Big (2x2) inserters

[Zaflis]

It has been known for a long time that moving items from 1 train to another is not possible with regular inserters because rails leave a 2 tiles wide gap between them. Long inserters can do the job slowly, but you need 6 or 12 of them and that would not be good for UPS for megabases where such bulk transfer would be even remotely useful.

So i investigated if there was a mod for that yet, and answer is yes:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/nco-InserterCranes

It has also taken a long time to arrive to the idea again to have it sink in that it's something we would really like in the base game. But it would make it possible to use separate railway networks for example, 1 for base area and other for mining outposts. Well, creative ideas are probably endless. It doesn't remove the need for any other inserters nor trivialize the game in some way. How engineer would probably say, right tool for the right job, and in current game we have to workaround with less efficient ways.

I'm not proposing to copy "Inserter Cranes" to vanilla game exactly as it is. Naturally some balance and maybe functionality changes should be made. This topic is for principle of 2x2 (or 2x1 rotatable to 1x2 ?) inserters to exist. I would prefer the 2x2 with more insert capacity because it is computationally cheaper.

I'm also aware there are loaders but their purpose is entirely different and absolutely not replacement for 2x2 inserters.

[Illiander42]

Loaders aren't going to be in vanilla anytime soon.

I'm not sure if I like this, it would be like having a 4x4 electric furnace, it would make perfect builds too easy.

Notice that most of the new buildings are odd-number sided.

[mmmPI]

I think those 2x2 inserters are also part of Exotic Industries, or there are some similar there. I think remembering they can transfer 1 stack of item at a time and takes as much room as 4 inserters, which could be long handed but then even with some research they could only beat the large one on item that stack up to 10 or 20 not much more.

It was fun to use them, they were quite late game, but useful for loading trains or ship from (modded) chest, they have this quirk that they work in diagonal as show on the picture, so 2x2 chest do wonder with them but are not necessary.

I wouldn't use 4 version, with slow and fast and filter and without filter, but the filter part is adressed for the expansion. Does it make sense to have a lower tech and higher tech version ? of such item or only 1 fast and late game is enough ? If you get it too late in game, it may obsolete a large part of existing infrastructure, if you don't it's very strong, making things easy and removing some of the challenges of large scale logistic. I was happy to use it in mod though, it has a lot of impact on my games when they are there i only use them to load trains when i can as soon as they are available. To me they allow to focus more on other aspect.

It has been known for a long time that moving items from 1 train to another is not possible with regular inserters because rails leave a 2 tiles wide gap between them.

That is because you are considering horizontal or vertical train tracks, but players have found ways to use diagonal train tracks for train transfer. It would be less "heretical" with the suggestion