Logistics Module, flight path fixes and Logistics tweaks

[rebcom1807]

Not sure if this had been suggested before, but..

One of the things that I found myself doing was creating a rather significantly-sized logistics network in my base for auto-producing more or less everything I need. That is perfectly fine in its own way, but one of the more tedious things I've found myself having to do is make a requester and provider chest for each and every factory (More or less), as well as set up a buffer with the system so there is a bit in the chest in case one finds themselves needing the item but not having a whole lot in storage to build it with. My idea is to make a module that you have to research (Probably under the name of 'Manufacturing Logistics') that would allow you to put a module into a machine that can accept them (Furnaces, auto-builders, maybe labs and gun/rocket(?) turrets) that would allow logistics robots to interact directly with it, as well as let you set how many you want to keep in storage at most or set it to be an on demand thing.
What this could also do is allow one to make it so that things in the Logistics request system don't actually show up unless there is some in storage or you have the means to craft them. The reasoning here is so that you can see, at a glance, what you have set up to auto-craft and what you may need to set up. It could also allow for, if there is a shortage, items to be crafted in order of complexity as needed for a recipe, much the same way as it happens in the player's inventory.
As for the tweaks to the system in general, having a window you can pull up for an overview of what is in and around the system would be nice to have, as well as a sub tab labelled 'Requests', which would show items that the system needs but has none of in storage or in transit. Being able to give the roboports a network name would be handy as well, so that they can overlap without being in the same network.

This last one is something I ran into personally while initially hunting down Biter spawners in little laser forts that I had set up. Currently, the Logistics robots just beeline for their task without much of a care for what is - Or more importantly, isn't - in the way. I had found myself, at a point, losing hundreds of logistics bots for a reason that I couldn't, at the time, determine. After looking at it, the problem was rather clear: The bots had been flying through an area with no roboports (Because the path arced) and had been dying due to lack of charge. One thing to note is that when you're placing the ports down is that, if they are close enough, there is a little dashed line between all the ones it is in range of. I, personally, think it would make sense if the logistics robots would attempt to either A - Fly straight on if there's no dead zone or B - Follow a line from port to port until they can make a straight line that doesn't exit their safe flying zone. What this would mean is that less robots die off and lose (potentially highly expensive) items because they were too far from a port when they needed to charge.

Also, from observing an odd, if obvious, similarity for the pathing AI for robots and Biters, one can be led to assume that they, in some way, share an AI base. What this means is that one could, in theory, use the Logistics bot tweaks to give enemies a 'Hive Zone', outside of which they probably won't aggressively pursue the player unless they had been sent out for an attack. This could also give them a patrol path, in a way.. And, if one were to get really fancy, they could try to have the AI have some zones that they actively avoid - Turret clusters are the things that come to mind initially. And that's only because otherwise they will go out to attack turret emplacements that they have no hope of ever beating.. Or, when you get a base aggro'd on you because you blew up a spawner, they won't follow you to the ends of the planet and onto am active train track.


Just my thoughts.

[Garm]

Are you playing the latest version? it sounds like you dont have roboports

[rebcom1807]

No, I did have roboports. What I didn't have was roboports inside the curve along the robot's pathing.

How I had it set up was that I had my base down near the starting area.. Then, when I went hunting for artifacts (For a reactor, admittedly) and needed something a bit more beefy to help keep me alive when taking out the base, I set up a walled-off box full of turrets. That worked for the first one, went to another one. This one was more or less due north of my first position, which was a little ways northwest from my base. What this ended up meaning was that when the logistics bots came to fill up the ammo that I had requested (~200 clips of piercing, 100 flamethrower ammo) and to help fix up the walls, they were flying through a rather large area where they were not in the service zone of any roboports. As such, when they ran out of energy (Supposedly, only explanation I can thing of for 200+ robots being missing all of a sudden), they couldn't make it to a roboport quickly enough to recharge themselves and ended up dying.

For the record, playing 0.8.8 right now.

[Garm]

Well I usually dont build roboports too far from my base (furthest is usually directly at base walls) as such I've never had such problem. Besides I dont believe constricting robots to roboport are is a good solution - they are already demanding as is with extremely basic pathing, if there are actual boundaries present pathing calculations would increase tremendously.

As such I would simply suggest to use more roboports for solid coverage everywhere, without many appendages sticking out.


About 1st suggestion - I usually use storage chests for that - I limit the storage capacity for each chest to 1-4 slots in order to prevent overcrafting, but otherwise they perform quite well.

[rebcom1807]

Admittedly, I just did that to just get some alien artifacts in order to make things.. But I fixed the problem eventually.

And the idea is less limiting them to roboports and more making sure they don't fly out where they don't recharge and die.. All things considered, though, that's just an idiotproofing measure.
As for the chest thing, that does work, but there's just a large part of me that's bugged by it, because it means that you need to take up that much more space in an already-cramped area. Just thought it'd be something interesting to do.

[ssilk]

Devs already stated that this will be fixed.

Like your ideas. The idea with the requester module is really good.