Isolate roboports by limiting them by circuit networks

[EpicPartyGuy]

TL;DR

Restrict roboports to only connect logistic/construction networks with roboports they are connected to via wire.

What ?

I know that logistics/roboports suggestions litter the forum, but I looked through the "frequently suggested" sticky and didn't find this.

The current default (afaik, as of 0.17.54) is that roboports will automatically connect logistic and construction networks with every other roboport within 100 tiles (if their orange areas touch). I propose that if you wire them with either red or green wires (maybe also copper wires?) to other roboports, or other roboports are on the network, they have the option for "Only Connect with Other Roboports In Circuit Network". The roboports would also need to be in range as usual.

In the same vein, it would be interesting to have an option for a check mark of "Isolate this Roboport", which enables a stand-alone mode, removing this roboport from any and all other networks.

Why ?

It expands the functionality and utility of logistics while not impacting "normal" usage and planning of roboports and logistic/construction networks.



Your thoughts?

[Tekky]

Related threads:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=22737 Logistic Subnetwork
viewtopic.php?f=67&t=8905 Overlapping Logistic Network II
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=69210 Roboport networks
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=43460 Logistic Network and Logistic Chest Extensions

[EpicPartyGuy]

Okay, well my post has a method of how to implement it.

[Darinth]

No consistency with existing mechanics.

I'd rather have the ability to setup a roboport to accept a circuit signal and use it to set a 'network ID' and have all roboports with the same ID that are close enough connect. Note that the 'network ID' set by the circuit network would not match the factorio generated logistics network IDs, but would simply act as a method to control what roboports are willing to connect to each other.

[mrvn]

My suggestion was to be able to cut the yellow dashed line connecting roboports like one can with copper wires by shift clicking power poles. Add a wireless "wire" to manually connect roboports and you are set.

[Darinth]

My suggestion was to be able to cut the yellow dashed line connecting roboports like one can with copper wires by shift clicking power poles. Add a wireless "wire" to manually connect roboports and you are set.

That at least would be using mechanics similar to other known mechanics. I of course a partial to my solution, but that's just how it works.

[mrvn]

My suggestion was to be able to cut the yellow dashed line connecting roboports like one can with copper wires by shift clicking power poles. Add a wireless "wire" to manually connect roboports and you are set.

That at least would be using mechanics similar to other known mechanics. I of course a partial to my solution, but that's just how it works.

But then you have to remember all those numbers. And just you wait till you have 2 roboport networks with id 23 and when expanding you accidentally connect the two. Now go and change the ID for all roboports in one of those networks. Oh the fun you will have.

[urza99814]

My suggestion was to be able to cut the yellow dashed line connecting roboports like one can with copper wires by shift clicking power poles. Add a wireless "wire" to manually connect roboports and you are set.

That at least would be using mechanics similar to other known mechanics. I of course a partial to my solution, but that's just how it works.

But then you have to remember all those numbers. And just you wait till you have 2 roboport networks with id 23 and when expanding you accidentally connect the two. Now go and change the ID for all roboports in one of those networks. Oh the fun you will have.

If you plan ahead that's no problem -- you don't put a constant combinator at each roboport, you put one at the center of each network and wire the rest into that. Then you only have to change it one place. If you accidentally connect the two wires you'll end up with a whole new ID, which could be an issue (although it's easy enough to fix) but if you plan the numbering properly that could probably be a useful feature instead...

Also, isn't connecting networks by wire pretty much how it used to work? I could be wrong as I didn't fully understand all of the mechanics back then, but I though that was kinda how the red wires worked back around 0.13? I like the idea a lot personally... I keep alternating back and forth with each new game I play -- I'll blanket the whole map in a roboport grid, then get annoyed that my robots take FOREVER to do anything, so next game I only drop roboports where I absolutely need them, but then get annoyed that I have to constantly shift roboports and build them one at a time to expand the network...along with remembering to load up the bots if I end up with a new, disconnected grid...

[slippycheeze]

My suggestion was to be able to cut the yellow dashed line connecting roboports like one can with copper wires by shift clicking power poles. Add a wireless "wire" to manually connect roboports and you are set.

That at least would be using mechanics similar to other known mechanics. I of course a partial to my solution, but that's just how it works.

But then you have to remember all those numbers. And just you wait till you have 2 roboport networks with id 23 and when expanding you accidentally connect the two. Now go and change the ID for all roboports in one of those networks. Oh the fun you will have.

If you plan ahead that's no problem

Also, Factorio is full of magic numbers, and you either remember them, or run into pain. I don't think the game should protect you from that sort of error, as long as it is reasonably easy to resolve.

To the subject at hand: I'd rather see "circuit" wire used to connect roboports, rather than the reverse. Trying to give players control via expressing a negative is ... usually much harder to model, mentally, than a positive statement: "do connect these" is easier to know what someone meant than "please disconnect these now".

Also, per blueprints and copper wires, having it default to "connect all the things" can be a real pain in the neck at times.

[mrvn]

My suggestion was to be able to cut the yellow dashed line connecting roboports like one can with copper wires by shift clicking power poles. Add a wireless "wire" to manually connect roboports and you are set.

That at least would be using mechanics similar to other known mechanics. I of course a partial to my solution, but that's just how it works.

But then you have to remember all those numbers. And just you wait till you have 2 roboport networks with id 23 and when expanding you accidentally connect the two. Now go and change the ID for all roboports in one of those networks. Oh the fun you will have.

If you plan ahead that's no problem -- you don't put a constant combinator at each roboport, you put one at the center of each network and wire the rest into that. Then you only have to change it one place. If you accidentally connect the two wires you'll end up with a whole new ID, which could be an issue (although it's easy enough to fix) but if you plan the numbering properly that could probably be a useful feature instead...

Also, isn't connecting networks by wire pretty much how it used to work? I could be wrong as I didn't fully understand all of the mechanics back then, but I though that was kinda how the red wires worked back around 0.13? I like the idea a lot personally... I keep alternating back and forth with each new game I play -- I'll blanket the whole map in a roboport grid, then get annoyed that my robots take FOREVER to do anything, so next game I only drop roboports where I absolutely need them, but then get annoyed that I have to constantly shift roboports and build them one at a time to expand the network...along with remembering to load up the bots if I end up with a new, disconnected grid...

Set the ID by wire? Ok, I would have thought you would set it in the GUI of each roboport.

If you connect two grids then all the roboports would end up with a new ID as the sum of the old. All bots on the fly would have no more roboport to go to (still having the old ID). I guess all the bots in roboports would get the new ID (if they leave). I you disconnect then the same thing happens. Bots on the move will fly to the half of the network that still has the ID. Bots in disconnected roboports get the new ID (0).

Having to string wires pole-by-pole across the whole logistic network would suck though. It would get in the way of other wires all the time. I find it often hard enough to make things work with 2 wires as it is. If one of them is then already used for the roboport that makes it even harder. You would need to put down extra poles and run 2 green wires in parallel. Then which wire does what? Makes circuit networks even harder to grasp.

So no, please, don't. Better to add a new wire type apart from the circuit networks.

[Darinth]

Ohh god this got way more complicated than it needs to be real quick. 99% of the time, logistics networks wouldn't need any wiring either way. Their default performance in game is already generally acceptable. Connect to everything in range. The ability to manually wire them together or to give them logistics IDs via a circuit both reasonably accomplish the goals. If you can't remember a few numbers to keep logistics networks separate when needed... I think you may be delving into something that is a bit more complicated than you should be.

Nobody should be using this to manually isolate all of their networks. We need a solution that allows networks to be isolated when it's really useful, not one that will replace the entire current system.

[urza99814]

My suggestion was to be able to cut the yellow dashed line connecting roboports like one can with copper wires by shift clicking power poles. Add a wireless "wire" to manually connect roboports and you are set.

That at least would be using mechanics similar to other known mechanics. I of course a partial to my solution, but that's just how it works.

But then you have to remember all those numbers. And just you wait till you have 2 roboport networks with id 23 and when expanding you accidentally connect the two. Now go and change the ID for all roboports in one of those networks. Oh the fun you will have.

If you plan ahead that's no problem -- you don't put a constant combinator at each roboport, you put one at the center of each network and wire the rest into that. Then you only have to change it one place. If you accidentally connect the two wires you'll end up with a whole new ID, which could be an issue (although it's easy enough to fix) but if you plan the numbering properly that could probably be a useful feature instead...

Also, isn't connecting networks by wire pretty much how it used to work? I could be wrong as I didn't fully understand all of the mechanics back then, but I though that was kinda how the red wires worked back around 0.13? I like the idea a lot personally... I keep alternating back and forth with each new game I play -- I'll blanket the whole map in a roboport grid, then get annoyed that my robots take FOREVER to do anything, so next game I only drop roboports where I absolutely need them, but then get annoyed that I have to constantly shift roboports and build them one at a time to expand the network...along with remembering to load up the bots if I end up with a new, disconnected grid...

Set the ID by wire? Ok, I would have thought you would set it in the GUI of each roboport.

If you connect two grids then all the roboports would end up with a new ID as the sum of the old. All bots on the fly would have no more roboport to go to (still having the old ID). I guess all the bots in roboports would get the new ID (if they leave). I you disconnect then the same thing happens. Bots on the move will fly to the half of the network that still has the ID. Bots in disconnected roboports get the new ID (0).

Having to string wires pole-by-pole across the whole logistic network would suck though. It would get in the way of other wires all the time. I find it often hard enough to make things work with 2 wires as it is. If one of them is then already used for the roboport that makes it even harder. You would need to put down extra poles and run 2 green wires in parallel. Then which wire does what? Makes circuit networks even harder to grasp.

So no, please, don't. Better to add a new wire type apart from the circuit networks.

I don't think bots are that much of an issue. Bot gets a task, bot completes the task. If the roboport it's going to changes from network 1 to network 3 while the bot is in flight that's no problem, just let it complete the task. When it arrives it will be dispatched for network 3 tasks. Basically the roboport knows which network it is in but bots don't need to. Could end up with a mess if you accidentally connect to a network that's doing pavement and all your bots go join in, but that should be somewhat rare and easy enough to fix.

As for the circuit connections... I was thinking it'd be like other inputs where you chose whatever channel you want to use to set the ID. Same way you can already configure the channel for roboport outputs, which works well enough. If you set nothing then it's some default network that works as they do currently, but you can use circuit networks to get more advanced behavior. You can cover the distance between roboports with two large power poles so it's not THAT much extra wiring. And you *could* always use a constant combinator instead which gives the flexibility of either setting each individual roboport by hand or binding multiple to one ID or wiring up and setting them with some more complicated logic.

[mrvn]

That at least would be using mechanics similar to other known mechanics. I of course a partial to my solution, but that's just how it works.

But then you have to remember all those numbers. And just you wait till you have 2 roboport networks with id 23 and when expanding you accidentally connect the two. Now go and change the ID for all roboports in one of those networks. Oh the fun you will have.

If you plan ahead that's no problem -- you don't put a constant combinator at each roboport, you put one at the center of each network and wire the rest into that. Then you only have to change it one place. If you accidentally connect the two wires you'll end up with a whole new ID, which could be an issue (although it's easy enough to fix) but if you plan the numbering properly that could probably be a useful feature instead...

Also, isn't connecting networks by wire pretty much how it used to work? I could be wrong as I didn't fully understand all of the mechanics back then, but I though that was kinda how the red wires worked back around 0.13? I like the idea a lot personally... I keep alternating back and forth with each new game I play -- I'll blanket the whole map in a roboport grid, then get annoyed that my robots take FOREVER to do anything, so next game I only drop roboports where I absolutely need them, but then get annoyed that I have to constantly shift roboports and build them one at a time to expand the network...along with remembering to load up the bots if I end up with a new, disconnected grid...

Set the ID by wire? Ok, I would have thought you would set it in the GUI of each roboport.

If you connect two grids then all the roboports would end up with a new ID as the sum of the old. All bots on the fly would have no more roboport to go to (still having the old ID). I guess all the bots in roboports would get the new ID (if they leave). I you disconnect then the same thing happens. Bots on the move will fly to the half of the network that still has the ID. Bots in disconnected roboports get the new ID (0).

Having to string wires pole-by-pole across the whole logistic network would suck though. It would get in the way of other wires all the time. I find it often hard enough to make things work with 2 wires as it is. If one of them is then already used for the roboport that makes it even harder. You would need to put down extra poles and run 2 green wires in parallel. Then which wire does what? Makes circuit networks even harder to grasp.

So no, please, don't. Better to add a new wire type apart from the circuit networks.

I don't think bots are that much of an issue. Bot gets a task, bot completes the task. If the roboport it's going to changes from network 1 to network 3 while the bot is in flight that's no problem, just let it complete the task. When it arrives it will be dispatched for network 3 tasks. Basically the roboport knows which network it is in but bots don't need to. Could end up with a mess if you accidentally connect to a network that's doing pavement and all your bots go join in, but that should be somewhat rare and easy enough to fix.

That won't work. The big idea of roboports having an id is so that the regions can overlap without merging. That means a bot that just dropped of an iron plate in a requester chest can be in multiple logistic zones. So which roboport should it go to now? If it doesn't now which logistic zone is belongs to then you will end up with all bots going to one of the zones and the other running out of bots.

[McDuff]

Who was it who had the idea of separating the different functions of roboports up?

[slippycheeze]

Who was it who had the idea of separating the different functions of roboports up?

Well, not me originally, but it sure was me last night. In this case I wanted them split because I don't want, or need, a logistics network, but would like a construction repair network covering some infrastructure.

[McDuff]

Who was it who had the idea of separating the different functions of roboports up?

Well, not me originally, but it sure was me last night. In this case I wanted them split because I don't want, or need, a logistics network, but would like a construction repair network covering some infrastructure.

Ah, no, different thing. Someone (might have been Bob?) suggested that robot charging, robot network and robot storage should be 3 different buildings. Think you might be the first one I've seen to suggest construction and logistics should be separate.

[Serenity]

Bob's logistics mod has an option to split the roboport into three buildings. It's pretty neat as often you just need more charging

[BlueTemplar]

I vote too for thick* gold wires auto-connecting roboports (like copper wires on power poles currently do).
*their thickness would also be an indication that they won't fit on poles.

Plus, they would probably look cool, while clearly showing what roboport is connected to which one.