Twinsen wrote:
Removing logistics bots from the game (Twinsen)
During more boring FFF, I like to do these gameplay rants where I share my ideas about game design. Here is one of them.
Ever since I started playing Factorio, I have thought of logistic bots as too powerful. Actually, I refused to use them thinking "surely there is some catch to this and they can't replace belts". Since then I was always a "bot hater". I believed it trivialized base building and managing belts. I also believe that building belts is way more fun due to it's inherent complexities, challenges, and emergent situations (the most common example being belt balancing).
First I would like to apologize if I offended anyone, as that was not my intention. I was simply trying to point out the silliness of telling someone *how* they should have fun. So...instead of something that can be construed as a personal-level attack let me instead debate on direct points.
I’m glad people enjoy belts. I do too, up to a point. There is a sense of satisfaction that comes from the things mentioned. The first, or second time. After that, for me, at least, it just gets tedious.
Where is that blueprint book for my belt balances. Oh, good. My 108th 6-4 balancer of this factory. Building all of that by hand, without blueprints and bots would be far more tedious.
Fun is completely subjective. My wife has a lot of fun watching vampire soap operas. I have fun making fun of all of the plots and characters of vampire soap operas. This is an activity now banned from the house. I now play Factorio and listen to podcasts while she watches vampire soap operas. We are both having fun in our own ways.
Twinsen wrote:
Bots vs. belts is a controversial subject, even in our team, but most of us believe bots are too powerful. So we did small nerfs from time to time in an effort to compensate for this, but we still keep coming to the same conclusion.
I’ve noticed. And I’m fine with nerds to balance things.
Twinsen wrote:
My argument is that bots are simply fundamentally better. Bots basically cheat by "teleporting" items, plus they are extremely easy to build and expand. This means that almost any nerf we throw at them is always solved by building more bots and/or more roboports and/or more solar panels. All of this can be done with a simple copy paste using blueprints. Plus they are even UPS friendly, so it seems like bots are the win-win-win solution.
Accepted. However, everything here, except the UPS and assumptive teleportation “cheat” points, applies to belts. I can’t help the UPS argument. Im lucky to have an excellent gaming laptop, so this is essentially a non-issue for me. (Aside: the “pneumatic tube belt” suggested in the forums would actually be more powerful than robots.)
Let’s review how I design and build an initial robot network. I use belts (and pipes) to automate the construction of pipes, gears, engines, electric engines, green and red circuits, flying robot frames, logistics robots, and roboports (that is a pretty big list, and I may have missed a few intermediate goods).
By the time I have the tech to do this, I already have most of the stuff I need built using belt arrays. But I do blueprint out a few things that are more efficient to have bots build (two suits of power armor with my standard buildouts for for a war frame and construction frame). I also convert a few arrays that are just cleaner to have bots do (rail goods, nuclear goods, etc).
Let’s contrast how I design and build out an initial belt network. I use belts (and pipes) to automate the construction of gears, green circuits, and the three tiers of belts, underground belts, and splitters. (Apparently belts are “hamster powered...? No power grid, no engines.)
/shrug
Feel free to read through the “fundamentally better” argument above. Then read back through the complexity difference between what it takes to build belts vs. bots. I have time, I’ll wait for you.
So, I count the problems with bots is that they teleport items, are too easy to build, and are better for UPS.
- Again, I can’t help fix UPS, I’m not an efficient game programmer.
- Looking at my arrays to build belts vs. bots...belts are significantly easier / cheaper to build
- I can’t help belts “teleport” items
So I’ll grant one advantage these super-“cheaty” bots allow. (And I’ll point out that I didn’t code increased carrying capacity or infinite speed research in for bots. Even then, I actually disagree with “teleport”. But I will still grant it for the sake of argument.
Twinsen wrote:
So I had this rather crazy idea of removing logistic bots from the game. Basically my idea was that construction bots would still be a thing and player logistics would still work. This would be done by:
Merging logistic and construction bots into just Flying Robots.
Removing Active provider, Buffer and Requester chests and having just Passive provider and Storage chests.
Flying Robots will do everything construction bots do now and also supply the player.
Simplifying recipe complexity a bit so the belt spaghetti does not get ridiculous.
Ok. So we remove all ability for bots to transport items for the factory. But this leaves us in a place where some recipes are too advanced and require belt spaghetti to craft. Got it. We don’t want to be rediculous.
Twinsen wrote:
Now, hopefully you aren't smashing your desk and writing us an angry email. Don't worry, logistics bots won't be removed from the game, mostly because it's a feature that has been developed and polished quite a lot. Also many players love the feature, and we've all become used to it over the years. But think of it a different way, imagine there were two parallel universes:
1. The universe we are in, where Factorio has had logistic bots since very early.
2. A universe where Factorio never had this feature. Construction bots were eventually added, and using bots to move items freely is nothing more than an idea that pops up from time to time but it's quickly discarded due to it breaking the game.
Woot. Thought exercises. Ok I’m in!
Twinsen wrote:
Which Factorio would be the best and most fun one for the players in that universe?
To be honest it's very hard to decide. I would go with the more pure Factorio from universe 2 that focuses on it's core and most fun mechanic: belts and belt logistics. I'm curious what you guys think.
I mentioned this, because I think this way often in an attempt to "make the best game ever" without being influenced by my biases of being used to some feature or style of play.
Well, assuming I’d never played with bots, I’d probably be having fun (mostly) with belts. But boy, as a lover of drones (in real life) those posts in the forums would surely be piquing my interest.
That said, I agree. I’m biased toward bots being a fun thing to play with. I understand others are biased toward belts.
I think eventually the idea of having bots would batter down my dislike of mods, and I’d probably install a bots mod.
Twinsen wrote:
But let's return to reality and the game we have now. Quite recently I actually realized that bots are not as bad as I thought. The logistics system is placed very late in the tech tree, so most of a typical playthrough will be done using belts. The fact that you get this almost game breaking feature is not so bad because it's late in the game. After this you can continue to challenge yourself and build even bigger using bots, or belts or both.
I’m still not sure I consider bots “game-breaking”. This is probably because I am biased toward liking them. But I’d love to hear from others why they are so bad. If it is just “we think Factorio is all about belts”, then I get that. It messes with design sensibilities. I’m kinda curious why they were added in the first place if the original game design was belts-only.
Twinsen wrote:
We are still looking to incentivize belt building a bit more, since it is the more fun way to play Factorio, but the question is how.
We have ideas like increasing the power consumption, decreasing the maximum stack size bots can carry to 2 items or buffing belts by adding a "stacked" belt tier.
Like I mentioned before, I try to balance things by looking at numbers and objective facts. I'm trying to determine how much better bots are than belts, so I can know if for example nerfing the stack size to 2 will have the desired effect, or just make players angry. I thought of metrics like throughput over time to set up, or throughput over base size.
But how do these metrics influence the big picture and will any of these make the game more fun in the long run?
I still think part of the problem here is the assertation that belts are more fun than bots. I’m ok with robot nerfs. I’ll take as many as everyone feels are necessary, but it still feels inherently punitive to me.
A robot network is already more costly and complex to setup than a belt network. Increasing power consumption will hurt at early- to mid-level bases. I agree with you, I’m not sure you can solve the power situation without making power across the board a lot more expensive.
A carrying-capacity reduction would help reduce overall throughput. But in and of itself I don’t think will hamper late-game factories. You can simply build more robots. This will probably just annoy or anger people who play with bots.
I think the answer is to give belts more throughput and increased variety. Those stacker belts sound pretty awesome. I should be able to push so many items through a belt that robots, as fun as they are, actually *are* an inferior option in many end-game situations.
Twinsen wrote:
We don't know the answer to these questions yet. What is your take on this bots versus belts thing? What changes, if any, could we do to make everything more fun?
Pro-bot arguments:
- The fact that they are so powerful, gives a very big sense of progression. They are behind a late game research, and gives you things that are very powerful and game changing.
- It adds large diversity to the game.
Anti-bot arguments:
- Bot bases are usually less complex and less interesting to look at, manage and expand.
- Because of their ease of use (and apparent ease of use), players tend to go to bots. We believe that belts are more fun, but we are guiding the player towards a less fun style of play.
- When you learn that bots exist and how they work, building bases with belts just seems tedious.
Bots are extremely powerful, they can do a *lot* of things. It does feel like a huge progression gate when you unlock them. They definitely add a metric bot-ton of diversity.
I tend to think my “bot” portions of my base are more complex and more interesting observe, manage, and expand. I’m still having a difficult time with the subjective reason of “fun” being a driving factor for these changes.
I feel even if I were in universe 2 and hadn’t ever tried bots, belts would become tedious. I *definetly* feel that belts are tedious since I have used bots.
This is not the fault of bots. It is the fault of belts being tedious.
My opinion is that instead of punishing our poor working-class bots, time should spent making belts better.
I just want to point out, the bots commentary in the FFF post literally started with “belts are more fun” and ended with “belts are tedious”.
I kinda wonder if you all really do like belts as much as you think you do. I’ve never once thought “boy...these bots are super tedious”. But every time I start a new map, I think “ugh...this is so slow and tedious doing things manually”.