Apologies for the dumb title, but I'm a little stumped as to how the stacking beltboxes are supposed to be used. I understand the core principles - stack multiple belts, then merge them together into fewer belts to transport more material via fewer belts. What I'm a bit unsure about is how one taps into a compressed line like this. Say I have 1 compressed belt carrying 5 belt's worth of material and I want to pull 1 belt's worth of material off for an assembler array. Right now, it seems like I'd need to uncompress the entire line back to 5 belts, split one belt off, then recompress it. Size aside, wouldn't that kill my UPS if I do it too often?

I'm pretty sure I'mthinking of this the wrong way, though. Like, what I'm trying to do isn't how these belts are supposed to be used, or some such. Hence this question - how am I supposed to use this mod?

i'm not very sure of it as i played with it allready but not too much yet.

basically lets say u have 5 smelting lines, u let the output (iron plates) trough the stacking box and it will compress 5 iron plates into 1 stacked iron plate (i don't remember the names too good) and then u can merge these 5 belts onto 1 belt and add it to your main bus for example.
Then u can just split of with a splitter, run it trough the stacking box again and it will unstack the stacked plates into 5 plates again.

so basically 5 belts => compress to 1 belt => run wherever u want => split off => unstack => use where u want.

my numbers can be off cann't remember how many items it uses to make a stacked item.

Right, that much makes sense. I guess my problem is I'm playing a fairly aggressive Rail World, so I don't really have "a main bus" so to speak. Everything travels by train and each individual industrial compound is more or less on top of its own train station. I do have something like a "main bus" running through each compound, but it's fairly short, and it gets tapped in MANY places. Due to speed of production, I can't actually support a lot of assemblers on the same line most of the time. Unless the crafting time is 10+ seconds, I usually can't put more than 12-18 per line. My Copper Smelter, for instance, uses 12-Furnace lines in a double-sided horseshoe (so 24 Furnaces per horeseshoe), with a total of 12 such horseshoes (6 on each side of the main belt). That's being fed by six belts. If I'm working with one or two "compressed" belts, I would still need to uncompress the line in 6-12 locations.

I've been looking at this mod for a while now, trying to wrap my head around how to use it. Laterly, a friend pointed me to the "Fluid Must Flow" mod which does something similar - it compresses four pipes' worth of fluid into a single large duct to cut down on the pipe spaghetti. However, that mod has custom pumps with a large number of outlets, meaning that tapping off a single pipe in multiple locations isn't THAT bad. But then again - that's fluids, and fluids do their own splitting anyway. I was trying to do something similar with Deadlock's Stacking Boxes, but I can't really figure out a good way to do it without adding significant complexity and bulk to my factory.

Hmm... Suppose I can split the stacked belt, feed it into one or two belts (I assume the boxes accept Loaders in all directions) and just let both lines back up. The mod description says that a single box can handle a 5-1/1-5 conversion, so if I'm pulling just 2 belts then everything should back up and self-regulate. I don't need to unpack all five lanes. Hmm... THIS might help condense some of my belt monstrocities. Potentially, if I can make this work, I can even stack things at produer facilities. I'm aware that this doesn't save inventory space, but it does save space on the receiving end having to pack it there.

OK, so I treied my idea. Turns out I'd misread the mod description. Each stacking box can only handle one belt of normal, non-stacked resources of its type. If I want to feed two belts, then I'll need two boxes. OK, that makes sense and isn't that hard. As a test run, I converted my steel smelter to stackers. That's three Bulk Unloaders feeding 12 belts into 5 (legacy design), these 5 belts get stacked by 5 boxes and the results merged into a single belt. This belt is then split several times via 1-3 Compound Splitter. The two additional stacked belts each feed into an Unstacker box with a single belt leading out of it. Those stacked belts compress fairly quickly once the boxes fill up, and enough volume of resources is passed to the belts. Well, almost enough - I'd need a factory to build the Blue Belt stacking boxes, so I was experimenting with red stacking boxes and blue belts. They can't compress those, but they come close.

Now the real question - what's better for my UPS? Deadlock's Stacking Beltboxes clearly add a lot of additional calculations since I need 2 additional loaders per resource line, as well as 1 Beltbox (essentially a Fabricator), so that's a lot of extra overhead. However, I'm compressing what used to be 6 belts (and probably more, I'd likely go up to 10 easily) into just 1 or 2 belts. This means no more gigantic 6-8/6-12 Compound Splitters and - crucially - substantially fewer individual resource items along with substantially fewer belts. Less crap being moved around at a time to account for should help increase UPS overall... I think. Not really sure - would depend on how mods and the base game scale. I'm told gigantic 6-belt monstrocities take up a lot of UPS, though, when they're all moving.

Either way, this seems like a workable solution that deserves more investigation. Thanks for the help :)

regardless, loading trains with stacked items is faster since it's less items to load.
You can also try and use the stacked line to make longer production lines, and restock the input lines off of the stacked line to save space on input reload lines.

A month later... I actually figured out a pretty good way to use the Stacking Beltboxes. I ended up converting the majority of my rail transport to stacked items. Mines stack their resources almost immediately outside the mining area and feed their corresponding mining stations with stacked resources. These are shipped to processor facilities where the stacked items are run along a "main bus," usually just 2 belts wide. This is split off to feed orthogonal lines of assemblers, and resources are unpacked only when they enter each assembler array. The assemblers obviously produce unstacked resources, but those are stacked on the way out of their individual assembler arrays and merged, usually into a single belt. This stacked product is then fed to an outgoing train station.

It works! Except I need to replace every single facility in my base. I started doing that a few months ago, then burned out on the game. Guess I can go back and finish the job :)