I'm curious. Is there a sorter build that can utilize the faster-than-hopper speed of a water line?
Many tutorials for auto sorters use water transport instead of hopper lines to feed the items to be sorted. It does save some hoppers, but then, who would build an auto sorter without building an iron farm first? Water makes the design more difficult, as I need a couple of extra blocks space whenever I have to go around a corner and I need one space every 9 blocks to extend the line with packed ice.
You could make the water loop infinite, but at some point you have to take unsortable items into consideration. Hoppers can accumulate items faster than hopper speed, but I found that I need to slow down my clock sending items into the waterstream down to hoppper speed as otherwise items will pass over the sorting hoppers. (It's the safe speed anyway, as each hopper can store only 63 items even if you use the hybrid design that takes only one item as initializer.)
Maybe one could set up two processing units: A first one for items that we have a lot (whatever comes in from farms, and maybe cobblestone and whatnot) with a looped water line. That line contains one hopper at the end (before looping back) that takes all items and feeds them into a traditional sorter that works at hopper speed.
For the "fast" items we'd need two sorting units, but then this can be managed, right?
I'm curious. Is there a sorter build that can utilize the faster-than-hopper speed of a water line?
Many tutorials for auto sorters use water transport instead of hopper lines to feed the items to be sorted. It does save some hoppers, but then, who would build an auto sorter without building an iron farm first? Water makes the design more difficult, as I need a couple of extra blocks space whenever I have to go around a corner and I need one space every 9 blocks to extend the line with packed ice.
You could make the water loop infinite, but at some point you have to take unsortable items into consideration. Hoppers can accumulate items faster than hopper speed, but I found that I need to slow down my clock sending items into the waterstream down to hoppper speed as otherwise items will pass over the sorting hoppers. (It's the safe speed anyway, as each hopper can store only 63 items even if you use the hybrid design that takes only one item as initializer.)
Maybe one could set up two processing units: A first one for items that we have a lot (whatever comes in from farms, and maybe cobblestone and whatnot) with a looped water line. That line contains one hopper at the end (before looping back) that takes all items and feeds them into a traditional sorter that works at hopper speed.
For the "fast" items we'd need two sorting units, but then this can be managed, right?