Conveyor Receptacle versus Chute

[Dribbs]

Is there any situation where a conveyor receptacle is better than just a simple chute? Wherever I have an auto-sweeper nearby, it can pick up from the floor underneath the chute just as easily as from a receptacle. And the chute does not need power.

So it leaves me wondering what is the point of the conveyor receptacle?

[Hedning]

The receptacle also does not need power, and it will stop and back up the conveyor when it is not needed.

Lets say you are shipping coal to two locations where the first needs 30% and the second 70%, if you just split and add a chute in each location they would get 50% each. If instead you use receptacles once the first is full the coal will start to back up and soon all of the excess coal will go to the second location.

[Dribbs]

Thanks for the reply. I guess I haven't encountered a need for either of those situations yet. I'm happy for the coal from my ranches to be dropped from a chute and picked up by the auto-sweeper.

[Hedning]

It's not about coal. It's about not shipping things that doesn't need to be shipped.

[Aranador]

You might be able use them for auto-omlettes. I have not really played around with them, but their ability to be nailed to the ceiling may also help when in tight spaces.

[Strygald]

Simply, the conveyor receptacle was added to the game much earlier; the chute was added much later.

No real need to use receptacles anymore, apart from a few specialized applications. in Hedning's example you could just stick 2 chutes at one location and 1 chute at the other location for a 66% / 34% split and neither would ever back up... although you'd have to get creative with the conveyor lines as they probably behave the same way pipes do.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Strygald:

No real need to use receptacles anymore, apart from a few specialized applications.

I disagree. Standard for me is still to use receptacles, because why should I ship things to a location just to have it pile up on the floor? Why would you ship 25kg/s if you are just using 5kg/s? Moving rock for no reason sounds like something a prison would have as punishment for its inmates.

Originally posted by Strygald:

in Hedning's example you could just stick 2 chutes at one location and 1 chute at the other location for a 66% / 34% split and neither would ever back up... although you'd have to get creative with the conveyor lines as they probably behave the same way pipes do.

But why get creative when you can just have both locations receive what they need and not more? What if the ratios change, like if you added another fertilizer synthesizer and now use twice as much dirt in that location, how would you rebalance that with sending dirt to your sleet wheet farm? Having the machines pull what they need is just better with no downsides.

[Angpaur]

Another difference between chute and receptacle is that after chute drops something then dupes can pick it up. By using receptacle you can have more control by just disallowing manual grabbing from it. Can be useful to make some builds viable or just simplier.

[Strygald]

Originally posted by Angpaur:

Another difference between chute and receptacle is that after chute drops something then dupes can pick it up. By using receptacle you can have more control by just disallowing manual grabbing from it. Can be useful to make some builds viable or just simplier.

You only need a locked door to prevent dupes accessing items below a chute, also autosweepers can grab stuff behind a locked pneumatic door.

[Angpaur]

I don't think you can convience anyone that using doors is less complicated than just setting receptacle to be not manual. The sole fact that you need 2 elements(door and chute) makes it more complicated.

Of course you can do almost everything in this game in some different manner, but this is why I wrote that receptacle can be simplier to use. It doesn't mean it will be always better. Every build needs to be evaluated separately, but here we are discussing why potentially we could use receptacle over the chute and I gave a one reason.

[Strygald]

Well, it's not a matter of complexity but effectiveness... the conveyor receptacle can only hold 100kg of materials(very limited in most cases), whereas an infinite amount of material can be dumped out of a chute. If someone wants to collect all of a material lying around the map eg* 200 tons of coal, they can either use a whole bunch of storage compactors and conveyor receptacles or just use one chute sectioned off with pneumatic door(s)

[Bokonon]

Originally posted by Strygald:

Well, it's not a matter of complexity but effectiveness... the conveyor receptacle can only hold 100kg of materials(very limited in most cases), whereas an infinite amount of material can be dumped out of a chute. If someone wants to collect all of a material lying around the map eg* 200 tons of coal, they can either use a whole bunch of storage compactors and conveyor receptacles or just use one chute sectioned off with pneumatic door(s)

Hedning and Angpaur are actually answering OP's original question ... The whole point of this thread is why and when you would use the receptacle, they're just giving the asked for examples.

There's room in the game for using both ... Neither has said to only ever use the receptacle, they're showing why you might want to in some cases. In the case you describe (clean up 200t of coal) I don't think either would choose to use a receptacle.

[Hedning]

To clean the map I use dupes and dispensers. Building a whole network for a one time event seems like a waste of time. Also conveyors still have a limit of 20kg/s.

I use chutes too, I use them for dumping food into food storage, eggs into the drowning chamber and feeding regolith to the shove voles.