Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Roboports should signal when roboports drop out of the logistic network due to lack of power.

What ?

The suggestion really is that simple. It should be possible to detect a logistic network has roboports with power problems using the circuit connection of a roboport. My suggestion is to emit a signal when all roboports have power, i.e. there is no roboport that would connect to this network if only it had power.

Why ?

A roboport can emit 2 groups of circuit signals: Content and bot statistics. Both of which can be used to steer other entities. For example more iron gear wheels can be produced when not enough are available in the logistic network. Or more construction robots can be added to a roboport when not enough are available.

Both of those have a problem when another roboport lacks power. This could be due to a blackout, e.g. with solar power at night, or due to a power pole being removed. Worst case the logistic network splits into 2 unconnected parts. Now iron gear wheels stored in one part of the network are no longer reported in the other part. The bot statistics suddenly drops and only reports a fraction of the available bots. Either way the circuit signals emitted by the remaining roboports are suspect and most often useless. The automation based on the roboports circuit signal goes wrong.

So what I want to do is add a decider combinator to check for "roboports have power != 0" and disable any automation otherwise. Simply knowing when the circuit signals are suspect lets the user safeguard the automation.

I would like to suggest an alternative: Roboports have a new output variable, listed as: "number of roboports in network" that changes dynamically. It changes when roboports black out, but also when roboports are added/removed. Or, make it a checkbox and output the count of roboports based on the entity type (so mods can differentiate their different roboports)