Factorio Forums

I've always found it odd that robots take time to repair objects, but can deconstruct them instantly. It seems like they should have a mining power of, say, 4, to match a player with the steel axe.

Adding a mine-speed to bots may be more complicated(lag inducing) than it's worth, but it would be cool to see bots out busy deforesting instead of just booping away the trees.

Yes, I agree that it looks a bit strange that bots do their work instantaneously.

However, it looks just as strange when a player builds stuff instantaneously (which is unlikely to change).

While it may look strange , just imagine a world where you have to wait a second on each tile to be built ... just a pain in the ass. On the other hand, it wouldn‘t hurt at all if the bots take a moment to deconstruct something, as you can simply build thousands of them anyways, and can do whatever you like while they do their job.

Zool wrote:While it may look strange , just imagine a world where you have to wait a second on each tile to be built ... just a pain in the ass. On the other hand, it wouldn‘t hurt at all if the bots take a moment to deconstruct something, as you can simply build thousands of them anyways, and can do whatever you like while they do their job.

Yea. I've just kinda accepted the instant build as convenience for the player.

And while you can easily build a bunch of bots a lone player with a roboport can deforest way too quick.

n7m6e7 wrote: And while you can easily build a bunch of bots a lone player with a roboport can deforest way too quick.

I mean, even if robots couldn't deconstruct trees instantly, throwing grenades non-stop would be about as fast as using bots, and even later on you can use nukes.

@Impetus Maximus. I think you skimmed past the first post. This thread is about adding a delay to construction robots deconstructing ("mining") buildings etc.

I think this is a balancing issue, but my 2 cents is robots could easily be considered stronger than the player by at least an order of magnitude or 2 so if it takes 10 seconds for the player to do with the best tool it could take anything from a few ticks to a whole second and given that the player can reach several tiles but the robot goes right up to things to pick them up there's plenty of explanation for why it might appear instant and be consistent

Yeah...
The player is required to "Mine" the building, which not only takes time, but also damages you axe.
A construction robot instantly picks up the item.

There is a bit of inconsistency here.

JohnyDL wrote:I think this is a balancing issue, but my 2 cents is robots could easily be considered stronger than the player by at least an order of magnitude or 2 so if it takes 10 seconds for the player to do with the best tool it could take anything from a few ticks to a whole second and given that the player can reach several tiles but the robot goes right up to things to pick them up there's plenty of explanation for why it might appear instant and be consistent

See, I started to put this in "balancing" but it would require adding the players "mining" mechanic to robots. Like it's not as simple as adjusting a value, it's changing how bots fundamentally work.

Moving on,

I don't think the robots should mine faster than the human. Just for mechanic reasons. This is a game about automation, so you should assign a task (deforestation) and if it takes too long to do, well automate more bot production. If you need to take out a thousand trees, it'll take 2 seconds if you have a thousand bots available.

If you really want to make it player like then deconstruction bots should carry an ax just like repair bots carry a repair pack.

And then you can speed up your deconstruction bots by giving them a steel ax instead of an iron ax.

Note: players can deconstruct without ax so bots should too, and just as slow (relative to them having an ax).

n7m6e7 wrote:I don't think the robots should mine faster than the human. Just for mechanic reasons. This is a game about automation, so you should assign a task (deforestation) and if it takes too long to do, well automate more bot production. If you need to take out a thousand trees, it'll take 2 seconds if you have a thousand bots available.

For mechanic reasons what mrvn said, you should need them to have an axe of some sort. But robots are stronger and faster than humans, maybe without tools they are as quick as a player with a steel axe with a steel axe they're faster still.

Also remember that bots are initially slow moving and get faster, consider this a slow bot moving the 4 tiles from the edge of a player reach to the tree center takes as long as it takes a player to mine a tree with a steel axe. With the exception of trees close enough that the player could mine them they still have to move that distance and so if we consider the same area the player can be away from the trees to be the reach of the robots then automatically that 'time' aspect is covered, we just don't get to see the deconstruct tool tip, but then you don't get to see that for other players either.

JohnyDL wrote:

n7m6e7 wrote:I don't think the robots should mine faster than the human. Just for mechanic reasons. This is a game about automation, so you should assign a task (deforestation) and if it takes too long to do, well automate more bot production. If you need to take out a thousand trees, it'll take 2 seconds if you have a thousand bots available.

For mechanic reasons what mrvn said, you should need them to have an axe of some sort. But robots are stronger and faster than humans, maybe without tools they are as quick as a player with a steel axe with a steel axe they're faster still.

Also remember that bots are initially slow moving and get faster, consider this a slow bot moving the 4 tiles from the edge of a player reach to the tree center takes as long as it takes a player to mine a tree with a steel axe. With the exception of trees close enough that the player could mine them they still have to move that distance and so if we consider the same area the player can be away from the trees to be the reach of the robots then automatically that 'time' aspect is covered, we just don't get to see the deconstruct tool tip, but then you don't get to see that for other players either.

Might make a huge difference with aliens though. The bot would hover over the tree and take more damage.

Not if it's mining for the whole distance it can, if you stand on a yellow belt mining trees with a steel pick you can almost mine them up in the time it takes you to move past then if a bot did the same action at the same speed it'd only get half way to the tree before mining it and turning back not even getting all the way up to it thus less opportunity to take damage than present

What I'm saying is that the mining speed is covered, if you assume they have the same reach as the player and the time they're in reach of the item they're mining it then actually by almost every metric I can think of bots are slower than the player because the time they take to cover the distance between coming into range and getting to dead centre on the item at their slowest speed is > the time it would take a player to do the exact same action.

Ah ok.I misunderstood your post then.