Feeding from a box

[Dramba]

So I have figured that if you drop something in front of a building input, it will start pulling from that stack... If you drop on the lane it will move the whole stack without splitting it until the stack reaches the end of the lane and if there is an input at the end, it will start pulling. The stack reaching the end of the lane doesn't merge with another stack that is already there.
All that is to ask a simple question - WHY A BOX CAN'T FEED A LANE? This is such an easy thing to do that it makes me think it was an intended limitation?
Any thoughts?

[Booyah]

It feels like an intended limitation, I think you're right. It probably broke the progression or something along those lines.

[Knofbath]

The Dispensing chest seems intended to feed lanes. But I find Dispensing Chests nearly useless most of the time, because they only hold 1 stack, and don't pull from belts (or regular Chests) automatically. Being able to pull from belts/chests would turn them into a pseudo-inserter, which would allow more consistent automation.

And you can't trust pushers to feed them, because they stall if items on the belt stop moving.

[Dramba]

Originally posted by Knofbath:

The Dispensing chest seems intended to feed lanes. But I find Dispensing Chests nearly useless most of the time, because they only hold 1 stack, and don't pull from belts (or regular Chests) automatically. Being able to pull from belts/chests would turn them into a pseudo-inserter, which would allow more consistent automation.

And you can't trust pushers to feed them, because they stall if items on the belt stop moving.

One stack of 25, not even 99... Why 25??? Why not a few stacks??? So many questions and so few answers...
Sad...

[Isto-Stephen]

A couple of notes here
1. Your criticisms are certainly valid. When you progress further into the game, you get an "iron dispense chest" that has a much bigger stack size, but if players are frustrated, they're frustrated. And that's on us.

2. This was intended. we were thinking of having the dispense chest be the option. But clearly this isn't fun. We'll be exploring ideas of adjusting things (maybe pushbacks push items out of chests??) The team and I are going to meet tomorrow and figure out a better option

3. The splitters not working when the belt stops moving is an oversight by us. We are committed to fixing this and to make them more useful.

[mruuh]

The dispenser chests only seem useful for when you need the resource flow to be clockwork-like consistent, and there is only one use case in the game for that - feeding the power generator. All other factories, smelters, planters, what have you, can happily wait a bit if their inputs aren't always lined up, so dispenser chests only slow things down without any real benefit.

Perhaps if the chests had a "no delay" mode, where they'd just spit their contents out as quickly as possible, the iron ones could be useful in latter supply pod waves, to feed a grav-pipe line going around a few stun towers for a short time.

[Dramba]

Originally posted by Isto-Stephen:

A couple of notes here
2. This was intended. we were thinking of having the dispense chest be the option. But clearly this isn't fun. We'll be exploring ideas of adjusting things (maybe pushbacks push items out of chests??) The team and I are going to meet tomorrow and figure out a better option

Thank you for the clarification, now I know this is how it is supposed to be ;). I am not very clear on what is the idea behind that but "isn't fun" is enough for me ;)
I personally always looking for things like "shoot and forget" - like you put the lane, put the box at the end and while you setting up everything that this lane will feed, the box gathers stuff and when you are done, you just release what has been collected and watch the whole thing works. And this way you can make buffers that stabilise flow in pretty much everything.
Why it isn't fun, I can't get, but this is your design, so you the boss ;)
The game is fun regardless.
Thank you for your efforts!