I see several arguments to not make them overlaps*, but what is the consensus?
It does not mean there is a single robotport every 50 squares, it can be a 'hub'. Two hubs are separated by a small 'no man's land' not serviced but with conveyor belts relaying stockpiles.
Should my robotports overlap?
Re: Should my robotports overlap?
It's really convenient to share a logistics network between roboport areas.
Re: Should my robotports overlap?
But the larger the area, the less control you have on particular aspects. You have to trust the robots will leap frog correctly from A to B to C and not do A to C, which will be terribly long. If I have 2 separate areas, I can have robots moving stuff from A to B while at the same time robots moving the same stuff category from B to C, in essence double speed. Plus I see in the transit area what's going on and can then conclude if a given logistic area is under too much pressure or not. With everything shared you'll have trouble identifying that.
Re: Should my robotports overlap?
Yes, forcing robots to work locally is the main reason to keep them disconnected. It just takes some effort to make each network self-sufficient.
Re: Should my robotports overlap?
Currently there is no convenient way to prevent Robots from going all over the place except of not making the logistic areas of roboports touch one another. But that also brings a lot of problems on how to get stuff transfered from one logistic area to another.
It could be better handled if either the current logistic chests would be extended in functionality, like in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21413
It basically would allow a lot more control of which chests are able to feed other chests or draw from other chests.
It's either that, or another reason why color-coded logistic networks should have been added a while ago.
Then you could set up multipe seperate logistic networks which share the same roboports and also the robots.
And maybe a global logistic network window in which you can add/delete each individual logistic networks like "Red", "Green", "Blue", etc in the area and also a bunch of sliders that basically determine how many percent of the available logistic robots in the area are dedicated to each individual network like for example "Red: 50%", "Green: 30%", "Blue: 20%".
A special Research could basically unlock more individual networks.
It could be better handled if either the current logistic chests would be extended in functionality, like in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21413
It basically would allow a lot more control of which chests are able to feed other chests or draw from other chests.
It's either that, or another reason why color-coded logistic networks should have been added a while ago.
Then you could set up multipe seperate logistic networks which share the same roboports and also the robots.
And maybe a global logistic network window in which you can add/delete each individual logistic networks like "Red", "Green", "Blue", etc in the area and also a bunch of sliders that basically determine how many percent of the available logistic robots in the area are dedicated to each individual network like for example "Red: 50%", "Green: 30%", "Blue: 20%".
A special Research could basically unlock more individual networks.
Re: Should my robotports overlap?
For the most part overlapping logistic networks work just fine. But if you want to do something very specialized which handles a lot of traffic such as a logistic-bot ore smeltery you might want to separate it off - it gets complicated if you have on the one hand a bunch of bots moving iron plates to requester chests to be loaded onto trains, and on the other hand a bunch of things requesting iron plates on the other side of the factory - you want the iron plates to take the train and be moved to closer provider chests but there's nothing in particular stopping bots flying clear across the factory go grab plates from the furnaces - and they'll also move iron plates from the providers at the destination train station to the requesters at the smelter train station (you want the requesters to only take plates from the providers at the furnaces - but the bots don't know that)
As a general rule you want to avoid possible requester/provider loops where resources can flow in one direction by train/belts but also the other direction by bots (or both directions by bots), this means being careful with resource flows (i.e. keeping it all belt based until a certain point in the chain where it becomes bot based) or having separate logistic networks, joined by trains or belts (usually trains are easier, since you can take advantage of inserter stack bonus)
As a general rule you want to avoid possible requester/provider loops where resources can flow in one direction by train/belts but also the other direction by bots (or both directions by bots), this means being careful with resource flows (i.e. keeping it all belt based until a certain point in the chain where it becomes bot based) or having separate logistic networks, joined by trains or belts (usually trains are easier, since you can take advantage of inserter stack bonus)