Minecraft Forums

So I build a contraption to gather floating items in a waterstream from eg. a (half-)automatic farm with two goals:

1. Fast removal of items from the world.
2. Unlocked hoppers only when there are items to grab.

The result is this - see attached images.

Working principle:

• The hopper minecarts both pull items from the 1x1 square above and the three input hoppers pull items from both minecarts. -> The maximum continuous gather rate is 7,5 i/s as long as the collector/buffer chest has space left (its fill rate maxes out 5 i/s with the output hopper connected to eg. a sorting system and more precisely the three input hoppers must have space left but...).
• The hopper minecarts are unlocked only by the pressure plate (activator rail) when items arrive.
• The pressure plate unlocks the input hoppers too.
• ... which are kept unlocked as long as the output hopper is still pulling items from the collector/buffer chest.
• The waterlogged stair is required to ~center the floating items in the waterflow to make sure both hopper minecarts can fetch items (not required when the arriving items are distributed randomly. Otherwise only one hopper minecart could pull items in and the max continuous gather rate 'd drop to 5 i/s).

It works great in local creative mode with pulling items in fast but the minecarts always push each other away and make sounds thus causing more load I think (-> lag?).
On my spigot server on the other hand the carts often just merge again on one side :-( dunno why. <- Any feedback on that would be appreciated.