Routing Tube

The routing tube allows you to override normal routing behavior and tell it where you want items to go.

Configuring
The routing tube has 9 filter columns. Each of these columns can support 4 different types of filters and can specify a direction, and color.

By default, all columns are closed meaning they will be ignored. Left clicking on a direction button (the first button below the filter slots) will cycle between the following directions: Closed, Down, Up, North, South, West, East, and Any. Right click will cycle through them in reverse order and Middle click resets it back to closed.

To use a filter column, you must set the direction to something other than closed. Note that the tool tips for the directions are colored (except Closed and Any). These colors correspond to color bands on the connections between the Routing Tube and other tubes / inventories.

The color buttons (below the direction buttons) are used to paint items as they are assigned their new destinations. Left / right clicking will cycle through all 16 colors as well as no color. Middle click resets the color back to no color.

An empty column that is not closed will match any item, but at a lower priority.

See Filters for information on how to set filters.

Selection Behavior
When an item enters the Routing Tube, it will be matched against all the non closed filter columns. Which destination is chosen depends on what columns are matched. To determine what column is used, each column is given a score:

If the column is empty, it gets the score 0, otherwise it gets a score depending on how close to the top of the column the matching filter is. The score 1 is given for the lowest slot, and 4 for the highest.

The column with the highest score is chosen. If more than one column has the same highest score then the shortest valid path using the directions specified in all winning columns will be used. If all paths are of equal length, a random path out of the valid paths will be chosen.

Routingtube-filter-example1.pngle:
If the filter is setup as in the image ("An example filter setup") to the right, if wood enters then for the Down direction column, it will have the score 2 because is the second from the bottom. The Up column will have the score 0 because it is an empty column. Finally the North column will have the score 4 because it is 4 from the bottom.

The highest score wins so in this case the winning column is the North column.

Recipe
You will require:


 * 4 Iron Ingots


 * 4 Basic Tubes


 * 1 Filter Tube