I wish there was a way to ''purge'' an entire belt

[Nauskills]

As in, clean a whole belt system or a section of all of its items.
Sometimes I attach the wrong belt to a system and it clogs everything and its's a bit tedious to clean everything, especially since the item right in the input hole can be hard to reach.
I could simply ''don't make the mistake'' but sometimes I'm stupid lul

[Paragon]

Disconnect source...Attach a storage to the end of the belt.

[Nauskills]

Originally posted by Paragon:

Disconnect source...Attach a storage to the end of the belt.

Unfortunately that doesn't really work for manifolds, when belts are all splitters across multiple machines. Best you can do is simply delete all the small belt sections and rebuild them

[Sanquin]

I'd be fine with it if the last item or two right at the intake of something wasn't such a ♥♥♥♥♥/impossible to grab off of it...

[Nauskills]

Originally posted by Sanquin:

I'd be fine with it if the last item or two right at the intake of something wasn't such a ♥♥♥♥♥/impossible to grab off of it...

Yeah exactly, both the item and machine hotboxes are pretty much inside each other's

[NocheLuz]

So, basically, if you build a very large factory. The first splitter you use to transport raw material into your factory should be a smart splitter. Setting it to only split your material and any other to either clog the splitter or go the other way (overflow out). This will help you when you somehow input the wrong material into the input belt.

Small factories might not need this, but just thinking about this happening to a very large factory of over 100+ buildings is really a headache.

[Llania]

Delete the belt and rebuild it. The items all go into your storage or a crate.

[coldtobi]

in later games, when parts are not the limitations, use smart splitters as safeguards. that will avoid the cloging part at the cost of a few extra parts and one-time configuration of the splitter.

[Oobaneko]

Originally posted by Nauskills:

Originally posted by Paragon:

Disconnect source...Attach a storage to the end of the belt.

Unfortunately that doesn't really work for manifolds, when belts are all splitters across multiple machines. Best you can do is simply delete all the small belt sections and rebuild them

Why? Remove input to manifold, clear last building several times for cleaning main line, then repeat for other buildings in manifold line.

[Nauskills]

Originally posted by Oobaneko:

Originally posted by Nauskills:

Unfortunately that doesn't really work for manifolds, when belts are all splitters across multiple machines. Best you can do is simply delete all the small belt sections and rebuild them

Why? Remove input to manifold, clear last building several times for cleaning main line, then repeat for other buildings in manifold line.

It's not really hard to clean the mainline of a manifold, but there's always one item deep in the machine input and it's always troublesome to find the pixel perfect angle to be able to pick it up.
When you have a bunch of machines in a row it's a bit tedious, which is why I find it easier to just delete the input belt and rebuild it

[Dreepa]

Yeah, it baffles me that this hasn't been improved in all the years.

You STILL cannot pick up items from a belt that are blocking the machine. And if you happen to have build some complex cluster of machines with conveyor elevators you're screwed and have to dismantle the entire thing, just because you made a mistake when feeding the cluster.

There are so many things wrong with the whole belt system in terms of usability and indicators, it still feels like a prototype.

And to be fair, it mostly looks exactly like it did 3 years ago.

Like, obvious things, such as "snap splitter to machine entrance" and "snap splitter in front of elevator instead of on it"... an... place conveyor belt with stackable pole instead of standard pole... and... make proper different models for merger and splitter to distinguish them strongly while building... and... make lines showing alignment not vertical flat 2d so they don't vanish when you look at them from 90 degree... and... dont remove starting attach point when canceling endpoint placement of a belt with the first right click, but with the second.... and... remove the 3 arrows of merger / splitter, and only keep the relevant one (in arrow for splitter, out arrowe for merger) and show the others dynamically on correct alignment... and ... and ... and...

I could write book about how bad this stuff is from a usability viewpoint, and it's the frigging core of the game what we do thousand of times...



My assumption: The entire dev team just cheats their stuff for testing and no one really plays the game from a real enduser perspective, where you have to deal with all these problems and annoyances.

[kLuns]

Always save before connecting a belt that lets items into a system. I still do that everytime and reloading in stead of rebuilding is a huge QoL improvement.
You can put a smart splitter on the incoming belt and sort all wrong items out because this is the only solution when it's too late:

Originally posted by Llania:

Delete the belt and rebuild it. The items all go into your storage or a crate.

[Sonic Titan]

Originally posted by Urtho Rashkae:

sometimes one wants to clear the belt AFTER the mess has been made. how can smart splitters help after the fact?

"My trains keep crashing"
"Use signals"
"But they've crashed already! How will signals help now?"

[Famine]

easy belt solution: cut off the addition of new items somehow, slap a splitter near the point you want it clear to, and sink the line from there. or route it into storage with the option to sink later.

moving entire supply lines to a new belt is a serious pain, especially if its a LONG line from source to destination.

[Dreepa]

Originally posted by Sonic Titan:

Originally posted by Urtho Rashkae:

sometimes one wants to clear the belt AFTER the mess has been made. how can smart splitters help after the fact?

"My trains keep crashing"
"Use signals"
"But they've crashed already! How will signals help now?"

When the train crashes, at least the sh*t is gone.

A stuck complex blueprint is a pain to dismantle if you fed it with the wrong belt by accident.

[Sonic Titan]

Originally posted by Dreepa:

Originally posted by Sonic Titan:

"My trains keep crashing"
"Use signals"
"But they've crashed already! How will signals help now?"

When the train crashes, at least the sh*t is gone.

A stuck complex blueprint is a pain to dismantle if you fed it with the wrong belt by accident.

I mean if it's a blueprint, dismantling the whole thing with blueprint mode should be pretty easy, but maybe also put a fail-safe for that scenario in your blueprint before you place another one?