Conveyor Rail

Conveyor Rail is a transportation building used to move materials automatically to where they are needed most, reducing the amount of walking Duplicants must do. It is part of the conveyor system and is typically used to automate item delivery across a colony, especially when resources need to be routed to distant production lines, storage, or critical rooms.

Because conveyor rails move a large mass of material, they can also act as an effective means of heat transfer. In practice, this makes them useful for moving hot or cold items through a base, but their contents still exchange heat with the surrounding environment. If the goal is to approximate the thermal behavior of insulated or radiant pipes, the rail should be run under Insulated Tile or Metal Tile. Even then, this approach has a significant cost: it requires large amounts of Refined Metal, which can be difficult to obtain and may compete with other uses. For that reason, using conveyor rails as a heat-management tool can consume a lot of industrial effort.

There are also important drawbacks when transporting unstable materials. Volatile items continue to off-gas or otherwise continue their behavior while on a conveyor rail or in related containers, so manually moving them or using another transport method may be preferable. One way to reduce this issue is to route the rail through pressurized rooms or through enclosed walls, limiting contact with the surrounding atmosphere.

A notable quirk affects the rail’s heat exchange behavior: items on a Conveyor Rail exchange heat with both the tile they are on and the tile below it, even if the lower tile is heavily insulated. This makes conveyor-transported items behave as though they are partially exposed to the floor beneath them, which can be relevant when building thermal systems or moving temperature-sensitive materials.

• Conveyor Rail is ideal for automated item logistics and reducing Duplicant labor.
• It can move heat efficiently because of its high throughput, but that same property means it interacts with temperature more than many players expect.
• Running it under Insulated Tile or Metal Tile improves thermal control, but the refined metal cost is substantial.
• Volatile items remain volatile while transported, so they may be better handled by other means.
• For better thermal isolation, route rails through pressurized rooms or sealed walls when possible.