Ideal robot birth clinic anyone?

[brunzenstein]

Im looking for a clever setup for a automated producing logistic and construction robots (with a fixed equivalent) which are self installing themselves into the Roboprort system.
Currently I do this with red circuit wired inserters and requester / provider chests .
Anyone with a clever set / screenshot?

[Deadly-Bagel]

That would depend on what you're trying to achieve.

A typical setup would probably involve having a production of both bots that is inserted into a roboport when there is a demand. You can check demand by connecting a roboport to the circuit network and selecting the option to send robot count, for a "smart" setup I would have combinators inserting robots if available robots is less than 5% of total robots.

[brunzenstein]

That would depend on what you're trying to achieve.

A typical setup would probably involve having a production of both bots that is inserted into a roboport when there is a demand. You can check demand by connecting a roboport to the circuit network and selecting the option to send robot count, for a "smart" setup I would have combinators inserting robots if available robots is less than 5% of total robots.

Currently I'm doing something similar - I'm looking for a elegant solution where robots are inserting new robots into the roboport autonomous and not via a requester chest / inserter combo.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Only way to deploy them automatically is via an inserter into a Roboport. Otherwise they're just treated as items.

You don't have to use a requester chest however, you could have a roboport (or a series of them for large factories) at your production of robots. Doesn't hurt to have extras in the network, as long as you have the room for them. If you're okay with a more passive system, or you have a lot of space, you could insert directly from the assembler into the roboport. Alternatively you could have a belt line to the roboport but tbh that's probably going to have more bots lying in storage (on the belt in this case) than the logistic system.

[brunzenstein]

If you're okay with a more passive system, or you have a lot of space, you could insert directly from the assembler into the roboport.

That was it - thanks - I overlooked the wood for the trees

And that from steam daniel0674 too:
Alternatively you can solve this with combinators:
Set the roboport to Read Robot Statistics with signal C for Total Construction Bots and L for Total Logistic Bots.
Put down 3 decider combinators and set the parameters (set output to 1 on each of them):
C < L and output C, L < C and output L, C = L and output C
Connect the inputs to the roboport and the outputs to the inserters.
Set the construction robot inserter to C > 0 and the logistic robot inserter to L > 0.
Picture: http://puu.sh/qhsYu/bcf66baaa9.jpg

[zebediah49]

I generally use the minimalistic solution of one requester chest, one roboport, three assemblers, and 7 inserters. requester chest feeds all three assemblers; frame assembler feeds both robot assemblers, and the robot assemblers directly dump into the roboport. I have found using "free logistics < 10 --> add more logistics" and "free construction < 10 --> add more construction" to be fairly effective. Larger numbers could be appropriate for a bigger factory. Optionally, a passive provider chest can stash spare construction bots for me to use in personal applications.

It's small, convenient, and I can pretty much just set it and forget it for an entire game.

[brunzenstein]

I generally use the minimalistic solution of one requester chest, one roboport, three assemblers, and 7 inserters. requester chest feeds all three assemblers; frame assembler feeds both robot assemblers, and the robot assemblers directly dump into the roboport. I have found using "free logistics < 10 --> add more logistics" and "free construction < 10 --> add more construction" to be fairly effective. Larger numbers could be appropriate for a bigger factory. Optionally, a passive provider chest can stash spare construction bots for me to use in personal applications.

It's small, convenient, and I can pretty much just set it and forget it for an entire game.

Screenshot?

[zebediah49]

I generally use the minimalistic solution of one requester chest, one roboport, three assemblers, and 7 inserters. requester chest feeds all three assemblers; frame assembler feeds both robot assemblers, and the robot assemblers directly dump into the roboport. I have found using "free logistics < 10 --> add more logistics" and "free construction < 10 --> add more construction" to be fairly effective. Larger numbers could be appropriate for a bigger factory. Optionally, a passive provider chest can stash spare construction bots for me to use in personal applications.

It's small, convenient, and I can pretty much just set it and forget it for an entire game.

Screenshot?

The roboport would normally be two spaces further right, to make a nice, symmetric square with regular inserters, but it needed to reach a little bit so I used the long inserter instead.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I have found using "free logistics < 10 --> add more logistics" and "free construction < 10 --> add more construction" to be fairly effective. Larger numbers could be appropriate for a bigger factory.

This is why I would suggest calculating 5% of your total robots and comparing to that. You'd only need a single arithmetic combinator ([signal] / 20) for each robot type. Or hey, if you want to get advanced you could set up a circuit network to calculate how many more robots are needed (easiest in negative form to represent demand), and remember that number. If a lower number (more required robots than in memory) comes up, remember that instead. Set the inserters to pulse their contents to count off the demand as they meet it. This would be extremely powerful in logistic-heavy factories.

[brunzenstein]

I have found using "free logistics < 10 --> add more logistics" and "free construction < 10 --> add more construction" to be fairly effective. Larger numbers could be appropriate for a bigger factory.

This is why I would suggest calculating 5% of your total robots and comparing to that. You'd only need a single arithmetic combinator ([signal] / 20) for each robot type. Or hey, if you want to get advanced you could set up a circuit network to calculate how many more robots are needed (easiest in negative form to represent demand), and remember that number. If a lower number (more required robots than in memory) comes up, remember that instead. Set the inserters to pulse their contents to count off the demand as they meet it. This would be extremely powerful in logistic-heavy factories.

Perfect - pls give me (us as not everybody is a math buff) a helping hand setting this up - thanks in advance.
Learning by doing -. with your kind help will do it

[Deadly-Bagel]

I'm intending on doing a logistic-only run on 0.15 - absolutely no laying of any kind of belt at any stage of the game - which will definitely require I have this sort of system in place. If I get time before then I'll play about but right now I have rather limited time with my personal computer.

The simple setup should suffice for most purposes, which is to connect a Roboport to an Arithmetic Combinator, then to the inserter(s), repeat for the other type of bot.

Note I don't have access to Factorio right now so can't remember what the default signals for robot counts are, but it's all interchangeable.

Roboport: Send robot counts | Total Logistics: A | Available Logistics: B | Total Construction: C | Available Construction: D
Arithmetic Combinator: A / 20
Inserter(s): B < A (inserting logistics bots)
-----
(Roboport as above, doesn't have to be same one)
Arithmetic Combinator: C / 20
Inserter(s): D < C (inserting construction bots)

This would work best either with a buffer of say 50 robots, or a decent production of each type because once the current robots go back into storage the demand for robots will disappear and they'll stop being added, so you want to be able to fulfil at least some of that demand as it arises, though it's a good way of limiting growth such as you walking into base with 2,500 alien artefacts and 1,000 wood in trash slots.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Okay I made a really simple and efficient "lowest number rememberer". It's pretty easy from there to connect it to the roboport and inserter, need one for each robot type.

Note the Roboport needs to be connected to an arithmetic combinator first to take [Total Robots] / -20, then add the output to the available robots. Provide that number (which represents demand) to the linked setup.

[zebediah49]

Taking a minimum is an interesting way of doing it. Personally I've always viewed the fact that the unbuffered robot production system can deliver ~4 robots for any given demand peak to be a feature, rather than a bug. This means that burst loads (such as dumping the inventory of a just-returned player) has a minimal effect on robot count, and it requires sustained use to appreciably affect the robot count.

[Deadly-Bagel]

It depends on what sort of setup you are going for. I put in one of my previous posts that the demand fluctuation mitigates expansion in that sort of scenario, however if you are doing a heavy logistics run you don't want your factory to shut down because you walked into it so it depends on your situation really.

EDIT: I've been playing around with this and duh duh duh your bot ccount can only expand by 5% at any given time. So if you have 100 robots, and the demand momentarily drops, only 5 more will be inserted. So there is still an element of slow growth, it's just a bit quicker to respond to demand peaks.

Robot Demand Calculator

Robot Supplier.jpg (303.53 KiB) Viewed 4481 times

Doubled up the circuit, one for each robot type, and successfully grew 20 construction robots to 170 by putting loads of ghost stuff down then deconstructing it. Note it won't work for very small number of robots (< 20 I think?) because of rounding.