Roboport extender

[diamondsaplenty]

The idea is that roboports are fairly expensive and if i want roboports like 1000 tiles away linked to my main robot network (not sure why) I dont want to put a million roboports leading the way so the idea is a single tile charging station that charges one robot at a time and allow roboports to be connected from a long distance.

Cant think of how to describe it better so i will draw it with keyboard stuff

Code: Select all

|--------------------|                      |--------------------|                                          |
|                    |                      |                    |                                          |
|                    |----------------------|                    |                                          |
|     Roboport       |        extender      |     Roboport       |                                 ---------E---------
|                    |______________________|                    |                                          |
|                    |                      |                    |                                          |
|____________________|                      |____________________|                                          |

I know this looks like trash, and i dont expect the extender to have anymore than 10 tiles on each side outward connecting them ^^^^^^(shape expected like this for orange link and green link) E=extender
I am so sorry i made this terrible post

[diamondsaplenty]

it broke

[diamondsaplenty]

how do i remove a broken post?

[Patashu]

If you want the forum to preserve number of spaces, use code tags, like so:

Code: Select all

|-----------------------------|                           |------------------------|                                                                                                          |
|                                   |                           |                             |                                                                                                           |
|                                   |----------------------|                             |                                                                                                           |
|        Roboport             |        extender      |       Roboport         |                                                                                                ---------E---------    
|                                   |_______________|                              |                                                                                                           |
|                                   |                          |                              |                                                                                                           |
|____________________|                          |_________________|            

                                                                                                |

But now it's monospaced, so you'll have to lay out your diagram in notepad or notepad++ using a monospaced font.

[Koub]

Fixed your post, OP

[Daz3]

Good idea, could we also, perhaps, increase the range of the roboports through research? Maybe as another one of the endless science sets...

[Selvek]

I wonder if the problem would be somewhat mitigated if roboport ranges actually were defined by the range a robot can travel on a single charge - which is much farther than roboport connection range. It has always bothered me that roboport range is arbitrary and does not make sense with behavior you already see out of the bots.

Right now, bots blindly head in the "as the crow flies" direction towards their target, and if they run out of juice they stop and backtrack or slowly crawl towards the nearest roboport. You notice in this that they travel WAAAY more than one roboport's coverage area before they have to charge.

If you build a roboport network in a "U" shape, bots will happily cross the open space (well outside the robo network). Depending on the size of the U, they may or may not run out of juice partway across and be sad.

So, the obvious change would be:
1) Robots plan their trip as a series of hops between charging stations, rather than blindly going straight. This will speed up latencies since they wouldn't have to stop and backtrack to a roboport all the time.
2) Roboport network connection range is limited by bot single charge range
3) Roboport build/logistics range is half of the connection range, because the bots have to fly out and back. There is no difference between build and logistics range, because there is no logical reason for them to be different.
4) Roboport logistics range to the player is awkward because the player keeps running around. But bots don't like running out of juice so they turn around once they have just enough power left to get back to the roboport. Which means that if the player is right at the edge of logistics range, they have a lower probability of logistic bots getting through than if they were closer to a roboport.
5) Ranges would now be circles. This helps mitigate OP's problem because if you just need a long line of roboports, you can put them at max distance, whereas if you need total coverage of an area you have to put them closer together to fill in the corners.

[bobingabout]

My logistics mod adds such an item.

it's over rated. It works, but my mod also adds a heap of other stuff too.

[Ghoulish]

There are a couple of mods available which do this, for example;

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/DJDaemon ... 20Extended
https://mods.factorio.com/mods/Peppe/Robo-Charge-1x1

Have used both before, and they are quite useful, and as such feel that something similar would indeed be a neat addition to vanilla.