Cutter

The Cutter is a building that splits an incoming shape vertically into two halves, producing the east half on its main output and the west half on its secondary output. Its mirrored variant functions identically. The machine always performs a vertical east/west cut regardless of its rotation setting; rotation does not affect which halves are produced.

When a cutting operation severs two connected crystal pieces (or when a connected crystal piece is removed by a different halfing device), the crystals will shatter and all connected crystal pieces break. After the Cutter finishes cutting, the Shape Gravity Rules are applied to the resulting piece(s), which can cause pieces to fall or shift according to the game's gravity behavior for shapes.

The Cutter is functionally one half of what the Swapper implements; the Swapper is similar to two cutters combined with two stackers and is used when patterning requires reassembling halves without causing crystal breakage. If the goal is to keep only one half of a shape and avoid producing an unwanted second output, the Half Destroyer is the recommended alternative because it destroys the west half, runs faster, and does not create extra outputs.

Practical notes:

• The main output always carries the east half; the secondary output always carries the west half. This is true even for mirrored variants.
• Rotation of the building does not change the cut orientation or which output is east/west; place accordingly.
• Cutting can shatter crystals if the cut goes through connected crystal pieces; plan cuts to avoid unwanted crystal loss.
• After cutting, check for gravity-induced movement of resulting pieces and route outputs to conveyors or stackers to capture shifted pieces.
• Use Swapper when you need to recombine halves side-by-side without dropping them (required for some crystal-containing shapes). Use Half Destroyer when you only want to retain one half and minimize machine outputs and processing time.