Up until now, supplying machines with resources has been done using one type of inserters, in two variants: Tier 1 copper based, and a tier 2 upgrade which requires iron but has double the speed.
[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38931510/030277ede739539e80645159bea839793e22e995.gif[/img]
They work fine, but in some situations you have several belts to supply a machine, and you had to get a little creative, puzzle the environment a bit, to get all of them to connect to a machine especially for furnaces.
[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38931510/99262b60dff3dee6aa84aa265939bcba35fb7d8d.jpg[/img]
The game now also contains a long handed inserter, both a standard version and an MK double speed version.
[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38931510/df29d45d69ace440c10d0806fced19ebddea9a7c.gif[/img]
These grab resources from one distance further than the regular inserter, effectively allowing you to run two belts in parallel and grab from both.
[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38931510/8214caaba3cc8646bef152845d07ad4bf1ee6a5c.png[/img]
Double the creativity for supplying, and you can still route resources however you want.
While adding these inserters I also improved the basic pickup animation from the regular inserters a bit, I'm quite happy with the result.
The above screenshots where posted by members of the discord community.
Getting closer to the early access release, hope to welcome you soon!