Personal Roboport should come before Roboport

[cogwheel]

I think it would fit better with the way other tech progresses in the game:

You start out having to chase your slow moving bots around but otherwise benefit from strength in numbers (and blueprints). Even ten bots to help out during early oil expansion would be a huge quality of life improvement, while still requiring active engagement. Later you graduate to standalone roboports to fully automate further construction and logistics.

The way it is now, regular roboports take so much investment, you have people building one and using it like a personal roboport until they can either build the personal or finish a real bot net.

[ssilk]

This is a balancing question. Moved from Suggestions to Balancing.

[person3triple0]

Doesn't that go against other tech though? You have to research lasers before personal laser defense, and batteries before accumulators. It makes no sense to have a small version of something if a bigger one didn't exist beforehand.

[cogwheel]

Doesn't that go against other tech though? You have to research lasers before personal laser defense, and batteries before accumulators.

That's a surmountable game design challenge, not a flaw in the suggestion. Clearly something like this would take more than just swapping the two researches, possibly involving renaming some things to make sense.

It makes no sense to have a small version of something if a bigger one didn't exist beforehand.

What exactly are you referring to? Are you saying that technology only progresses from big to small? That's only true for things that start out big that we want smaller (like electronics). We went from horseless buggies to massive earth moving mega-trucks, not the other way around. If we're talking realism, the roboport is basically just a glorified box with a charging station. The bots themselves are the advanced part. There is no reason you wouldn't be able (or for that matter likely) to build a small-ish portable roboport before expanding to the big one.

[Koub]

Usually, miniaturization comes after. One could also argue that making huge versions of standard size constructions also comes after.

[cogwheel]

Usually, miniaturization comes after. One could also argue that making huge versions of standard size constructions also comes after.

Like I said, that entirely depends on the thing. In this case, we're talking about a building with electrical plugs and maybe an antenna or two. All of those things in real life started out medium sized and then were either embiggened or emsmallened as needs developed. Giant electrical switches came after small ones. Giant steel buildings came after small steel buildings.

I feel like I'm repeating myself though. None of this is an argument against the suggestion. They're interesting design questions for sure, but not reasons to push against the idea.

[Zeblote]

I'd like this aswell. Normal roboports are totally useless at the time you research them as they can't take buildings out of your inventory to plant them.

[cogwheel]

Maybe there could be a third thing, like a Robot Control Unit or something that is both an intermediate product used to construct roboports and you can put one in a weapon slot "armed" with a handful of robots to use as a makeshift personal roboport.

[cogwheel]

Here's a first pass attempt at such a thing:

Add one recipe

Robot Control Unit

2 steel, 5 gears, 9 advanced circuits

Unlocked by Robotics, works like a personal roboport when equipped to a weapon slot. Allows control of 5 robots (so max 15 if you fill all your slots). As a balance for not needing batteries, robots launched by an RCU do not benefit from speed or capacity research.

Change recipes

Roboport

35 steel, 20 gears, 5 Robot Control Unit

There is no net difference in the cost of this compared to before the change.

Personal roboport

10 steel, 2 processing units, 2 Robot Control Units, 45 batteries

Small difference in the circuit needs (and significantly less H2SO4), but mostly very close to the original

[person3triple0]

My reasoning is twofold:
• RL - Technology tends to become smaller, and therefore easier to use
• Who gets Power Armor BEFORE robots? It's later in terms of technology AND resources! (I guess it's a playstyle thing :T)


To the Robot Control Unit:

That actually makes a lot more sense, and it follows along with real life:

Right now, we have remote controlled drones (although, you can do one or two at a time, not 5-15)
The next step for us would be to make a place (probably police or military) to store and recharge bots.
Finally, modular suits with their own portable power source can control a group of robots.

[Deadly-Bagel]

• Who gets Power Armor BEFORE robots? It's later in terms of technology AND resources! (I guess it's a playstyle thing :T)

I skip straight to MK2 power armour before bothering with robots. I don't find logistics bots to be particularly useful until I'm throwing down blueprints and constantly need restocking, and I avoid their use in production (with some exceptions such as carting iron ore around for concrete). Having said that, oil loading and unloading is ridiculously more efficient with bots but that depends on the map I'm playing on and if I run out of oil early.

Modular armour isn't particularly difficult to get reasonably early and can handle a roboport, only problem is charging and I don't want to have yet another suit of armour AND solar panels which I then either have to destroy or leave lying around. Adding the previous tier armour to armour recipes would eliminate most of the problem, either that and/or a "resource reclamation" building that returns 80% of the resources for an item or something. As it stands it just feels like a bit of a waste to have these really slow robots a bit earlier when it's costing a fair bit of resource and that's only going to be lying around within the hour. There's just no advantage to it.

Last thing I'll say is as far as I remember, there isn't a research for "Roboport". You research construction or logistics bots and you get it as a bi-product so there isn't really much point in putting the personal roboport before that because you wouldn't have anything to put in it!

[BlakeMW]

The main thing with personal roboport is it's blue science. You can make a green science modular armor setup, but the only utility component available at green science is energy shield. It's not clear to me why you should be able to make a green science shielded armor setup and not a green science builder setup (i.e. personal roboport).

[Deadly-Bagel]

It's not clear to me why you should be able to make a green science shielded armor setup and not a green science builder setup (i.e. personal roboport).

Bots build out of electric engines which require lubricant so you need oil processing regardless, and it doesn't make sense to change this.

Personally I don't really find it much of an issue. The first point of any game I wish I had a personal roboport is when I'm trying to build the MK2 power armour and associated modular components, because the modules and processing units are so expensive and require massive quantities of green circuits which I need to expand meaning I also need to expand copper smelting. This could be completely avoided if I didn't skip ahead to MK2 power armour but that's just the way I play. The exception is if I'm laying train tracks early which is soooooo much easier and faster with construction robots, but without the speed research it's still pretty tedious so I don't see the advantage of having them any earlier.

Before you start MK2 armour, your highest production of components come from iron (maybe 24 - 48 furnaces that you've already slowly been adding to manually), green circuits (perhaps 4 assemblers churning these out), and red circuits (around 12 assemblers). There's not really anything that needs more than that. Generally you're focused on producing new components and products rather than expanding what you've got.

[bobucles]

I skip straight to MK2 power armour before bothering with robots.

Guilty as charged. But this isn't a case of robots being bad. This is a case of MK2 power armor being so insanely GOOD. It should probably be a bit deeper in the tech tree to give more intermediate projects a chance.

[Deadly-Bagel]

This is a case of MK2 power armor being so insanely GOOD. It should probably be a bit deeper in the tech tree to give more intermediate projects a chance.

I don't think it even could be any deeper in the tech tree =s it requires t3 efficiency AND speed modules which are, as far as I know, the deepest component.

The answer isn't to just nerf stuff and make it harder to get, in this case it would be wiser to make the other armour tiers more attractive. How's this for an idea? Each tier armour builds into the next, and the recipe for Power Armour also requires 25 solar panel modules (as such it can provide a small built-in passive power supply). It's a highly requested change, and it does make sense that the engineer continues to improve his existing armour rather than starting from scratch every time.

What effect will this have? First of all you now have a real reason to build Modular and Power Armour. If you're going to be doing it anyway, why not a bit earlier to benefit from at least the resistances? Maybe a few shields and a roboport too, might as well since you'll use them later. The knock-on effect is that now MK2 armour research and construction isn't as high a priority since you're already partially working, and rather than sinking all that research into speed and efficiency modules you're now more inclined to first research the armour modules so you can use them sooner.

The upgrade to power armour includes solar panels so you retain the small supply of power until you can build a portable fusion reactor. MK2 armour is still pretty far off so you sink some research into bot speed first because ugh that base speed is so slow.

See where I'm getting at? Nothing is nerfed, nothing is even really buffed, it's just a simple change that drastically affects the player's priorities.