Factory Linking

[Zourin]

The idea is actually really simple. Currently, inserters going from factory to factory works on an Output->Input basis. The relationship only exists between two different factories: A producer and a consumer. This is an academic basic of production as a whole.

What I'm suggesting is unlocking a relationship between identical or similar factories with allowing Input->Input transfers. This is about scalability of bulk production and making it efficient in some manner to having similar or identical production factories adjacent to one another. To prevent weird things from happening, the only consideration for this behavior would have to be a 'factory-to-factory' relationship. It would be messy if inserters started emptying factory input into a chest, for example.

This would shake up factory designs a little bit, but not be completely unrealistic. Resources come in to one factory, are shared with another factory, resulting in what is effectively a 'one input, two output' factory layout, relaying resources to another factory with the same function. Another possibility here would be for Smelters to share fuel and ore between one another, offering more creative fuel-feeding and/or smelting solutions that would improve scalability and renovation redesign (such as having furnaces spaced apart in anticipation of upgrading to electric furnaces, and using that gap-space for sharing fuel).

While an Output->Output relationship would work similarly, I honestly think it may defeat the use of belts if inserters were 'fully unlocked'.

[ssilk]

I like this idea for furnaces, or for assemblies of the same type. For different types i think it's not working, cause there are too many special cases. And it would change the game very deep, so must be researched first...

What if a new player wonders, why all his copper goes now into one copper wire assembly, but copper wire comes out from three?

[Coolthulhu]

Sounds good to me, especially if we also had output linking.

This would make fast inserters actually useful for building->building transport (as opposed to building<->belt). It would also make smart inserters' filter mode useful for more than just filtering stray coal/ores from impure ore/coal belts.
It could also help with beacons.

One thing I don't like about it is that it would make the poor speed modules even less useful than they are now.