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Butterfly Net?? Loads of wandering abandoned Bots

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:51 am
by Gavin Williams
Hi All,

I was doing great with my megabase in city block design and then suddenly everything ground to a halt as I realised that I had 1,000's to 10,000's of BOTS flying from one end of the base to the other carrying iron ore etc. at the same time as the trains were doing same.

I removed a few BotStations and that problem solved itself and the FPS began to recover. However, now at a few places in my base I have a big flock of bots trying to get from one place to another (carrying nothing), and then dashing back for electrical refill.
Trouble is... if I add a BotStation path to give them an extension in travel to destination, then it will overlap with all of the rest of the logistic networks and there will be 50,000 bots charging around from one end to another.

By the time my flock has got to the destination, there will be 10 more flocks in transit.

How (aside from patiently clicking on each one in air), can I do a bulk sweep gather of all of these Bots?

Thanks,
Gavin

Re: Butterfly Net?? Loads of wandering abandoned Bots

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2020 12:28 pm
by the_potty_1
Don't feed your ore into provider or storage chests? Any chests requesting ore you can probably ignore, so long as none is coming into the logistic network.

Re: Butterfly Net?? Loads of wandering abandoned Bots

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2020 12:32 pm
by Zavian
Or stop consumption by stopping research, and just wait until everything is satisfied.

But if you don't want hordes of bots flying around, then don't build large bot based factories.

Re: Butterfly Net?? Loads of wandering abandoned Bots

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2020 2:37 pm
by Gavin Williams
Yeah...after I did my first major belt based factory... I went 3mins EAST and started city block and bot based.
Everything was working amazingly until I discovered Spaghetti 2.0. The BotFest!

Now I've disconnected most of them until I can leave it overnight to satisfy itself... in meantime I've got a bit further EAST and am now keeping the city block idea, but this time will be automatically distanced so I can decide when I want networks to join.. however I'll have it centring on a middle train line which will carry mall and solar and concrete and landfill and fuel.

Then I can start to really scale... (am thinking of going back to the posts about train lengths etc... I started off with 1+4... now I'm on 2+4 with nuclear.
For the amount of circuits I reckon I'm going to need just to supply the #3 modules I will need for the megafactories I may need to either rethink my lengths, or else rethink the placement of loading.

Am thinking of a 3-wide city block, with the middle block being tightly packed incoming train stations with multiple stations for iron plates/copper

Re: Butterfly Net?? Loads of wandering abandoned Bots

Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2020 11:46 pm
by Yoyobuae
The problem is not the bots. The bots don't do anything out of there own.

You've probably setup some logistic chests somewhere in your network that are ordering bots to perform massive amounts of jobs. Since you've mentioned trains also being cause of the problem it seems you've created a loop between requester and provider chests with trains transporting things between them.

Fix your logistic chests and your bots will finally rest at the roboports. You may need to remove or reduce the request from requester or buffer chests. You may also need to replace active provider by passive provider chests.

Re: Butterfly Net?? Loads of wandering abandoned Bots

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2020 12:08 am
by Impatient
Gavin Williams wrote: Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:51 am How (aside from patiently clicking on each one in air), can I do a bulk sweep gather of all of these Bots?
You could nuke them or mass-destruct them by other means.

You can remove as many roboports as necessary so that they start dashing forward, not backward to recharge.

To avoid creating new flocks you need to identify the responsible logistic chests and set up the system properly.

Re: Butterfly Net?? Loads of wandering abandoned Bots

Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2020 1:17 am
by MassiveDynamic
I think your best and easiest solution is to split your robotics network into separate blocks. Then take another look at each block’s needs. If you have more bots than you need in any block you can either take them from the roboports manually or connect to a neighboring network that needs help.
Also you can bridge the gap between two networks with a requester chest that loads into a supply chest in the neighbor network.

Re: Butterfly Net?? Loads of wandering abandoned Bots

Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2020 8:12 am
by Gavin Williams
Thanks all... yes... the ansewr is to break up the network to smaller networks... I kept removing roboports until they gave up and went home...