Friday Facts #224 - Bots versus belts

[MeduSalem]

Personally I don't understand this "buff the belts" argument. What is the problem with current belts? You upgrade yellow to red, red to blue and then you put down multiple blue.

Yeah, belts aren't the thing that needs buffing, its belt -> container insertion.

LOADERS!!!

Except people complained that belts would be overpowered and it would make robots useless.

Pointless anyways ever since Stack Inserters.

Now if you want even faster insertion the Assemblers/Recipes just can't keep up.

The only place where it would help a little bit are ugly ones like Copper Cable/Green Circuits... but I don't know if that makes it worth it to have loaders which take up this much space.

[Engimage]

I am all for loaders in late game (same as bots)

but I don't know if that makes it worth it to have loaders which take up this much space.

If loaders were like THIS it would totally make sense
Or at least 1 tile long
Also with a possible introduction of boxing/stacking loaders would be a really nice compliment allowing smooth transition between stacked/unstacked belts

[svalorzen]

I haven't read the whole thread, but here's my 2 cents on the Bots vs Belts question:

I too am one of the people that thinks that bots are way too powerful to be fun. At the same time, I think the concept of bots really helps towards the endgame, where creating a belt-only solution for some recipes would start to require massive refactorings or extremely long belts that go around everything else. This is also an important fact to take into consideration since I don't think one would want to force people to have to memorize all recipes in order to correctly plan for the future without the need for refactorings.

At the same time, building bots just gives no challenge. You just dump a bunch of roboports, and as long as you kind-of cover your base with the orange field, you're done. It gives no challenge. An idea would be to limit the ways in which the robots can move from a roboport to another. Maybe they have to transit directly from a roboport to another, so you need to try to build roboports organized in an efficient tree to minimize the time bots spend in flight. Another would be to create separate robot networks, where each can contain a maximum number of roboports, and where each network cannot intersect with another. This would require building exchange hubs between robot networks, and would make it impossible to just have a huge network for everything which does not require intermediate steps anywhere.

[Rylant]

For belts. Something else I think would help for consideration. Allow blue belt undergrounds to be able to weave with other blue belt undergrounds. You could have, in a line, B1 underground, B2 underground, B1 underground, and B2 underground. The B1 undergrounds are all connected to each other, but don't interfere with the B2 undergrounds. That way you could do underground belt weaving without having to go Blue/Red/Blue/Red/Blue/Red. You could go B1/B2/B1/B2/B1/B2, etc.

Rylant

[Pascali]

Bots vs. Belts

Maybe you can make a kid-mode or a creative-mode(like in minecraft) - there you will have bots. In normal games, you won´t have them. Or only some to give the player things and repair bots. But they only work at day. Maybe there will be a few fabrics that are running with bots. And another few that are running with bots, but less ineffective then with belts. So you can set them up first with bots and later improve the setups with belts.

Cliffs are making bots again more overpowered. But that´s not the mainthing: Bots are Boring! It´s like an aimbot in a shooter.

We discused the topic alredy here: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=53908

[js1]

Just looking at the tech tree, and I think also (although obviously it doesn't solve the problem) logistic bots should probably depend on Logistics 3 (unlike construction bots).

I still think the best would be to have an enforced delay needed for each bot to load/unload at logistic chest, (with reasonable default that would make belts more competitive for high throughput) and they would queue. If this delay could be set in settings or through mod (to 0), then people could easily change it and have their megabases as they do today.

[bobucles]

LOADERS!!!

Except people complained that belts would be overpowered and it would make robots useless.

Those were the good ol' days, weren't they? I bet that argument existed before unlimited bot research, though. Now that bots have unlimited research and no other transport system has an equivalent option to compete, bots were destined to win sooner or later.

I have serious doubts that the "super mega bot base" is a real issue at bot speed 5. The bots simply aren't fast enough to supply a high beacon base. They don't get crazy until players launch dozens of rockets to get speed 12 and beyond. At that point those simple +240% bots are now +700% bots! When bots are moving 3 times faster than the devs ever dreamed of, crazy things were bound to happen. There is definitely some blame on the tech tree here.

[Løys]

I think you should keep both bots and belts, but maybe nerf bots a little bit and make belts more fun to use by making more types of belts even though I cant think of anything more to do with them than making them faster and carry stacks. You could maybe make it possible for the players to decide where the inserters drop the items (right or left side on the belt).

[Tricorius]

Someone out there has to have a few screenshots of a belts-only factory that can (let’s keep it simple) repeatedly build and launch a single-silo rocket at full speed (without starving the rocket of any building material it needs). I don’t even care if it is beaconed. As long as the silo isn’t waiting on anything.

In the spirit of “pure belts Factorio” I want to see what the belt bus and feeder systems look like.

After all, it is perfectly acceptable to just build out and get additional throughput without beacons.

[Zavian]

I'm working on designing a belt based 1k/minute factory. But it won't use a main bus, instead it will have multiple train stations delivering iron and copper where it is needed. Most modules will make their own green circuits. I really don't want 30 blue belts of iron, 26 of copper and 20 of green circuits.

Here is a screenshot of a red + blue circuits module. (Note that I'll need over 4 times that many red circuits, and around 50% more blue circuits. That screenshot comes from a quick build I did earlier to show something to someone else).

red_blue_Circs2.png (5.73 MiB) Viewed 7380 times

[TiMatic]

Someone out there has to have a few screenshots of a belts-only factory ...

Here my wait free belt based rocket production. Delivery at top, rocket launcher at bottom (belts are yellow). Its not completely bot free, because I use them for repair, but not for production.

thumb1.png (38.74 KiB) Viewed 7352 times

Open large map view

1RocketBase.png (430.52 KiB) Viewed 7375 times

thumb2.png (43.07 KiB) Viewed 7352 times

Open large belt view

BeltCore.png (4.84 MiB) Viewed 7363 times

[Horde Commander]

I find that Bots are extremely useful, but the power costs are insane. Being able to expand is at the heart of Factorio, and Bots help you do that.

I find that bots are good for integrating into a clunky base to get it working better. Then using them to modify the base to be more efficient usually using belts.
I prefer using belts in satellite bases, and only construction bots for long distance updates (new mining advances and repairs).
I Use Logistics Bots usually only in my Main base, and in bases that will supply Players with Equipment.
With the new Cliff addition, I also use them to supply Turrets on top of cliffs.

I agree that bots, with enough power (which as stated by the devs is really easy to do), can replace Belts all together, In my main base I have previously done this a few times, and despite the novelty of doing it once or twice, is pretty boring (Despite how much I love bots, and how enjoyable they are if you don't convert everything to them).

The Method for solving the problem though does not need to come in the form of nerfing Bots, that will just make bot players upset, and will hinder a enjoyable and versatile aspect of the game.
The change should reward Belt use, which will make everyone, including Bot players happy.
-A Simple concept (though probably a pain in implementation), is to allow Belts to use Modules. Maybe make some specifically for them. I know I would love faster Belts, mods that allow them to pull from or directly add to storage, or for the ability to move stacks of materials. I also love customization, and the price of thinking about what it costs and what I can get from it. Since they don't have Energy costs or Pollution, you can utilize a speed loss for different effects.

[Goldminer]

I think that there is only one Way to get both factions satisfied: Make it an Option play robotfree Games.

You dont have to mess around with anythin. Make no one angry. But you settle down both ways to Experience by the Players decision.

Does anyone mentioned this? Maybe, dont read much comments ;>

I would like some real differences. Maybe using a Teleport-Module Belt to compensate Robots in a way? Double or Quadruppled Beltsystem in one Space or such things.


And one other thingy ... You guys know what to do after Factorio?

I would like to see you designing a Game like Timber and Stone. So many tried, so many failed in one way or the other... I think you can do it and many many people out there wayting for a game like timber and Stone in high quality big population and with at least some! content ...

[TiMatic]

I think that there is only one Way to get both factions satisfied: Make it an Option play robotfree Games.

"Robotfree" is only an option for very few people, because there are a lot of belt players like me, who wants to use robots, but only for repair or some occasional services. So the option should be more like a numeric limit and not like a yes/no-checkbox

[EntroperZero]

I don't know if anyone is still reading these, but here goes:

I really like belts, and I really like bots. Belts obviously pose more interesting design challenges, but there are clearly design challenges when using bots, as well. Where to place roboports, requester and provider chests, and beacons, how to move parts in and out of assemblers as quickly as they can be consumed and produced, how to move the products where they need to go, whether to have separate networks, etc. There's plenty of creative things to do with bots.

I think bots let you scale up more easily, as you can build more densely. You can't do anything with bots that can't be done with belts, you can just do it smaller. I wouldn't want to see logistics bots completely removed; I think they've become an important part of the game, and I don't think they harm the gameplay. I don't think they even lower the net creativity, they just let you focus your creativity elsewhere.

I really like the suggested idea, though. Having logistics to and from the player, and provider chests, but no requester chests. Maybe requester chests should be even later on the tech tree than it is now, but I don't know the whole shape of the tree, or what other prerequisites would make sense. Or perhaps they could be enabled with a mod (in fact, I'm sure someone would publish this mod within hours, if they were removed from the base game).

The one negative aspect of logistics bots for me comes in multiplayer games. As soon as logistics is researched, without a doubt, players start dropping requester and provider chests all over the map, and building little mini-factories to produce things, with no organization. It gets out of hand immediately, you start having production shortages all over the place because bots are grabbing your stuff and shuttling it off to ten different locations that you don't know about, and are difficult to even find. So it can become quite difficult to keep your production machine well-oiled. Most of the disagreements I see between players are of the nature "stop requesting blue chips, we need them for modules" or "why is yellow science stopped AGAIN?", etc., and it's often because of "rogue" bot networks. At least with belts, you can easily see where your stuff is being sent, and you're kind of forced to build in a more organized way, whereas with bots, you can still build stuff that works, even if it's total spaghetti (a Flying Spaghetti Monster of logistic bots!).

[wwdragon]

Belts are only fun when trying out the first few of them.
As the base scales up, the annoyance of them goes up in proportion.

Getting to bots is GREAT because it allows redesigning the base to actually work efficiently with space and to expand much faster.
The way bots start off sucking now is really annoying; They should be vastly more powerful to start!

Another way to make them better is to provide a cheap to produce module that allows linking 'zones' together without needing power, nor anything else.
That way if I have a two part base, with a large zone in-between them, then I can link it together without using a ton of the normal, super expensive drone recharge buildings.

[Faen]

I feel that bots lack complexity. You begin the game mining manually, then you put down some miners, then attach them to furnaces, add belts, get power, make asemblers, find oil, refine... and then you get logistics and go back to the level of "attaching miners to furnaces", a complete drop in dificulty. I dont want bots to be nerfed, I want to make them a bit like nuclear is to coal, more powerful, but more complex.

[Alyssa]

I am I the only one that think this whole argument is pointless?

This is a sandbox-type game,sandbox games are about giving the FREEDOM to the player to decide whatever HE WANTS.

I don't care if bots are overpowered or not,you shouldn't ever considering taking away the CHOICE from the players, ever.

And no, mods are simply not the answer to everything. Bots are in the official game, and they should stay there. You don't like them? *mind blow* then DON'T use them *problem magically solved*

[svalorzen]

I am I the only one that think this whole argument is pointless?

This is a sandbox-type game,sandbox games are about giving the FREEDOM to the player to decide whatever HE WANTS.

I don't care if bots are overpowered or not,you shouldn't ever considering taking away the CHOICE from the players, ever.

And no, mods are simply not the answer to everything. Bots are in the official game, and they should stay there. You don't like them? *mind blow* then DON'T use them *problem magically solved*

Unfortunately this argument doesn't really hold much water. One of the things you buy with a game is the game design, and an important part of game design is balancing. By your logic, you could stuff whatever inside the main game since "it's a sandbox game". But the fun of the game is making it work inside the rules and constraints of the game, which is why people spend so much time on "tricks" such as the underground belt compression: because it improves your designs without going outside the features of the game. When you start disregarding that part, you might as well just make an engine and let everyone decide what to use.

Customization is important, but having a good game that stands alone by itself, and that new people can play without the need of knowing that "hey everything is unbalanced because you choose what to do" is important too.

[Alyssa]

Unfortunately this argument doesn't really hold much water. One of the things you buy with a game is the game design, and an important part of game design is balancing. By your logic, you could stuff whatever inside the main game since "it's a sandbox game". But the fun of the game is making it work inside the rules and constraints of the game, which is why people spend so much time on "tricks" such as the underground belt compression: because it improves your designs without going outside the features of the game. When you start disregarding that part, you might as well just make an engine and let everyone decide what to use.

Customization is important, but having a good game that stands alone by itself, and that new people can play without the need of knowing that "hey everything is unbalanced because you choose what to do" is important too.

You literally said "rules and constraints of the game" about a sandbox game. Which is like saying "We need violence in kid's games".

Just no. That's not how sandbox games works.

You talk like everyone is FORCED to use bots for whatever reason, you talk like everyone just go with the most convenient way, you talk like nobody has the creativity to do things his own way no matter how "less convenient" it may be.
I'm that type of player, I do all sort of weird and often very "non-optimized" gameplay because I like to do things my way.

Hey while we're at it, let's remove the "Sandbox Mode" from the game, it's unfair that people can just place any building without farming the damn resources.