This talk of exploiting things sparked a couple of questions in my head. More precisely questions about conveyors and automation.
This shows a simple one destination conveyor, that can apparently filter what it takes in. Useful for combined stockpiles I presume, but how do they deal with overflow of one resource? Lets say a factory requires iron and wood, with no proper filtering if you run out of either of them, the other resource would fill up the input stockpile and make future production impossible. Or do supplier conveyors(as opposed to those who shuffle things between stockpiles) respond to the demands of their corresponding factories? Can you "reserve" stockpile space, making it impossible to fill it with the wrong type of resources and how do conveyors react to a filled stockpile?
And how would one deal with having a central stockpile and 2 factories that require an equal amount of resources? It would work fine(I presume) when the stockpile is filled, but when it isnt, does one of the supplying conveyors get precedence and always get incoming resources? Basically is there automatic flip-flopping of supplied conveyors? Or could you construct a flip-flop gate on a single conveyor, causing it split into two factories with both getting 50% of the supplied resources? (Sorry if the flip-flop thing isnt proper terminology, I'm just thinking in terms of Spacechem. On that note you should try out Spacechem if you havent, it deals precisely with this sort of automation.)
On another note, lets say you have 2 mayor stockpiles, one on one end of the map and one on the other. Is it possible to connect them with conveyors in such a way that they would always stay balanced, or are conveyors only useful for one-way transporting?
And lastly, can you change the amount of resources that a conveyor transports, so you could change the supply depending on how much a factory requires, and according to your whims?