Factorio Forums

Why do devs are surprised that bots are making belts obsolete, when they themselves worked hard to make it so?

Belts end in middle game with kinda fast, but apparently not fast enough tier. Bots become fully functional late game and can be upgraded to infinity and back.
Belts take loads of space to transport items, compared to that bots footprint is nonexistent
One unit of blubelt takes more iron than carbot and offers less prodding opportunities, and need for splitters and underbelts makes this even worse, especially since sideloading is ded.
Belts shouldn't be contaminated with mixed resources, bots don't give a damn.
When using belts at train stations you either underutilize inserters or belts, and bots don't have this problem.

Mister Twinsen, do not whine that people favor bots over belts because it was you and your friends and co-workers who did their very best to make belts a dead end of progress.
If you want to address this issue, then buff belts, because they, not the bots, are the real problem.

vampiricdust wrote: Bot throughput is already limited to the speed of the inserters being used. The only thing this would do is stop bots from being able to deliver large amounts of goods in a single burst. Logistic bots can supply infinite resources, but they only get into assemblers as fast as inserts can go. Faster input is already only achievable by spamming more boxes, out is limited in the same way.

The same throughput limit exists for belts, too. That's why throughput of logistic bots to a single chest should be lower than that of inserters (I would think it should be about basic inserter), so that there is incentive to use belts for high throughput.

Tricorius wrote:Did I miss any other complaints?

To me, it's about suspension of disbelief (and I have changed my mind on this). Optimal end-game factory that transports all material through airlifting just doesn't feel right. I think (optimal) endgame factories should use all three logistic options (belts, trains, bots) as appropriate.

POPISowyNumer wrote: If you want to address this issue, then buff belts, because they, not the bots, are the real problem.

+1000.

I'm on my first real attempt at a mega base. I normally go full logistic bots early but for whatever reason, being distracted or this thread, my base is almost 100% belts. I have bots bringing stone across the base for making rails and one train station is being kept supplied with wood to get rid of the stupid stuff and that's it.

That being said, I am really seeing the shortcomings of belts for the first time. I can't get enough iron ore to keep all my smelters (steel furnaces not electric) running and even if they do they can't compress the belts anymore and can't unload. Ditto for copper. My first setup of 2 yellow asm machines for control boards sucks up one side of a red belt of copper and starves the 4 next blue asm machines where they mostly don't run. And half of that is now that where you pull plates off the bus really seems to matter. Pulling off the right and crossing over the bus seems to give less copper than if I pull from the left and don't cross under.

I'm hoping switching to electric smelting will help. And starting to upgrade to blue in places. But really thinking that I am going to need to switch to bots to get the throughput up enough.

js1 wrote:

vampiricdust wrote: Bot throughput is already limited to the speed of the inserters being used. The only thing this would do is stop bots from being able to deliver large amounts of goods in a single burst. Logistic bots can supply infinite resources, but they only get into assemblers as fast as inserts can go. Faster input is already only achievable by spamming more boxes, out is limited in the same way.

The same throughput limit exists for belts, too. That's why throughput of logistic bots to a single chest should be lower than that of inserters (I would think it should be about basic inserter), so that there is incentive to use belts for high throughput.

The problem is that belts aren't high throughput. So you are removing high throughput and forcing everyone to use low throughput.
This is why people are saying to buff belts.

I agree that the bots are too powerful.
I would suggest early bots that could only cut trees and mine rocks.
The logistics bots might be offloaded from the vanilla game as a mod.

Well I think that now that the new FFF is out, and explains things, this topic has arrived to its conclusion.
I encourage all members to have a look at the viewtopic.php?f=38&t=56519 topic, and factor in what the devs have written to clarify the situation before reacting.
[Koub] Topic locked