Rescuing Robots

[realm174]

Hello fellow factoriorists? (Yup, just made up that word!).

Can anyone suggest a way to rescue construction robots? Here's what happened. I was expanding and building rails to distant locations. As I went, I cleared some of the trees with the deconstruction planner. At first, robots were picking up wood and dropping it into my inventory. However, some of them decided to bring them back to the main base. Back on base, I do have a request chest to drop off wood. The problem, I think, is that they don't have the "fuel" to make it back to base. So they start in that direction, and eventually run out of fuel and turn around, coming back to a nearby roboport to recharge, then they attempt to go to base again.

I suppose I could stand by the roboport and harvest them one by one, but there's about 400 of them.. Suggestions?

[mergele]

Put a roboport around the point were they start running out of energy.

[Mr. Tact]

Put a storage chest down where they are charging. After they're done, you can just pick up the chest.

[realm174]

The storage chest is usually my preferred method, but turns out it's not working in this case. The multiple roboport did help with a bunch of them tho. The other thing I've noticed, upon closer inspection, is that a lot of those robots are flying back and forth "empty handed). Those particular robots totally ignore the additional roboports I've layed down (with solar power) along the way. Those particular guys were actually building a concrete path along my rails. So what I think happened there is that they came to put down their concrete, then were attempting to head back "home" to pick up more concrete and return to continue the job. (there's a lot of concrete to lay down). I might just have to cancel the whole blueprint ghost thing and see if that'll make them head back home at all. Unless someone has another idea....