What is the advantage of pile sorters?

[Frogzulla]

I've been playing with the new pile sorters (fully upgraded) but I'm not seeing the benefit vs. the blue sorters. Can someone give me the low-down on how to use them properly? Thanks!

[cswiger]

They stack stuff onto the belts. Once fully upgraded via research, they work like several Auto Pilers combined. They aren't needed in most places, but are probably most useful for Hydrogen, Deut, and Oil recipes.

[JuryCyber]

Dude, those sorters are on a whole new lvl bro..... GG to the Devs, im speechless.

[Flexible Games]

They also can stack stuff on top of things already ON the belt to the max height you've researched. So fully maxed if they have a couple items in their hand and a stack of 2 rolls by, it'll drop 2 more on top. It's brilliant.

[davidcoley]

So i just redesigned a factory with the new pile sorters and it took a minute to get use to but it was neat.
I had a set of smelters that normally "ran dry" halfway through the pathing.. and so I took 3 MK III belts side by side, and put 2 4x Pile Sorters to the middle conveyor. This made a pile of 4. Put that through the Blue goo and threw it down this smelter. The whole line was fed and as you pile out of hte smelters they pile on top, so you get MUCH MUCH less stuck conveyors with a single item on them.
I haven't tried putting different items on the belt in a stack.

But very useful in their case, you just have to think a bit differently

[Blaarg]

I was confused on what the final upgrade was supposed to do, so I made a test. I tried using a single pile sorter out from a storage box onto a mk 3 belt, sending it through a traffic monitor, and then into another box with a second pile sorter.

With full upgrades, the throughput was 7200 items/min. A single one can completely fill up or drain a belt.

Clear applications are for fractionator setups or for long production lines that you don't want jamming, but also don't want to deal with putting the autopilers in. It could also be used in farms for the sorters pulling things out of the BAB.

[Nekogod]

The pile sorters are superior to mk3 sorters in every single way except power consumption, using double what a mk3 sorter does. A single wind turbine could only power 2 piler sorters. However because when fully upgraded a single piler sorter can saturate a belt at any distance you can use significantly fewer of them in several builds so overall you could see a power saving.

Here are the stats for each upgrade at a distance of 1, 2 and 3 grids. At base the piling sorter has better throughput than the mk3 sorter at any level at a distance of 1 and is about equivalent at distances 2 and 3 to a level 3 mk3 sorter.

A level 2 piler sorter is better than any mk3 sorter regardless of stacking upgrades and a level 6 piler sorter will output 7200 items a minute or 120 per second at any distance completely saturating a belt. This will neaten up a lot of builds where you needed multiple lines of an item being fed in due to sorter distance dampening your throughput. And makes topping up belts further down the line much easier for fractionator loops etc.

Mk3 Sorter - Maximum possible 1800/m 30/s

No sorter stacking
360/m 6/s
180/m 3/s
120/m 2/s

level 1
555/m 9.25/s
313/m 5.2/s
218/m 3.6/s

level 2
673/m 11.2/s
415/m 6.9/s
300/m 5/s

level 3
757/m 12.6/s
497/m 8.3/s
372/m 6.2/s

level 4
818/m 13.6/s
562/m 9.4/s
428/m 7.1/s

level 5
864/m 14.4/s
620/m 10.3/s
480/m 8/s

Piler Sorter

No upgrades - Maximum possible 1800/m 30/s
800/m 13.3/s
480/m 8/s
342/m 5.7/s

level 1 - Maximum possible 3600/m 60/s
1030/m 17.1/s
555/m 9.25/s
380/m 6.3/s

level 2 - Maximum possible 3600/m 60/s
1080/m 18/s
675/m 11.25/s
490/m 8.2/s

level 3 - Maximum possible 5400/m 90/s
1350/m 22.5/s
770/m 12.8/s
540/m 9/s

level 4 - Maximum possible 5400/m 90/s
1310/m 21.8/s
845/m 14.1/s
624/m 10.4/s

level 5 - Maximum possible 7200/m 120/s
1600/m 26.7/s
960/m 16/s
685/m 11.4/s

level 6 - Maximum possible 7200/m 120/s
7200/m 120/s
7200/m 120/s
7200/m 120/s

[JuryCyber]

Originally posted by HaddockA:

Originally posted by davidcoley:

So i just redesigned a factory with the new pile sorters and it took a minute to get use to but it was neat.
I had a set of smelters that normally "ran dry" halfway through the pathing.. and so I took 3 MK III belts side by side, and put 2 4x Pile Sorters to the middle conveyor. This made a pile of 4. Put that through the Blue goo and threw it down this smelter. The whole line was fed and as you pile out of hte smelters they pile on top, so you get MUCH MUCH less stuck conveyors with a single item on them.
I haven't tried putting different items on the belt in a stack.

But very useful in their case, you just have to think a bit differently

I'm still trying to figure out what the hell you just wrote..

bro stuck on load mode