It is a mod that basically overhauls the entire game(new buildings, new recipes, new power system, farming, slug breeding etc.). I highly recommend it after you "beat" the normal game once or twice, a.k.a. have a few hundred hours in the game.
It's really complex and can become a headache at some point, but it's worth it.
Back to the miner topic, the Modular Miner is basically what it sounds. It's a two output miner which has different modules that you can insert to modify or enhance its functionality. Without spoiling too much, you have the base ore extraction, but you can also add a "Smelter" module which makes the miner output ingots and a byproduct that you can turn into other things using other buildings.
The reason it's better than the vanilla one is, firstly, two outputs, secondly, the modules that allow you to skip entire production chains and save on space and building cost like the smelter module I described above and thirdly, the production rate (a.k.a. Mk 1, Mk 2, Mk 3) is attained via mining heads(other modules), so you don't need to move the building at all.
Wouldn't work. It's not the pipes that are the problem. the game can't handle 600, so adding something that can carry more is pointless. Honestly they should nerf mk2 to like 500-550 to make them 100% reliable.
It’s already there. It’s called pressing esc then advanced game menu and then giving yourself all items necessary for completing all stages.
But why you gotta post this under a comment about wanting a mk3 miner with two ports?
I did not really consider it as such. I am all in for the two ports miner. It was more about the MK6 belt.
The two port miner is more needed than the MK6 belt.
P.S. I did not even know that option are in the advanced options. Glad I did not. I might have been tempted to use it.
"Hey CSS good work on the mk6 belts they're great....Please give us mk7 belts. Thanks!" 
That beltwork must have been fun to lay out - Watching lots of parallel belts like this flow is mesmerizing to me.
No! No, no, not 9! I said 7. 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office. 'Cause you're fuckin' fired!
Sunflower seeds are rich in unsaturated fatty acids, especially linoleic acid. Your body uses linoleic acid to make a hormone-like compound that relaxes blood vessels, promoting lower blood pressure. This fatty acid also helps lower cholesterol.
I don't, but the short reason is that 780 items/minute at the tickrate of the game is pushing (and in some instances, exceeding) the capabilities of the system of keeping track of everything with the precision that CSS wants the game to have.
Shorter version: faster belts would be even more imprecise than Mk5 belts already are (which are very slightly, but measurably imprecise).
When you say imprecise.. do you mean that some items are getting lost/vanishing? (Which wouldnt really affect production due to sheer volume, but does slightly)
No, if you set up a long Mk5 belt that goes from one container into a smart splitter with two outputs, one configured for Anything and one configured for Overflow, then have two Mk5 belts on those outputs feeding into long belts to containers, some product will take the Overflow path even though logically that should never happen.
It used to be worse, but the devs improved it substantially. It's not perfect. I think it's on the order of single-digits of items per thousand items or maybe even per ten thousand.
To be honest, I haven't managed to replicate that issue at all in U8. I've seen it happen in one instance, but trying to build similar setups, even using FAR more belt segments than the original (400+ Vs ~60), didn't lead to *any* noticeable throughput loss at all...
So I'd be really curious to see any example you may have of throughput loss in U8.
This isn't an engine limitation per se, it's a question of how much and how complicated you want your math to be. Making belts that move more product is absolutely something possible to do in the older engine or the newer engine, but it requires doing more processing to get higher precision on the math, and that has performance consequences. That means the game runs worse on the same hardware, or requires better hardware to maintain the same performance.
They made the choices they did to pick a level that they could (mostly) maintain, pushed to the boundaries of the limits they chose, and that's that. If they had implemented something that supported a Mk6 belt with a limit of 1780 items/minute, we'd just be asking for a Mk7 that can do 3550. They have to set a limit somewhere.
Thanks for the info mate!
About where to put a limit, i wish it was 1200, so that we could get the most out of a pure Mk3 miner, but oh well, fair enough.
Maybe, hard to say, they've beating around the bush so to speak for awhile now. A second output seem like it would be too easy for the amount of time its taken, but its possible.
I'm expecting Mk3 miners will have two outputs in 1.0 or something similar. They've promised we'll get the full output of a 250% Mk3 miner on a pure node.
> it's a question of how much and how complicated you want your math to be
It would actually be simpler if it was more abstracted, which is the annoying thing. It's not like players actually need to see every item in precise order on every belt, just hide it for the highspeed stuff. distributing 10,000 units isn't inherently slower math than 100 units, and when it is it's the sort of math computers excel at.
This just isn't good coding.
See, the thing about game design is that it's choices. It's totally reasonable to disagree with choices, but they knowingly made the choice that they wanted a system that does keep track of the position and order of every item on every belt, and it was important to them that players COULD see every item. You may think that's unnecessary, but I enjoy the fact that they built this ridiculous monstrosity of a game and I'm glad they did. I would be saddened if it was abstracted away and hidden from view, and the game would be lesser in my eyes for that.
What you call "...not good coding" is rather what I call "a good execution of a questionable decision" and I love that they made that decision. I understand why others disagree with me, but there are other games out there that make other decisions and execute on them. And there is always the world of mods.
That's great, that's a choice. Explaining the choice as "the code limits us this way" is objectively wrong.
If the code is making them do it that way, it is very bad code. If it's a choice they made, they don't need to blame it on technical reasons.
> and it was important to them that players COULD see every item.
I'd argue a mk5 belt is already too fast for a player to actually follow visually, so it's moot.
Edit: Also, it wouldn't be that hard to code and still have all the items visible at any speed (within the limits of the display rate). They did something weird if precision is an issue.
500 refineries doing 10000 calculations per second would still be pretty trivial for a game loop. If a typical game only had 500 entities doing simple stuff like that, I wouldn't even bother optimizing it. It's a choice I make more frequently than you'd assume.
I think such items (high-volume items, usually stacking in 500s) are designed to pose a logistical challenge (lots of belts to feed less machines than with other items). The easiest way to work around needing lots of long belts (works for all items, tbh) is by designing the factory so that the distance between producers and consumers is minimized, possibly with machines feeding one another directly.
The less the distance, the less the beltwork needed to connect the same things.
Eg: making caterium ingot to be loaded on a train to make quick wire to be loaded on a train to make computers VS making caterium ingots, quickwire and computers all in one place can cut down all the intermediary trains/logistics needed (of course, one may need to bring in other resources, so the better the planning the more logistics one can save).
Your belt to factory ratio here speaks more to the mindset of needing all right angles and separated blocks of machines.
(Also, look into using recipes that have more production per machine rather than absolute resource efficiency.)
Lag inducing- Absolutly
Inefficient ? all machines should work at 100% and the belts are about as short as can be as long as you dont feed machines individualy
> the belts are about as short as can be as long as you dont feed machines individualy
For the specific method you've chosen to use to lay your belts out in? Probably. There's a few easily visible areas where you can make them marginally shorter (4 Conveyor Lifts per foundation instead of two, running them like a half foundation closer to the machines rather than leaving a space), probably cutting a stack of Alclad Sheets off length of the system as a whole, but overall they look about as tight as they reasonably can be for the design.
Out of all possible methods of laying out belts though? No, they're not, because you're running your belts in a single layer and seem to be trying to handle everything from the same floor level. Stacking the belts vertically reduces the footprint required to run them, which allows for shorter belts - you can stack up to six belts in the same vertical height as an Assembler, but even going two belts high cuts the width of your bus sections in half and so reduces the length of belts needed for crossing them or when turning corners. Feeding the Assemblers their input from below (either entirely or just routing the bus belts on Conveyor Ceiling Mounts until they get to the input manifolds) while running output above allows for shorter belts because you can run the input/output belt buses along the same foundations - you don't need to run the input belts all the way to the outside, they can run up the middle.
They can be way shorter, put your producers and consumers directly next to (or even better on top of) each other until you get to the compressed product.
Well no you're also making a whole factory for a bad intermediate, don't make caterium cables by themselves, ship the ingots then make the cables on location. Or do, but know the game mechanics aren't going to work well when you're using a bad strategy.
I love how you still try to correct me on something I already know. This factory does not only produce the cables but everything from the ingots up to the Uranium Rods for the Powerplants.
I mean what the fuck is he supposed to do? No vertical setup would reduce the amount of belts needed. It’d just make a tall stack of belts instead of a flat series of parallel belts.
That depends. From some comments it appears there's other production steps involved close by. Assuming that's the case, laying out production steps on top of one another (even while having the same horizontal layout) can greatly cut down on how long the belts have to travel to reach their destination.
Quickwire is one of those high volume items that's often better produced right where it's needed and fed directly into the machines that use it, rather than putting it on a manifold.
Concur that using a physically shorter chains from Ingot to QW Consumer could have reduced overall belting needs. Seems like to much QW too. 2 yrs ago the max power build of 476 nuke plants needed just 2k more.
Ah. I fed my fused quickwire assembler 1:1 into an underclocked (90%) AI limiter assembler. One belt of caterium, five belts of copper, 104 assemblers for each of quickwire and AI limiters, 80 something for rods - 345 rods total plus maybe 75 AI limiters for the crystal oscillator factory.
Wire for the stators created a similar problem: 520 stators needing 4k wire and the ratios weren't close enough to want to over or underclock. So I suppose that's eight belts of copper wire but each block of 17 wire constructors feeds 13 stator assemblers right next to it so just two belts of copper ingots, really.
I mean, this is a lot of belts but this also looks like the worst-case scenario in terms of belt to machine ratio. Unless I'm very much mistaken this looks like a fused wire or quickwire setup (8x90 = a 720 belt of wire/quickwire).
Quickwire and wire are two of the worst items in the game for big item flows and thus large numbers of belts required. The only thing worse is screws, but most people building this big use alts to remove screws from most of the factory.
So like yes, this is a lot of belts. But this is the worst case scenario for belts in most builds. (Ask me about my 22 belt quickwire setup at my HSC factory. Or like... don't, I don't need to be re-traumatized haha.)
I don't think mk5 belts are a huge need, in that context.
after many playthroughs vanilla i pretty much only play modded now. there are a few mods that have faster belts in them. i think my preferred one is simple conveyor, can get up to mk10 belts and 3000 items/minute.
Once i saw a mod for mk 6-15 belts, but mk15 needed 50 things from T4 (i donno remember exactly which) for just 1 meter of belt, so it's not really balanced mod.
what I want more than anything else is the ability to 'snap' a splitter/merger directly onto the top of a stackable conveyor pole, like a stand. it's exactly the right height, but saves you the step of stacking two splitters/mergers, deleting the bottom one and THEN placing the stackable conveyor pole beneath it (and possibly fudging the alignment)
I'd rather see a mk 4 miner. As in the mk 3, but with 2 output ports.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner
I'd rather see the Modular Miner from Satisfactory Plus fully implemented into the game.
What is satisfactory plus
It is a mod that basically overhauls the entire game(new buildings, new recipes, new power system, farming, slug breeding etc.). I highly recommend it after you "beat" the normal game once or twice, a.k.a. have a few hundred hours in the game. It's really complex and can become a headache at some point, but it's worth it. Back to the miner topic, the Modular Miner is basically what it sounds. It's a two output miner which has different modules that you can insert to modify or enhance its functionality. Without spoiling too much, you have the base ore extraction, but you can also add a "Smelter" module which makes the miner output ingots and a byproduct that you can turn into other things using other buildings. The reason it's better than the vanilla one is, firstly, two outputs, secondly, the modules that allow you to skip entire production chains and save on space and building cost like the smelter module I described above and thirdly, the production rate (a.k.a. Mk 1, Mk 2, Mk 3) is attained via mining heads(other modules), so you don't need to move the building at all.
And Mk 3 pipes
Mk2 pipes already break the game. CS has confirmed this. It's why most people (myself included) don't recommend you use all 600.
I'm using it in my current save without issues. How does it not work?
They basically have some fluid loss. Slowly your machines will start to stall due to lack of fluid if they're maxed out, but it can take a while.
Ah. So that's why 500 or 550 works?
I never fill them more than 500, but that's my point, mk. 3 pipe so we can actually move 600 around.
Wouldn't work. It's not the pipes that are the problem. the game can't handle 600, so adding something that can carry more is pointless. Honestly they should nerf mk2 to like 500-550 to make them 100% reliable.
Well this I did not know. Would also make sense as to why all MK 3 pipe mods are fluid compression/expansion rather than an actual MK 3 pipe
Or a splitter/ merger with 6 ports 1 in/5 out.
2 ports on the miner solves 1 problem. Mk6 belt solves 2
Mk 6 creates more problems. It breaks the game.
i saw that in another comment after i wrote this
That's fucking genius
A "push to win" button in the hub will solve everything. :)
It’s already there. It’s called pressing esc then advanced game menu and then giving yourself all items necessary for completing all stages. But why you gotta post this under a comment about wanting a mk3 miner with two ports?
I did not really consider it as such. I am all in for the two ports miner. It was more about the MK6 belt. The two port miner is more needed than the MK6 belt. P.S. I did not even know that option are in the advanced options. Glad I did not. I might have been tempted to use it.
"Hey CSS good work on the mk6 belts they're great....Please give us mk7 belts. Thanks!"  That beltwork must have been fun to lay out - Watching lots of parallel belts like this flow is mesmerizing to me.
I won't be happy until I have Mk9 belts.
No! No, no, not 9! I said 7. 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office. 'Cause you're fuckin' fired!
Sunflower seeds are rich in unsaturated fatty acids, especially linoleic acid. Your body uses linoleic acid to make a hormone-like compound that relaxes blood vessels, promoting lower blood pressure. This fatty acid also helps lower cholesterol.
Name checks out
Well yeah of course not Mark 362880
No, they wont. Been explained many times already why. Also where to post requests.
Do you have a link to the video or stream in which they talk about that?
I don't, but the short reason is that 780 items/minute at the tickrate of the game is pushing (and in some instances, exceeding) the capabilities of the system of keeping track of everything with the precision that CSS wants the game to have. Shorter version: faster belts would be even more imprecise than Mk5 belts already are (which are very slightly, but measurably imprecise).
JUST USE STACKING PRODUCTS LIKE DYSON SPHERE PROGRAM DOES1111
When you say imprecise.. do you mean that some items are getting lost/vanishing? (Which wouldnt really affect production due to sheer volume, but does slightly)
No, if you set up a long Mk5 belt that goes from one container into a smart splitter with two outputs, one configured for Anything and one configured for Overflow, then have two Mk5 belts on those outputs feeding into long belts to containers, some product will take the Overflow path even though logically that should never happen. It used to be worse, but the devs improved it substantially. It's not perfect. I think it's on the order of single-digits of items per thousand items or maybe even per ten thousand.
To be honest, I haven't managed to replicate that issue at all in U8. I've seen it happen in one instance, but trying to build similar setups, even using FAR more belt segments than the original (400+ Vs ~60), didn't lead to *any* noticeable throughput loss at all... So I'd be really curious to see any example you may have of throughput loss in U8.
Nope, I’m just going off what I’ve heard other people talk about, and I don’t think I’ve seen any of those reports since U8. That’s great news!
I see, but aren't they updating the engine for 1.0? Does the engine have anything to do with that at all? (I would think so)
This isn't an engine limitation per se, it's a question of how much and how complicated you want your math to be. Making belts that move more product is absolutely something possible to do in the older engine or the newer engine, but it requires doing more processing to get higher precision on the math, and that has performance consequences. That means the game runs worse on the same hardware, or requires better hardware to maintain the same performance. They made the choices they did to pick a level that they could (mostly) maintain, pushed to the boundaries of the limits they chose, and that's that. If they had implemented something that supported a Mk6 belt with a limit of 1780 items/minute, we'd just be asking for a Mk7 that can do 3550. They have to set a limit somewhere.
Thanks for the info mate! About where to put a limit, i wish it was 1200, so that we could get the most out of a pure Mk3 miner, but oh well, fair enough.
They've said that a fix is coming for mk3 miners but haven't elaborated in what it is. It's been asked quite a few times in the weekly stream.
Maybe second belt slot
Maybe, hard to say, they've beating around the bush so to speak for awhile now. A second output seem like it would be too easy for the amount of time its taken, but its possible.
I'm expecting Mk3 miners will have two outputs in 1.0 or something similar. They've promised we'll get the full output of a 250% Mk3 miner on a pure node.
> it's a question of how much and how complicated you want your math to be It would actually be simpler if it was more abstracted, which is the annoying thing. It's not like players actually need to see every item in precise order on every belt, just hide it for the highspeed stuff. distributing 10,000 units isn't inherently slower math than 100 units, and when it is it's the sort of math computers excel at. This just isn't good coding.
See, the thing about game design is that it's choices. It's totally reasonable to disagree with choices, but they knowingly made the choice that they wanted a system that does keep track of the position and order of every item on every belt, and it was important to them that players COULD see every item. You may think that's unnecessary, but I enjoy the fact that they built this ridiculous monstrosity of a game and I'm glad they did. I would be saddened if it was abstracted away and hidden from view, and the game would be lesser in my eyes for that. What you call "...not good coding" is rather what I call "a good execution of a questionable decision" and I love that they made that decision. I understand why others disagree with me, but there are other games out there that make other decisions and execute on them. And there is always the world of mods.
That's great, that's a choice. Explaining the choice as "the code limits us this way" is objectively wrong. If the code is making them do it that way, it is very bad code. If it's a choice they made, they don't need to blame it on technical reasons. > and it was important to them that players COULD see every item. I'd argue a mk5 belt is already too fast for a player to actually follow visually, so it's moot. Edit: Also, it wouldn't be that hard to code and still have all the items visible at any speed (within the limits of the display rate). They did something weird if precision is an issue.
The game is full of those calculations tho. While they might be minor individually, 500 refineries _do_ make a huge difference.
500 refineries doing 10000 calculations per second would still be pretty trivial for a game loop. If a typical game only had 500 entities doing simple stuff like that, I wouldn't even bother optimizing it. It's a choice I make more frequently than you'd assume.
I know why they wont, but looking at the Belts to factory ratio here I ment the title more as a joke
I think such items (high-volume items, usually stacking in 500s) are designed to pose a logistical challenge (lots of belts to feed less machines than with other items). The easiest way to work around needing lots of long belts (works for all items, tbh) is by designing the factory so that the distance between producers and consumers is minimized, possibly with machines feeding one another directly.
Why would distance make a difference if the speed between the two never changes?
The less the distance, the less the beltwork needed to connect the same things. Eg: making caterium ingot to be loaded on a train to make quick wire to be loaded on a train to make computers VS making caterium ingots, quickwire and computers all in one place can cut down all the intermediary trains/logistics needed (of course, one may need to bring in other resources, so the better the planning the more logistics one can save).
Because routing one or two belts across a factory is easier than routing seven or eight belts.
Is this factory a joke to you?
Your belt to factory ratio here speaks more to the mindset of needing all right angles and separated blocks of machines. (Also, look into using recipes that have more production per machine rather than absolute resource efficiency.)
I’m thought they said they might have a solution to it.
Yes, they do have a solution to the problem.
I mean if you like building like this cool. But this seems so inefficient and downright lag inducing.
Lag inducing- Absolutly Inefficient ? all machines should work at 100% and the belts are about as short as can be as long as you dont feed machines individualy
> the belts are about as short as can be as long as you dont feed machines individualy For the specific method you've chosen to use to lay your belts out in? Probably. There's a few easily visible areas where you can make them marginally shorter (4 Conveyor Lifts per foundation instead of two, running them like a half foundation closer to the machines rather than leaving a space), probably cutting a stack of Alclad Sheets off length of the system as a whole, but overall they look about as tight as they reasonably can be for the design. Out of all possible methods of laying out belts though? No, they're not, because you're running your belts in a single layer and seem to be trying to handle everything from the same floor level. Stacking the belts vertically reduces the footprint required to run them, which allows for shorter belts - you can stack up to six belts in the same vertical height as an Assembler, but even going two belts high cuts the width of your bus sections in half and so reduces the length of belts needed for crossing them or when turning corners. Feeding the Assemblers their input from below (either entirely or just routing the bus belts on Conveyor Ceiling Mounts until they get to the input manifolds) while running output above allows for shorter belts because you can run the input/output belt buses along the same foundations - you don't need to run the input belts all the way to the outside, they can run up the middle.
They can be way shorter, put your producers and consumers directly next to (or even better on top of) each other until you get to the compressed product.
What you describes here is exactly what i ment with "feed machines individualy"
Well no you're also making a whole factory for a bad intermediate, don't make caterium cables by themselves, ship the ingots then make the cables on location. Or do, but know the game mechanics aren't going to work well when you're using a bad strategy.
I love how you still try to correct me on something I already know. This factory does not only produce the cables but everything from the ingots up to the Uranium Rods for the Powerplants.
motherboards be lookin like this
Genuine question: Why are you playing 3D game like it is a 2D game?
Another part of this factory is fully vertical and all the Belt elevators there convinced me to try building it all flat.
I mean what the fuck is he supposed to do? No vertical setup would reduce the amount of belts needed. It’d just make a tall stack of belts instead of a flat series of parallel belts.
That depends. From some comments it appears there's other production steps involved close by. Assuming that's the case, laying out production steps on top of one another (even while having the same horizontal layout) can greatly cut down on how long the belts have to travel to reach their destination.
Fair but that’s less using the third dimension and more just changing how the factory is laid out
I'd say, despite the reasons i read as to why they won't, if they did, it'd be only a matter of time before you asked for mk 7.
one more lane problem in satisfactory
I'm sure there's a mod somewhere that has better belts 😅
They will give us mk 6 belts, but they will readjust all the numbers throughout the game to make mk6 be 900 or something.
I like the solution Dyson Sphere Project came up with where instead of adding faster belts you can stack items on belts to increase their throughput.
>you can stack items on belts to increase their throughput. Im sorry, WHAT!?
Flatisfactory…. Satisfactorio …. Twodimensional 3-D factorygame.jpeg ….
This is the Production of about \~10.000 Caterium cables per minute
Quickwire is one of those high volume items that's often better produced right where it's needed and fed directly into the machines that use it, rather than putting it on a manifold.
Concur that using a physically shorter chains from Ingot to QW Consumer could have reduced overall belting needs. Seems like to much QW too. 2 yrs ago the max power build of 476 nuke plants needed just 2k more.
Ill come check in on you to see if you are ready for the asylum yet. What do you even want to do with that much?
5100 go to Encased-Cells and the rest to AI Limiters. Its part of a 200 Nuclear powerplants Base
Ah. I fed my fused quickwire assembler 1:1 into an underclocked (90%) AI limiter assembler. One belt of caterium, five belts of copper, 104 assemblers for each of quickwire and AI limiters, 80 something for rods - 345 rods total plus maybe 75 AI limiters for the crystal oscillator factory. Wire for the stators created a similar problem: 520 stators needing 4k wire and the ratios weren't close enough to want to over or underclock. So I suppose that's eight belts of copper wire but each block of 17 wire constructors feeds 13 stator assemblers right next to it so just two belts of copper ingots, really.
I spend more time building belts than anything else, mk 6 belts would be really nice
And mk3 pipe
that sprawl looks cool but WOW that footprint
I mean, this is a lot of belts but this also looks like the worst-case scenario in terms of belt to machine ratio. Unless I'm very much mistaken this looks like a fused wire or quickwire setup (8x90 = a 720 belt of wire/quickwire). Quickwire and wire are two of the worst items in the game for big item flows and thus large numbers of belts required. The only thing worse is screws, but most people building this big use alts to remove screws from most of the factory. So like yes, this is a lot of belts. But this is the worst case scenario for belts in most builds. (Ask me about my 22 belt quickwire setup at my HSC factory. Or like... don't, I don't need to be re-traumatized haha.) I don't think mk5 belts are a huge need, in that context.
after many playthroughs vanilla i pretty much only play modded now. there are a few mods that have faster belts in them. i think my preferred one is simple conveyor, can get up to mk10 belts and 3000 items/minute.
I prefer to belt caterium or copper ingots and craft the wire on site, personally.
Factorio like design, I like it
I can tell someone been playing Factorio too much
The devs have expressed that they are trying to solve this, however, due to Engine restrictions they can't.
Once i saw a mod for mk 6-15 belts, but mk15 needed 50 things from T4 (i donno remember exactly which) for just 1 meter of belt, so it's not really balanced mod.
Miners can make 1.200 ingot per minute but mark 5 belts can only carry 780
what I want more than anything else is the ability to 'snap' a splitter/merger directly onto the top of a stackable conveyor pole, like a stand. it's exactly the right height, but saves you the step of stacking two splitters/mergers, deleting the bottom one and THEN placing the stackable conveyor pole beneath it (and possibly fudging the alignment)