Smelter obstructions can't be cleared.

[The Nameless]

If I mistakenly cause something that can't go into a smelter to get put on a conveyor leading into it, one item will vanish into the smelter but not appear in its inventory, leaving me no way to clear the obstruction but to dismantle the smelter.

[Dreadlow]

You can delete/rebuild the belt to retrieve the item.

[Huren Ogeko]

It doesnt vanish into the smelter its just hard to see as its on a part of the belt that is a little bit inside the conveyor hole. And its so far in there is no possible way to grab it without selecting the machine control panel instead. As stated above the best way is to delete the last segment of conveyor and rebuild the conveyor, You will then get the offended item in your inventory and off the belt.

[The Nameless]

Yeah, I figured that out... eventually. Several times, I deleted the smelter instead. I still say it needs improvement.

[Huren Ogeko]

camt disagree
The game could use some polish in how it priorities what is slected when more then one thing overlap. Like if you point at the item on the belt inside the conveyor hole it should default to that and only select the machine if pointing to anything not an item on the belt. The machine itself is pretty much the broad side of a barn so it should not take priority when pointing directly at a small item on a belt right in front of it.

[The Nameless]

Originally posted by Huren Ogeko:

camt disagree
The game could use some polish in how it priorities what is slected when more then one thing overlap. Like if you point at the item on the belt inside the conveyor hole it should default to that and only select the machine if pointing to anything not an item on the belt. The machine itself is pretty much the broad side of a barn so it should not take priority when pointing directly at a small item on a belt right in front of it.

Or every building could have some options regarding what it keeps and what it dumps onto the conveyors. It's really dumb having every building dump every item onto the conveyors no matter what.

[Huren Ogeko]

I tend to avoid the issue by being careful. If I make a mistake its always at the beginning when I first set it up but once its going the then its going. Each belt has only one item and its the item that is needed for the machine at the other end.
Sometimes I do a sushi belt but in those cases I have smart splitters.

[The Nameless]

Originally posted by Huren Ogeko:

I tend to avoid the issue by being careful. If I make a mistake its always at the beginning when I first set it up but once its going the then its going. Each belt has only one item and its the item that is needed for the machine at the other end.
Sometimes I do a sushi belt but in those cases I have smart splitters.

That's cute, but we shouldn't have to "avoid the issue". Bugs should be corrected, and I shouldn't have to dismantle an entire conveyor belt to clear obstructions, that's absurd. If real factories were that inefficient, we'd still be in the dark ages. A game that is supposed to be about designing efficient factories shouldn't have clunker issues like this.

[Huren Ogeko]

there is nothing about this game that even pretends to be like real factories.
you are free to play any way you like as it is a sandbox but at the end of the day you will find some ways are easier to accomplish your goals then others because of the style of the game mechanics.

[jamiechi]

Sometimes the game will let you remove the object but still show the ghost of the object after it was removed. This happened to me a couple of days ago with the Awesome Sink input.
I found the object I was trying to put into the Sink in my inventory after removing it (with the ghost of the removed object still appearing on the belt). It is possible that there is some difference between the inputs of factory machines and the Awesome sink though.

I believe this has been an issue since I bought the game back around U2 or U3.

Deleting the belt and replacing it as mentioned above is the best answer for this. A lot quicker than moving close to the input of the machine and trying to manipulate the view to allow one to select the last item on the belt.