Factorio Forums

Before I report this, I first want to make sure I'm not "seeing things".

I am under the impression that, when you place an underground belt blueprint, the direction depends on the order the parts are placed, and not on the order of the blueprint. Namely, the first end point place becomes the entrance, even if it's the exit in the blueprint.

Anyone else seeing this or am I just hallucinating?

The direction of underground belt is not dependant on the order you place the items, only the initial direction is. You can reverse the direction of any placed underground belt by pressing "R" (the rotate key) while having your cursor over it.

When they are placed using blueprints the direction is saved in the ghost entity so that when it is created, it goes is the correct direction.

If I have misunderstood the issue please let me know.

Okay, testing time. Thanks for assuming I'm an idiot. Maybe I deserve it (part of me is convinced I *always* deserve condescension).

What I *obviously* (if you don't assume stupidity/lack of knowledge) mean is that while I'm pretty sure (but not 100%) I place blueprints with belts in the *correct* direction, but the belt ends up going in the *opposite* direction.

One test I already did was place just *one* side of the belt (AS A GHOST!), and place the *other* ghost when the first has been installed by a bot. Direction was correct in 3/3. Not a huge sample size, I know.

If you can find an instance of underground belts being placed so that the direction is not the same as the one in your blueprint then post the save. Otherwise (as it is what I do alll the time) it's a case of you blueprinting things that have not been tested/aren't running and you just assume that everything is arround the correct way.

I'm sorry if it came across that I thought you are stupid, but I went through the basics mechanics because many people are unaware of some of the things you can do in the game. I have seen 4 people lift up their underground belt because they built it in the wrong order. Because they had "tested" rotate with underground belt and it appeared not to move (only the arrows on the top of it change direction, so it's an easy thing to miss), they assumed that only the order of placement dictated the direction and never thought about it again.

I have placed hundreds, if not thousands, of blueprints with undergrounds in them -- mainly balancer setups, and have never seen this issue.

Blueprints are fine, it's manually placing a ghost that is the problem. When you place a ghost of one underground belt and then another, the order of placement by the robots will decide which way the underground belt goes. Blueprints instead work just fine.

Nova wrote:Blueprints are fine, it's manually placing a ghost that is the problem. When you place a ghost of one underground belt and then another, the order of placement by the robots will decide which way the underground belt goes. Blueprints instead work just fine.

Underground pipes too I think. At least in that they don't swap direction when you ghost-place last I checked.
not 100% sure admittedly.

Nova wrote:When you place a ghost of one underground belt and then another, the order of placement by the robots will decide which way the underground belt goes

I agree, that is a pain in the neck.

Ranakastrasz wrote:Underground pipes too I think. At least in that they don't swap direction when you ghost-place last I checked.
not 100% sure admittedly.

As underground pipes don't have a "flow direction" in the way the belts have a "movement direction", they don't suffer from this issue. The do (maybe used to?) however connect through other ghosts, so that you may end up with the incorrect fluid in your pipes due to the order of construction. I know underground belts were fixed, not sure about pipes.

Same thing also applies to inserters, they can pick up the incorrect item from a belt before the assembler/smelter has been placed.

Yeah, I was a bit... quick on the annoyance maybe. I just find it better to assume knowledge and intelligence until proven wrong than the other way around.

As to the "bug"... I haven't encountered it since my OP. Dang. Or good. For testing, I placed a ton of blueprinted belts... no misdirection. Placed reds and "upgrade planner"'d them to blue (which was my other suspicion). Nope.

Probably pilot error then. Sorry for the bother, though making sure that it wasn't (or finding it was) was the purpose of my OP.