Factorio Forums

I don't get it, I don't get it at all..

I see only one reason why one would design their solar grids in this way.. Is it OCD-ness? Is it that the roboport in the MIDDLE of a solar grid placement so the bots can do the work laying out the grid and then the roboport NEVER gets used again? They're solar arrays, they don't produce pollution, often sitting in the corner of the factory, with no requester chests, no storage chests, no provider chests.. Not being repaired, not being added on to.... They're dead as a skull and crossbones after the grid is placed down.

Are people not interested in putting a roboport down near a walking path with solar grids on either side, so you can later come by and pick up the roboport and use it for the next expansion?


I don't get why people would blueprint or just in general build a roboport in the middle of a solar grid. Please, I would like to see any other reason OTHER THAN bots to fill out the rest of the solar grid.

Thanks for helping this clueless and possibly unintelligent (lies!) person figure one more thing out.


--iNick

Moved from Show your Creations.

Having a roboport in the middle of the grid could mean that if you need to do something at the solar farm (working on wall, defence, ...) you have an established logistic network to request stuff instead of having to extend the existing one if it isn't reaching there.

Yeah it's basically just to make building it quicker before personal roboport mk2. No reason not to, as the roboport is typically less than 10% of the whole solar blueprint cost. Plus in 0.15, Eventually you're going to tear it all down anyways for reuse once you've got kovarex nuclear, so it's not like the resource is wasted either.

One of the reasons why I would put a roboport in the middle of solar grids is (in my case) that robots at some point need a "home" for when they're idle. When you have 50-100k robots all over your bases, each roboport can only handle so many of them at once in their storage. So since I used the roboports anyway to extend my solar grid, I would just leave them there, and it provided charging stations/homes for the idle robots.

inick wrote:Are people not interested in putting a roboport down near a walking path with solar grids on either side, so you can later come by and pick up the roboport and use it for the next expansion?

Before personal roboport was a thing, I always put my roboports on a corner of the blueprint. But now I rush personal roboport and don't bother putting any in the blueprint.

They're cheap and provide easy tiling without wasting space.. drop several blueprints and walk away. Time not spent babysitting their construction can be spent elsewhere.

Also, the roboport allows your bots to fly over your solar grid without getting stuck once your base spreads out. If you leave a large dead space, bots can attempt to cross, and turn around in an endless loop. (I do wish they'd stick to the confines of the roboport range rather than take the shortest path even if they lack the power to go the distance, but they don't.)

But as greep said, solar can be made obsolete pretty fast. I think I dropped 5 of them in my current map before dismantling them for a smart nuclear plant.

I think the most persuading reason is convenience. Everyone seems to have their own ideas but basically when you go to expand your solar network the bots need to be able to access the new tile. As you generally expand off your existing solar tiles you need Roboports in them to connect to the new tile.

It means I can set up production of solar panels and periodically whack a blueprint down without having to worry about how many panels/accus/substations I have built, then run off and do other stuff while my power grid slowly expands. This is even easier now that we can do this remotely from the map.

Durentis wrote:But as greep said, solar can be made obsolete pretty fast. I think I dropped 5 of them in my current map before dismantling them for a smart nuclear plant.

And that's the reason because imho solar panels are either obsolete or nuclear reactors to fast to get if you don't care much about biters and stuff ...

In my latest playthrough of 15.x i had also only 20 or so solar panels until i researched nuclear power and go full radioactive

realm174 wrote:One of the reasons why I would put a roboport in the middle of solar grids is (in my case) that robots at some point need a "home" for when they're idle. When you have 50-100k robots all over your bases, each roboport can only handle so many of them at once in their storage. So since I used the roboports anyway to extend my solar grid, I would just leave them there, and it provided charging stations/homes for the idle robots.

Aaah, realm174 - very good point. I've never had what I called a massive base, none that has more than some 300 bots (yup!). This is a good point!

Thank you

Kajanor wrote: Having a roboport in the middle of the grid could mean that if you need to do something at the solar farm (working on wall, defence, ...) you have an established logistic network to request stuff instead of having to extend the existing one if it isn't reaching there.

Hmm, I could see this too, just not something I am typically faced with in my bases (as stated otherwise, I don't build massive bases).

Also you forget endgame power is solar. When you tear up your nuke plant you will have to put down about 1000 robot grids worth of solar. you do not really want to do that with a personal roboport.

Nich wrote:Also you forget endgame power is solar. When you tear up your nuke plant you will have to put down about 1000 robot grids worth of solar. you do not really want to do that with a personal roboport.

This depends on what your endgame is, if it's megafactory then maybe solar is a better way to go but nuclear should be fine for 99% of games.

Deadly-Bagel wrote:

Nich wrote:Also you forget endgame power is solar. When you tear up your nuke plant you will have to put down about 1000 robot grids worth of solar. you do not really want to do that with a personal roboport.

This depends on what your endgame is, if it's megafactory then maybe solar is a better way to go but nuclear should be fine for 99% of games.

I think nuclear should have a bit higher consumption and output to make it more UPS efficient. But still, no matter how big I build I will probably go with nuclear over solar. Especially when going far beyond megabase size. The time it takes to just lay down megasized solar blueprints at zoom 0.1 over and over for a gigabase would be crazy boring (even with creative mode instant blueprints it would take hours just from placing to the entities appearing if the game doesn't crash). Nuclear might require more UPS while running but you can build a 0.2 TW power plant in a reasonable time period with nuclear. With solar that would be a gigapain.

But we are getting off topic...

For games that are far into the endgame, with hundreds of rockets launched, and a huge factory..... unnecessary roboports waste your CPU time.

In multiplayer, huge unnecessary map-spanning roboport coverage will eventually make it so you have to slow the game speed for anyone to be able to join. Remove these roboports, and reduce your game's active tiles.

Idle, unneeded roboports in the middle of solar arrays makes it super easy to grief your world. Robots are deployed and on standby for anyone to logon, then quick order them to do a mass deconstruct and self-suicide of your world.