Friday Facts #225 - Bots versus belts (part 2)

[vincenteam]

Why do you focus on the robot?


Limit the logistics chest efficiency !
Like a logistics chest cannot request more than 10 robots at the same time or every minute.

This would limit the efficiency of robot for long range, cannot be solve by simply add more robot or chest and make them less scalable.

[ske]

This would limit the efficiency of robot for long range, cannot be solve by simply add more robot or chest and make them less scalable.

Limiting chest throughput is one of my favourite methods but I think this doesn't do very much for the short range throughput. You could add a lot more chests and chain them with inserters thereby raising throughput again.

What could be done to make logistics much more space consuming and a hassle to fit in is to make the logistics chests 2x2 items. I mean it makes sense to put the landing pad somewhere. Maybe make iron/steel chests also 2x2 items to keep it consistent. They indeed do offer a lot of storage space.

Together with throughput limiting it could be good enough to even the playing field a bit.


Another thing in the back of my mind are the assembly machines. I'd very much like them to have different sizes. Like 2x3 for mark 1, 3x3 for mark 2 and 4x4 for mark 3. Then you can't simply replace them with the faster version but they offer much more versatility. 4x4 offers much more space for inserters. Add in the possibility for modules for robots (yes I do like robots after all) to deliver low frequency items directly to the assembly machine. Then it's suddenly a whole new level of tetris trying to figure out optimal arrangements.

[Dooces]

akin to the death spell only killing low/mid level monsters, why not have bots only be able to carry low/mid level items? or restrict the amount bots can carry for higher-tech items, but increase the amount they can carry for lower(est) tier items, like ore/plates? existing factories would still work, but it would be optimal to use belts for end-game designing.

[AenAllAin]

TL;DR

Stop suggesting your bot-hate problems, become other peoples' bot-love problems via not so subtle bot-nerf suggestions.

What ?

If your only path to making a game balanced is destroying the parts you don't appreciate or prefer, then the issue is more your lack of imagination than it is an issue of balance. In other words, if you were actually as smart as you think you are, then you could make belts better instead of bitching and moaning about making bots worse.

Why ?

...because, I think ruining a good part of a game to make it match a "less good" part is a really dumb way of trying to improve a game. Also, I'm tired of reading all these whiny bot-nerf posts and comments.

[Koub] Merged this topic into the FFF thread. There is no added value to let it on its own in the Suggestions section

[bobucles]

The undisputed strength of a bot network is in being able to manage a wide variety of unique items. It's very easy for some bots to handle blue circuits, nuclear power, science potions, and that recipe you always hate setting up, all at the same time. Throwing all those items on a belt would create a nightmare sushi mess. The typical casual setup is to introduce one unique item per belt lane, and mixing more items per lane becomes very difficult very fast. Bots will always have that advantage over belts, no matter how the other numbers are set up.

or restrict the amount bots can carry for higher-tech items, but increase the amount they can carry for lower(est) tier items, like ore/plates? existing factories would still work, but it would be optimal to use belts for end-game designing.

This would probably have the opposite effect of what you want. Players don't like using belts once the recipes get too high tech or niche. It's not worth setting up a belt to transport power armor or combat capsules, for example. Belts are most effective when they're moving lots of the same item like ore or steel or circuits. A huge part of the game's visual appeal is watching these items flow through your base. If you change bots into that role, then they'll compete against belts to do the same thing. The entire base flow turns into a hornet's nest of bots. If bots can't handle high tech items, you also force players to to network a handful of every other item type with belts. Players are stuck twisting huge ramen belts just to build capsules or cliff explosives or nukes. Pushing bots into a "low tech" carry mode is all bad things and nothing good.

[Avezo]

Botton line is - bots can move diagonally, belts can't. Trains can but it taxates UPS afaik.

[ske]

Botton line is - bots can move diagonally, belts can't. Trains can but it taxates UPS afaik.

You're on to something.... bots can only move downwind! HA! You need belts to bring em back!

[obuw]

For instance, add a fuel requirement; make it so bots need to refuel from a roboport, which you need to pump in with a pipe. Make different fuel types with increasing production chain complexity, so the bots start pretty slow and require better fuel in order to move faster. (Remove the bot speed researches and replace them with researches that unlock new fuel types).

They already require fuel, although not directly. They eat power from roboport, which is usually produced from fuel. About the rest of proposal, you eventually end up in the same situation as we are now anyway.

Not at all. That's like saying, hey, why bother adding intermediate recipes at all, you should just make the science packs require tons of iron and copper ore, it'll eventually end up being the same situation.

Making bots require fuel and other resources (with separate processing chains) would mean that a playthrough focusing on bots will need to worry about setting up more production chains and the infrastructure that comes with it (like piping that fuel to all your roboports).

Electricity is also such an infinite and trivial resource by the time you get robots, the electricity cost of robots may as well not exist. (Yes, I know it's high, but it's nothing your existing infrastructure can't handle most of the time.). The most important part being that electricity is renewable. Fuel and robot parts would be using non-renewable resources, which would mean a real tradeoff; drones would require a steady income of iron and copper to maintain, and would also tax your oil refineries.

[Deadlock989]

What could be done to make logistics much more space consuming and a hassle to fit in is to make the logistics chests 2x2 items. I mean it makes sense to put the landing pad somewhere. Maybe make iron/steel chests also 2x2 items to keep it consistent. They indeed do offer a lot of storage space.

Yeah. And the player. Look at that huge inventory, with power armour it's like 3 steel chests. Make the player 5x5 tiles.

[steinio]

+1

[ske]

Yeah. And the player. Look at that huge inventory, with power armour it's like 3 steel chests. Make the player 5x5 tiles.

You have a point here. In many ways the player inventory is ridiculously big. Everything smaller would be very inconvenient, though. What would be a viable alternative while keeping the game still playable? Spidertron?

[Lastmerlin]

What could be done to make logistics much more space consuming and a hassle to fit in is to make the logistics chests 2x2 items. I mean it makes sense to put the landing pad somewhere. Maybe make iron/steel chests also 2x2 items to keep it consistent. They indeed do offer a lot of storage space.

Yeah. And the player. Look at that huge inventory, with power armour it's like 3 steel chests. Make the player 5x5 tiles.

Very convincing idea - do not stop at moderate nerfs, thinking big is the key. The logical structure of your proposal is also way better than most other suggestions in this thread. But please make the power armour a 5x5 item in inventory as well, because it is the same size as the player (obviously). Hence the power armor exactly fits the inventory and nothing else. It would really make sense, that carrying such an expensive high-tech-item without actually wearing it leaves no space for your other stuff like a tank and a few hundred chemical labs.

[Caine]

I wish I had a penny for every "don't nerf bots, buff belts" post.

This does not belong here, it is not a suggestion. You should have posted it in the FFF threads.

[bobingabout]

Why do you focus on the robot?


Limit the logistics chest efficiency !
Like a logistics chest cannot request more than 10 robots at the same time or every minute.

This would limit the efficiency of robot for long range, cannot be solve by simply add more robot or chest and make them less scalable.

wow... that is such an unbelievable massive nerf, I don't even know where to begin. even 10 robots per second would be a massive nerf, I have this one factory, sure, it's modded, but a single assembling machine can fill 3 output chests with stacks of product within seconds, and we're talking big stack size 200 stacks here, so that's 9.6k items per chest. 3 of them in seconds. that requires a lot of throughput, I have bots constantly on both the input and output. Limit that to 10 bot interactions per minute? that factory would become pointless

To note, when I do actually need massive throughput, I don't use bots, I don't use belts, I don't use trains... I just chain inserters and chests. Stack inserters between chests can move items at an unbelievable speed. Belts slow the inserters down


This is one reason why I'm for base game loaders, and faster belts and inserters, I think it would work better in the long run.

And yes... Make loaders consume electricity(Like inserters, there's no reason why they shouldn't cost electricity), and cost a fortune to build(at least increase their cost), they'll still be worth it.

[Deadlock989]

Very convincing idea - do not stop at moderate nerfs, thinking big is the key. The logical structure of your proposal is also way better than most other suggestions in this thread. But please make the power armour a 5x5 item in inventory as well, because it is the same size as the player (obviously). Hence the power armor exactly fits the inventory and nothing else. It would really make sense, that carrying such an expensive high-tech-item without actually wearing it leaves no space for your other stuff like a tank and a few hundred chemical labs.

You misunderstand me. I didn't mean that the player's inventory should be 5x5 slots. I meant that the player should literally fill the screen because it is so OP and clearly needs nerfing.

[Koub]

I wish I had a penny for every "don't nerf bots, buff belts" post.

This does not belong here, it is not a suggestion. You should have posted it in the FFF threads.

Agreed, sorry I lacked time to do it earlier.

[Lastmerlin]

Very convincing idea - do not stop at moderate nerfs, thinking big is the key. The logical structure of your proposal is also way better than most other suggestions in this thread. But please make the power armour a 5x5 item in inventory as well, because it is the same size as the player (obviously). Hence the power armor exactly fits the inventory and nothing else. It would really make sense, that carrying such an expensive high-tech-item without actually wearing it leaves no space for your other stuff like a tank and a few hundred chemical labs.

You misunderstand me. I didn't mean that the player's inventory should be 5x5 slots. I meant that the player should literally fill the screen because it is so OP and clearly needs nerfing.

Why not all of that . Scale the player, the inventory and the armor to 5x5. That would be finally some consistent and really logical design.

[Saltana]

So what I'm taking away from this is there are three main complaints about bots. The favored method to deal with this seems to be belt stacking, but I think you can fix this by adding a similar but new form of endgame transport: Quantum Pipes
Issue:

Bots are less UPS intensive-
Bot setups offer higher throughput density over medium AND short distances
Bots can simplify gameplay, ostensibly making it less rewarding.
1 and 2 make bots the go-to option for megabases.

Solution:
Quantum pipes- Basically acts like chest with a throughput limit.
Quantum pipes have a high base energy cost, with a smaller but exponential increment based on size. Throughput also depends on size (scaling less than energy requirements), giving them a medium range sweet spot.
Bots will always be easier to use, but the belt mechanic remains competitive into the endgame.
Megabases will naturally tend to use of pipes if they're optimal for UPS, but if they're balanced so bots are better for short range unloading/loading and low volume exotics, both should see use.

Belt stacks could be nice, but I think Qpipes would be different enough to actually require a different optimal design to belts and feel like a new unlock on the tech tree. That's where the fun in Factorio lies, coming up with new layouts and improving on them; once that's done it doesn't matter if a factory uses belts or bots, you can blueprint and spam it everywhere. For me, Factorio is a game about solving engineering goals by taking tedious repetitive tasks and trying to automate them as much as possible (wait, is that still a game?).

Visually they could still be satisfying like belts, maybe items go through a wavy-looking filter and are shown moving from source-> consumer, slowing down and vanishing as they reach it.

Not really sure about the name, but it's just a suggestion after all!

[Nomadic Steppe]

The problem of the balance between belts and bots has many ways of seeing, the developers believe that the bots are very strong, you can nerf the bots, I only play mega base and I do not play with bots in mega base because I see them easy but I think they are already fine as they are now.

I believe that the solution is to improve the belts, not nerf the bots, and the stacking in belts is the solution.

There is an infinite technology that improves the speed of the bots, now it lacks an infinite technology that improves the belts, and the solution would be an infinite technology that increases the maximum stacking of a belt.

If you play with bots, you improve the speed, if you play with belts, you improve the stacking.

In addition, stacking reduces the total number of belts needed for a mega factory to work. with fewer belts the CPU load is lower and simplifies factory zones where 2 or more blue belts can not deliver enough material.

Excuse me if something is not understood, my English is regular.

[Tricorius]

If you play with bots, you improve the speed, if you play with belts, you improve the stacking.

I’m actually leaning toward some sort of belt stacking being a good option that can actually bring an unlimited research tech to help belts too.

While I am very Pro-bot, I still like belts as well. I believe the best factory setup should be a mix of all three core transport methods (belt, train, bots).

And I think if the dev team is serious about a balancing, they should take a look at beacons and power.

I think that laser turrets vs ammo turrets are a little too in favor of laser turrets (but I actually also think this is more of an issue that power just isn’t tough to produce at scale after a certain point). That said, I love the logistics puzzles of ammo turrets, so I tend to use those more (similarly to how many feel bots are less of a challenge than belts).

I also still think the military stuff isn’t really well balanced. It is *better* but there are still some useless items (in most games). Although I have to admit I considered setting up some manufacturing for tank munitions in a current death world that I nearly borked. So I have no issue with some things mostly being around for certain niche uses.