For the love of god can we make stackable conveyor belt holders not painful to use?

[killjoy]

For the love of god can we make stackable conveyor belt holders not painful to use? Please just make it simple to place them on top of other belts. There's no reason they should be this tedious.

[Aven]

They aren't simple? Do you have soft clearance disabled? Otherwise, I don't understand the problem. Assuming you are building on foundations, with belts that always run in a cardinal direction, there is no issue placing a stackable conveyor pole over an existing 1m belt. The stackable base is 3m, and each subsequent stacked pole is 2m. This gives you uniform 2m belt stacking at 1m/3m/5m/~.

Now, if you are building in odd directions, over sloped belts, or on uneven terrain, then you can see placement issues arise, but this problem is entirely addressed with soft clearance and/or proper planning.

[MartyS]

This could be solved with an option to switch between standard and stackable support when you build a new belt. Find an unused key on the keyboard that could be used for that. If there is a way to do that now I haven't been able to find it.

[XLjedi]

Originally posted by Aven:

They aren't simple? Do you have soft clearance disabled? Otherwise, I don't understand the problem. Assuming you are building on foundations, with belts that always run in a cardinal direction, there is no issue placing a stackable conveyor pole over an existing 1m belt. The stackable base is 3m, and each subsequent stacked pole is 2m. This gives you uniform 2m belt stacking at 1m/3m/5m/~.

Now, if you are building in odd directions, over sloped belts, or on uneven terrain, then you can see placement issues arise, but this problem is entirely addressed with soft clearance and/or proper planning.

No, they are not simple; they are a PITA. I'm surprised you question it.

The default setting, whatever it is, does not allow placement of a stacker on top of a belt that is already there. It's kinda silly because they are specifically intended to be tools *for stacking belts* and they won't let you do it.

Just put a belt on any foundation and try to straddle it with a stacker. Now, if you are saying there is some default setting for "soft clearance" that has to be toggled one way or another... a new player wouldn't know this.

[Man's Best Friend]

Originally posted by XLjedi:

No, they are not simple; they are a PITA. I'm surprised you question it.

The default setting, whatever it is, does not allow placement of a stacker on top of a belt that is already there. It's kinda silly because they are specifically intended to be tools *for stacking belts* and they won't let you do it.

Just put a belt on any foundation and try to straddle it with a stacker. Now, if you are saying there is some default setting for "soft clearance" that has to be toggled one way or another... a new player wouldn't know this.

I'm not even aware of an option to turn off soft clearances, and I put stackable conveyors over normal ones just fine. Are you running any kind of mods? I'm with Aven in that I've never seen any kind of problem putting stackables over regulars. It just, works. So I'm not sure why you're having problems with them.

[NZ.Zero]

The standard ones should be stackable: problem solved.

[Vectorspace]

I think the OP means that you cannot easily place a stackable belt support on top of a ground level belt on non-stackable supports. So when you have an existing ground level belt, it isn't easy to place a stackable belt on top of it.

This isn't generally a problem I have because I rarely use ground level belts, only stacked at least 1 high - so I can easily walk through my factories without having to jump over or slide under belts.

I can place a stackable support over a ground level belt, but I need to aim at the empty ground beneath the belt, not at the belt itself, when placing the stackable support. I don't recall if that works when there is a non stackable support at the same location, as opposed to empty ground.

I agree it would be nice if stackable supports could snap to non stackable, and if you could choose if a belt will default to stackable or non stackable supports.

[Die Hand Gottes]

What is troublesome about it since U7 is even easy to lay them on ceilings.

[Fran Fyrhart]

Place conveyor stacks first then belts themselves maybe? If you're using this on a ground level belt it's obviously gonna be problematic to put down the stack on the belt because your cursor is gonna be using the belt as a reference point for placing the stack instead of the ground below it, so either you place the stack first then the belts and just reconstruct the belt to pass through the bottom of the stack or get really close to the belt and aim at the ground below it.

If you want to place a support stack under belt that's already above ground then you cannot. I have no idea when it would make sense to do that when the whole design of the stackable belt supports is that you build them first before the belts, not the other way around.

If your whole goal is to have a slightly easier life with belts and you aren't against using mods then you could go with the SMART mod so the belts and stacks are built in one go.

[McCloud]

They always snap right together for me.

[XLjedi]

The issue is...

If there is a belt existing, you seem to be forced to delete that belt first, place the stacker (which makes no sense) then rebuild the belt you just deleted and add the new belt.

A stacker, by it's very nature, should easily snap-to a straddle position over the first belt. It seems odd that we should even have to explain this. I cannot believe you all have not come across it yourselves?

Now, in the realm of all things that need improvement, I would not characterize this one as the lowest hanging fruit. ...but it is a tad annoying.

[taberuco]

hold ctrl while aiming at the belt

[Illuminia]

Stackable conveyor poles are more designed for organization and pre-planning, and snap into foundation gridlines at certain angles.

The standard automatic conveyor poles are more for coming up with design on the fly, and are more flexible. .... that extra flexibility is why it's hard to mix the two after-the-fact. Trying to place a stackable on top of something thrown around willy-nilly conflicts with it's grid placement rules.

If you really want to mix the two, place the Stackable conveyor pole first; then you can easily place a short normal conveyor pole between it's legs.

..... or just don't mix the two, switch everything over to stackable conveyors.

[XLjedi]

Originally posted by Illuminia:

Trying to place a stackable on top of something thrown around willy-nilly conflicts with it's grid placement rules.

This is not a matter of poor design layout. You can run a perfectly placed conveyor in alignment with the spiritual center of the universe... and a stacker won't straddle it by default.

Originally posted by taberuco:

hold ctrl while aiming at the belt

^^^ This should be marked as the answer to the thread.

[McCloud]

I still don't get it, ...unless! ...is everyone having problems with them not using Foundation blocks and trying to use them directly on the ground? Both placement over an existing conveyor will align easily on the foundation without any extra effort as well as snapping them to each other vertically. Again, unless, attempting the feat of no tolerance positioning on the ground. I get that, and that would be frustrating.

[MartyS]

Just did some experimenting and I had simply assumed that stackable supports would not construct with a standard pole in place so had been deleting them and then found it a pain to get the stackable support to be in the same spot. But you can build a stackable support around a standard pole. So from now on to add a conveyor on top of one I've run with standard poles I'll just build the new supports around the existing poles since they make a great placement guide, it can be a bit tricky at times but I could always get a stackable support to center on the existing pole and be able to rotate it to line up and then build it, then build the stacks up from there.

Still would be nice to have an option to have the stackable support as default when running a new belt, if I know I'm going to want 2 or 3 belts going out over terrain to a far away resource area it would be easier not to have to go back and add the stackable supports to the bottom belt.