The Belt (also known as the Conveyor Belt or, when used in long stretches, the Transportation Line) is an exceptionally essential building used to transport items. It is unlocked at the beginning of the game.
Belts will automatically link with buildings and other belts turning corners to do so, prioritizing buildings. They will face in the direction the cursor moves when placing them. Alt reverses the orientation, and Ctrl stops automatic orientation. Like other buildings, belts will remember their placement orientation, but this mainly only affects placing individual belt tiles. Unlike other buildings, they will not be automatically deselected after being placed, allowing for clicking and dragging.
A corner belt is formed when a straight belt is able to form a connection on its side. The belt will prioritize connections that rotate its back but will do nothing if the same type of connection can take place on both sides. Corner belts remember their original straight orientation, which they will revert back to if they lose their connections.
Holding Shift while using the cursor to drag enables Belt Planner, which will place a stretch of belts in an L shape from the position where it was activated to the point where the mouse button is released. Pressing R will flip which direction the belts travel first. Before releasing the mouse button, a preview in the form of a green line is shown. Like regular placement, Belt Planner will not destroy existing buildings, but will destroy existing belts.
If a belt abruptly ends with no connections, an item on the belt will halt upon reaching the end, which will cause a backlog. Placing a belt over a preexisting belt will delete all items on the original belt.
If you are considering using a Belt Reader to provide a source for a clock pulse, note that the it takes for the rendered objects 40.7 seconds to travel 110 tiles which gives a speed of 2.70 tiles / second. This was measured at a multiplier of 10.0, but it is beleived this speed is not affected by the multiplier. This is contrary to how the real speed operates, which is 2 items / second. If you picture the multiplier is the variable width of the belt, the speed would remain constant.
Strategies[]
Movement with the Arrow or WASD keys works while placing belts or using belt planner, making it easy to place belts over long distances.
In order to quickly clear clogs in factories or long stretches of belts, Belt Planner can be used over the existing belts to clear them. Since Belt Planner does not destroy existing buildings, it can be used over structures on a belt line such as balancers and mergers.