Transport belts
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Transport belts are used to transport items from one place to another. The advantages of transport belts lie in the fact that they don't use any power and are very easy to set up. There are three types of transport belts, each with their own properties.
Types
| Type | Max. throughput (Items per game-second) | Speed (Tiles per game-second) | Max. density (Items per tile) | Required technologies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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13.333 | 1.875 | 7.1111 | none |
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26.667 | 3.750 | 7.1111 | Logistics 2 (research) |
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40.000 | 5.625 | 7.1111 | Logistics 3 (research) |
*experimental value: See Transport belt experiments for more detailed information.
Placement
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While conveyor belts can be placed in a line by clicking and dragging the mouse, it is often easier to hold the mouse down and move your character. Conveyor belts can be rotated after being placed by hovering over them with an empty hand and pressing "r", or by building over them with another conveyor belt. Conveyor belts can also be upgraded in this manner, by placing the another belt over top of it.
Belt Management
Merging and un-merging
Belts have two lanes that can be used for transporting. This allows for either a double flow of one material, or with some careful setup, transporting two different materials on the same belt. Mixed belts can be beneficial for smelting ore, or producing items with a lot of ingredients such as the science pack 3. Un-merging a mixed belt is fairly easy too, since an underground belt will block half of your a belt. So there is no reason to be afraid of mixed belts at all.
Balancing the belts
Sometimes it becomes necessary to rebalance a belt, so that the number of items on either side is equal. This can also be applied to balancing items between multiple belts. As a general rule, the more belts that need to be balanced, the more complicated the methods.
Below are two designs for balancing a single belt. The left design only rebalances equally if one side of the belt is empty while the right version always balances equally.
Speed, Density and Throughput: About finding the bottlenecks
Maximizing the throughput is important, since it will keep your belts efficient. Therefore we need to introduce some definitions:
- Speed
- How fast does a belt move.
- Density
- How tight are the items put on the belts.
- Throughput
- This is speed * density. It describes how many items pass by in a given time.
So there are two opportunities to enhance the throughput:
- More density
- Sometimes items have little spaces next to each other that aren't big enough for other items to fit in. In this case reordering the items can still increase the density. This can be done by temporary increasing the belt speed on a single tile or by merging 2 lanes with an inserter.
- More speed
- In case your belts already are at maximum density you can still upgrade your speed with better belts. But first you have to find the bottleneck.
The bottleneck can be seen quite easy, if there is a part of a belt, where the items sometimes stop or don't move (or don't move fast) at maximum density and suddenly they come to a point, where this 'stop and go' releases itself and they run free and are not so tight on the belt. This is in most cases the exact place, where you need to optimize your belts.
Moving other Entities: About highways, advanced defenses and moving boxes
Moving fast can be essential to defend alien attacks in time. Running on a belt will increase or decrease the movement speed of the player accordingly to the belts speed. That is why building a belt towards your defenses can be beneficial.
However, the player is not the only unit that can be moved by transport belts. Also, biters and spitters can be moved. This can be abused to improve your defense. Firstly biters will have a harder time to reach your walls when placing express transport belt in front of them. Secondly spitters can be moved closer to your walls. That way more turrets can attack a single spitter at once.
Another useful usage are cars on transport belts. Cars have an inventory and can be filled by inserters. They can be used as moving boxes on belt. This has several advantages: Firstly the throughput of the belt-car-boxes is amazingly high, secondly the inserter stack size bonus does apply here and make inserters more effective.
