This mod introduces miniloaders, 1x1 entities that efficiently transfer a full belt worth of items into and out of containers, including train cargo wagons.
They use no Lua when running, keeping your factory's UPS healthy.
You can use them to feed your high-speed assemblers,
or put them in your bus as single-belt lane rebalancers.
Green and purple belts from Bob's Logistics are fully supported.
Miniloaders require stack inserter research, are relatively expensive to build, and consume approximately the power of two fully-upgraded stack inserters.
Each miniloader hides a set of very fast invisible inserters, one for each lane of the belt. Lua scripting adjusts pickup and drop points accordingly when the direction of the miniloader is changed.
Since item movement is handled by inserters, there is no on_tick handler, no Lua impact on UPS, and miniloaders will benefit from any future improvements to belt and inserter performance made by Wube in the Factorio core.
Versions of miniloaders with and without filtering are available once the appropriate technology has been researched. As you would expect, to build a miniloader capable of filtering, you must use filter inserters as ingredients.
Note that filter miniloaders behave like filter inserters, and not like vanilla loaders: if no filters are set then no items will be moved. You must set at least one filter.
- The power usage UI counts each miniloader multiple times, since it shows the power used by the inserters, not the miniloaders themselves.
- Miniloaders cannot be fast-replaced due to the invisible entities blocking placement of the new entity.
- Miniloader arrows don't always appear correctly in blueprints.
Ultimate Belts support is in BETA state.
Factorio core engine limitations restrict inserters pulling from belts to 60 items/second, or 4.5x yellow belt speed. Further, loader entities are restricted to 120 items/second.
Miniloaders at "Ultra fast" and faster speeds use vanilla loader entities in addition to inserters, giving a max throughput of ~180 items/second when interacting with chests and other containers. They will not give full throughput when loading cargo wagons, and circuit control is disabled since vanilla loaders cannot be circuit controlled.
- Arch666Angel — for the original 2x1 loader graphics, cut down to 1x1 with permission in versions through 1.5.x.
- Articulating — for the original Loader Snapping.
- Optera — for Loader Redux's revised and improved loader snapping code, adapted here for Miniloaders with permission.