Conveyor Belt


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Conveyor Belts are used to transport items, such as raw ores, refined materials or the engineer between 2 locations or 2 buildings. They consist of a single track that can curve around bends, as well as slant up and down. Many structures have ports in order to allow belts to be connected to these buildings.

Conveyors can only transport physical items across the X, Y, or Z axis. You can use a Conveyor Lift to transport these physical items vertically in a more efficient method. Fluids can only be transported through Pipelines.

Mark differences
There are multiple levels of conveyor belt available, denoted through their respective "marks"; each level is faster than its predecessor. When items enter a belt at a rate higher than the belt's speed, items can be compressed together. For a visual comparison of the different belt speeds, see this YouTube video from Coffee Stain Studios.

Note: all types of Conveyor Belts have a different belt texture with their respective speed. The decorative lights on the sides of each conveyor belt change with every mark.

Mk.6 belts are currently unavailable in Early Access.

Placement rules
Maximum length: 56 meters (7 foundations) calculated using the euclidean distance formula $$\sqrt{(\Delta x)^2+(\Delta y)^2+(\Delta z)^2}.$$

Maximum slope: 35°. To calculate slope, google "arctan(Z/sqrt(X^2+Y^2)) in degrees" replacing X, Y, and Z with the belt's displacement along those axes.

Belts cannot incline along the z-axis while turning in the xy plane. They will do one, then the other.

If placing a single belt for maximum steepness and length (e.g., making an escalator to walk up a cliff face), 31 meters vertical displacement with 45 meters horizontal displacement is the greatest possible rise in the shortest possible run using snap points. It may be possible to achieve slightly greater steepness and length if not snapping to foundation grid points. Also, a 45° turn can be placed on one end of a 31v/46h belt segment, and these can be chained together to form a helix for convenient vertical movement.

To chain multiple straight belts up the steepest incline possible, a good rule of thumb is 30 meters up, 43 meters out, for slope ~34.9° and length ~52.4 meters. 43 meters out is 5 foundations plus an additional 3 snap points.

Minimum turn radius: 2 meters.

It is often convenient to route belts around obstructions using tight 90° turns. To do this, find the corner you want, then place a pole 2 meters away from it in each direction.

Material cost: ~0.5 units/meter.

Marks
There are currently 5 marks of Conveyor Belts available in the game:

Unreleased
Unreleased There is one unreleased Conveyor Belt mark planned for future updates.

Note: Prior to being removed internally, Conveyor Belt Mk.6 could only transport 900 items per minute. That number has since increased to 1200, allowing for a Miner Mk.3 overclocked to 250% on a pure node to produce at maximum efficiency.

"Encroaching other's clearance"

 * This error means that the belt could not be built because it's within the collision box of another building. A belt can only collide with the building it's built out from. Splitters and Mergers, on the other hand, can collide with buildings. Take note when planning the location of Splitters and Mergers.
 * A belt will not encroach with a building if that belt is connected to that building's input or output connector.
 * Belts will neither encroach with Power Lines nor other belts. Conveyor belts have no problem clipping through foundations, walls and pipes.
 * There is currently a glitch that when a splitter or merger is snapped to one end of a Conveyor Lift, some of its port cannot be connected to belts as it will encroach with the lift.
 * This glitch can be circumvented by temporarily removing the lift, connecting the belt and then placing the lift again.
 * A belt may be built within the collision box of the Space Elevator only if one of its endpoints is one of the Space Elevator's loading ports. Conveyor Poles and Stackable Conveyor Poles can be built inside the collision box, but attempting to connect belts to them will result in this error.

"The floor is too steep"

 * Trying to land a belt on the edge of a cliff or thin structures such as on power cables will result in this message. Move the cursor around and find a flat point to build the end-pole of the conveyor belt.
 * You can also consider building a Splitter on the cliff as it is easier to snap to odd-shaped terrain.

"The conveyor belt is too long"

 * The length limit for a conveyor belt is 49 meters and it is counted in 3-dimensional length. This is equal to 6.125 foundations if it was constructed horizontally.
 * Before building a belt over a large gap it is advised to build a bridge out of foundations or walkways to place Conveyor Poles and Stackable Conveyor Poles on top of first.

Wrong way connection
The game prevents the engineer from connecting a conveyor belt the wrong way into a building. Should the engineer not be able to connect the belt between two buildings, check if the buildings are rotated properly.

Clicking an input port on a building will create a belt that moves items into the building. Otherwise, the belt will run from the starting point to the ending point. See the image on the right to learn how to distinguish between input port and output port.

When placing belts starting from a Conveyor Pole or similar, especially Conveyor Lifts that will end in midair, it can be helpful to place a short length of belt at one of the endpoints to force the new belt to be placed in the correct direction.

Simple stacking
You can place belts on a structure. By placing the starting point of the belt on terrain or foundation, you can end the belt on top of a building such as splitters or containers. You can even stack belts on belts directly, without Conveyor Pole Stackable.

Multiple conveyor belts can be stacked on top of each other neatly with Conveyor Pole Stackable, which is fixed at 2 meter vertical interval. By using Conveyor Wall Mount and some walls, it is possible to stack belts at 1 meters vertically apart.

Belt crossing
It is possible to cross belts, as belts do not collide with each other. Belts can also pass through other objects such as terrain, trees, walls, foundation, etc. A belt cannot pass through splitters, mergers, factory buildings and power poles.

Player transportation speed
Conveyor Belts can be used to move players around. The player moves faster than the items on the belt, strangely. Belts can be built temporarily for exploration, such as acquiring Power Slugs.

The edges of the belt do not move the player, so they can be used to walk against the motion of the belt.

By using a conveyor ramp and the Jetpack, one can travel long distances with little to no setup efforts. Belts Mk.5 and above offer higher movement speed than that of the Explorer.

Approximate movement speeds for a player standing still on a conveyor belt are given in a table below. Regular running speed is 32 km/h and 48 km/h with Blade Runners.

Trivia

 * The Conveyor Belt was first shown in the E3 trailer
 * On marks 1-3, the bottom texture of Conveyor Belts displays the reversed direction. Marks 4-6 have metal on the bottom, but still show the reversed direction texture when clipped through.
 * In the Conveyor Belt Speeds video, Conveyor Belts can be clearly heard from further away (especially higher marks), but they are very quiet in-game.
 * Higher tiers of belts generally have guards at the edges to protect items (and the Engineer) from slipping off the sides. Take note this does not totally prevent the Engineer though, one can be slingshot out from sharp turns.
 * Conveyor Belt Mk.6 is the only conveyor mark that is constructed using two different parts.
 * Conveyor Poles supporting a Conveyor Belt can be deconstructed without affecting the now floating Belt.
 * A solid item occupies 1.2meter length of Conveyor Belt. For example, a 48-meter long belt can contains 40 items.

History

 * Patch 0.3.4.0: Renamed Conveyor Belt to Conveyor Belt Mk.1
 * Patch 0.3: Greatly nerfed the engineers' walking and running speed on belts, making belt-launched jetpack flight inefficient. (work around by using Hyper Tube Cannon)
 * Patch 0.1.15: Increased the capacity of Mk.4 and Mk.5 belts from 450 to 480 and 660 to 780 items per minute respectively.
 * Patch 0.1.14: Made Conveyor Belt Mk.5 available alongside Conveyor Lift Mk.5.