriented towards or away the inserter or building doesn't correctly switch the side on which the items are dropped, breaking the setup.
- A very simple setup that breaks when flipped.
- 05-29-2026, 11-13-03.png (73.44 KiB) Viewed 302 times
