Game Mechanics on Belts
Speed Scale
For any game and mod versions, the basic transport belt is the reference used to define the base speed. (For belt physics, please see this document.)
In short, the base speed of 15 items/s (from game version 0.17.0 onwards) is used to define the speed scale = 1. The unmodified fast, express and turbo belts thus have speed scale of 2, 3 and 4 respectively.
| Belt Type | Vanilla Speed | Vanilla Speed Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | 15 items/s | 1 |
| Fast | 30 items/s | 2 |
| Express | 45 items/s | 3 |
| Turbo | 60 items/s | 5 |
This mod allows you to freely set the speed scales. You can set any numbers you want, even with non-integral numbers. Below are my suggested settings.
| Belt Type | Vanilla Speed Scale | Suggested Set I | Suggested Set II |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | 1 (15 items/s) | 1 ( 15 items/s) | 1.5 (22.5 items/s) |
| Fast | 2 (30 items/s) | 3 ( 45 items/s) | 3 (45.0 items/s) |
| Express | 3 (45 items/s) | 8 (120 items/s) | 6 (90.0 items/s) |
| Turbo | 4 (60 items/s) | 12 (180 items/s) | 12 (90.0 items/s) |
Analysis of Safe Speed
Guess we can set very high speed to the belts?
Unfortunately, no. When the speeds are beyond some critical points, either the belts, loaders, or splitters will start to glitch or stop working. Hence, there are limited usuable range on belt speeds.
Think you have to experiment and find out the values yourself? Not unnecessary, as I have already did it for you, as below. These results are used to find out the "safe" speeds (where belts, loaders and splitters are all working at their rated speeds), and I have already applied them as the allowed speeds in mod options.
Note: If you want to test the "limit" of the game engine by yourself, you may edit settings.lua file with a text editor to allow higher values. Yet it may put your save game at risk (such as jamming the splitters, even after lowering belt speeds). You have been warned!
0.16.51
Scale 1 = 13.33 item/s, which is different from newer versions (changed to15 item/ssince 0.17.0).- At scale 12 (160 items/s), splitters is still working fine. Beyond that, they may stop working and jam. So this is set as the highest safe speed.
- At scale 16 (213.33 items/s), even the belts will glitch (non-full belts).
0.18.30
- At scale 8 (120 items/s), even fast inserters are not fast enough to grab items from non-full belts. You may want to reserve such high speed for mainbus, using splitters to divert to lower speed belt for production input.
- Scale 8 (120 items/s) is the maximum speed for any loaders, due to engine limitation. Beyond that, items on belts begin to glitch, not flowing normally all the time.
1.1.30
- Loaders can go beyond scale 8 (120 items/s), due to stated game fix in 1.1.28.
- At scale 16 (240 item/s), the belts, loaders and splitters all seems working fine. Beyond that, splitters seems glitched on right output belt (on a 2 full input to 2 output test). So this is the new highest safe speed.
2.0.15
- Seems having same results as in 1.1.30, with scale 16 (240 item/s) being the highest safe speed for belts, loaders and splitters
- However, WITHOUT setting any priorites on an lane splitters, while having both 2 lanes fully fed as input, it can only acquire 180 item/s. It is possibly caused by the limitation of code and slowed down the output.
- Yet, the new lane splitters can still acquire the same safe speed of 240 item/s, if it is fully fed on both lanes and have output priority set to either of the lanes.