I think they should match barreling/unbarreling craft times.

Ok I reduced them to 6 seconds in the next version. Barrels crafting is 1 second, which might be too low -- we can try 6 seconds and go lower if it makes sense!

Actually I meant the load/unload crafting times... Barrel fill/unfill is 0.2, and I'm thinking Pallet load/unload should be the same.

As for crafting pallets themselves, I suggest matching barrel crafting as well... but this concerns me far less than load/unload times.

inserters and belts are a lot slower than pumps and pipes: a blue belt does 40 items per second and thus 4 stack inserters can fill it (at <1 swing per second? i don't know the exact value; and 4 inserters at one assembler is a bit tricky, but doable). if pallets would carry 40 items (un)packing might be best at a speed <=1 second, for pallet capacity 50, 1 second should be good too, for 100 it should be <= 2.5 seconds and for 200 <= 5 seconds. the current 6 seconds require several assemblers per belt. is my math correct?

I would enjoy having a faster time that would allow (un)packing with a single assembler for a blue belt (who uses mods with MK4, MK5 and MK6 belts would then need no more than 2 assemblers). maximum crafting time for MY :-) factory should be so that i can get at least a full red belt of plates with a single assembler (26.66 items per second, 100 in 3.75 seconds). did you set it to 6 seconds to get a full yellow belt (7.5 seconds) ?

crafting time for the pallets/barrels themselves doesn't matter since i do that only once and then reuse them all the time.

good point, I will turn it to 1 second!

Definitely needs to be quicker packing and unpacking time. Because it doesn't actually improve throughput in the current state. It improves the amount of belt-laying needed, by a lot - 16 blue belts can fit in less than half a yellow belt - but you can't load one blue belt into machines fast enough to fill another blue belt at the other end. Blue belt = 40 items per second, to unpack 100 ore fast enough to fill a blue belt, crafting time needs to be 2.5 seconds absolute maximum.

fair enough, I'm reducing crafting time to 1 second in 0.16.3, thanks!