Pile Sorter Upgrade

Pile Sorter Upgrade increases the number of items a Pile Sorter can carry at once, and it also incorporates the function of an Automatic Piler. It is a progression item for improving sorter throughput rather than a general sorter upgrade, and its effects apply only to Pile Sorters; Sorters Mk.III and below are not affected.

Its behavior changes by level in three main steps. At Lv.2 and Lv.4, the upgrade improves the item pickup stack: when collecting from buildings or conveyor belts, the sorter can take multiple items of the same kind at once and carry them together. This increases throughput, but it does not change the item-stacking state itself. At Lv.1, Lv.3, and Lv.5, the upgrade improves the unload stack: when the destination is a conveyor belt, the sorter can stack multiple carried items together as it unloads them. If the destination belt already contains the same item, it may also stack the incoming items on top of that existing stack, which makes this function broadly equivalent to Automatic piler behavior. At Lv.6, the sorter becomes extremely fast, able to move items almost instantly; if the transport speed at both ends is sufficient, it can move items at 120/s regardless of sorter length.

A few practical points are worth keeping in mind:

• The pickup-stack effect only changes how many items are grabbed at once. It is mainly a throughput boost.
• The unload-stack effect matters only when the output is a conveyor belt.
• At Lv.6, the waiting time for pickup stacking disappears, so when the source is a conveyor belt, pickup stacking is effectively disabled.
• Because the details are not very intuitive from the description alone, it is easiest to understand the behavior by observing it in Sandbox Mode.

For players who are still progressing normally, the simplest way to think about this item is that it makes Pile Sorters move items faster and with larger stacks. The more advanced details become relevant later, especially when building a Giant factory and trying to squeeze more performance out of sorter-based logistics.