Factorio Forums

[quote="Degraine"]Speaking as the person who wrote Slipstream Chests, I wholeheartedly approve of the loader, of course.

It'd be a relief to see a version of it that properly attaches to belts, and doesn't rely on a kludgy unique chest entity, but something compatible with every type of chest in the game. That makes sense to me. Making it a 2x1 entity throws a wrench into super tightly efficient layouts, and frankly I think it looks cool. The existing methods of bulk transporting items from chests to belts or belts to chests never really sat well with me. Inserters going from chests/belts to machines or back is fine, but plain old belt<->storage interaction deserves a bit of love, considering how robots tend to overshadow the most iconic game mechanics once they're introduced. You know what else makes belt balancer setups obsolete? Robots.

Make them consume some power, of course, but that's about all I'd do. The suggestions about constantly supplying them with lubricant or petro gas are ridiculous, nothing else in the game requires anything resembling that, not even those horrifically squealing cogs in all the assembling machines I've built.

I suggest the official name be 'chute'.[/quote]

[quote="Klonan"]To be honest,
I think people would be having the exact same reservations as if splitters were never in the game. You'd have to split using inserters! Its part of the fun of the game! Splitters just trivialise the logistic trouble of splitting a belt, which makes them overpowered, and they don't even need electricity? Splitters over powered, and they dont add anything we cant do already.

I've been thinking a long time about this, and i think i have figured out one possible solution.
I think it was someone in one of the earlier pages who came up with the idea,
But in essence its like this,
The loader is a 2x1 'chest' which automatically either inputs from a belt, or outputs onto a belt, I was thinking it could do so at half the belts speed
So for instance a 'Basic loader' unloads at half the speed of a basic belt.
I feel this balances it somewhat, as then you'd need two of them for a full belt, and a splitter, effectively making a full belt setup 3x2.
The loader wouldn't require any electricty, but to move items into/out of the loader, you'd need inserters.

So for buffer storage, you'd need input loader, inserter, output loader, which i think would look cool, and also involved the inserters as they are, and doesn't overlap in function.
For train unloading, you have a inserter direct from the wagon into the loader, which then puts onto the belt.

I feel this achieves all the goals of the loader, which not making it eclipse the inserter in function

In pics, combinator is loader
Example pictures
Simple buffer storage

Full belt buffer storage

Train unloading with loaders

Train loading

Another way of unloading

Simple storage for belt ends

Simple output buffer

Input and output buffers

Simple self-storage (like for gears for players)

Simple way of putting things on belts (like if you want to burn wood)

Bigger buffer storage

Sorting with smart inserters

Inline buffer storage

Another way of doing buffer storage

Some balanced input/output buffers

Any way these pics were just after like 10 mins of experimentation,
I can only imagine what people will figure out to do with these[/quote]

Limit slots to plate and gear -- Loader does proxy transfer too

Without slot filters, the loader would fill up with a material we dont want for assembly, leading to awkward production jams, with filters, we can use it for both input and output, and make sure production doesn't jam up from mixed belts

Some sort of circuit build

You can image some splitter belt utility or something with filtered slots