Factorio Forums

I had a quick search to see if this idea has come up before but didn’t find anything, apologies if this is an old idea.

One of the challenges with large robot use, either construction or logistics, is keeping them charged. You end up with tons of roboport sand circles of bots waiting for charging. How about having robot battery packs as separate items? The way I see it working is like this:

Have two new items: full and depleted battery packs. Full battery packs can be crafted from batteries and suitable other ingredients (green circuits, copper wire, whatever). Roboports have two inventory slots, one for full batteries and one for depleted batteries. If a robot with no power goes to a roboport, if there are no batteries available, it charges slowly as now. If there are full battery packs, it is instantly fully charged by picking up a full pack and dropping off a depleted one. Then have a recipe for an assembly machine that consumes an appropriate amount of energy that converts depleted battery packs back to full ones. This means instead of robot intensive logistic networks having tons of roboports to support charging, you just need a few, but with the logistical challenge of hauling around depleted and fresh batteries. Let personal roboports do the same, using the player’s inventory, so that if you want to do a big construction project, if you take the effort to prepare a load of spare batteries, the whole thing can go much faster. This technology could be gated behind some kind of “roboport Mk2” if it might be overpowered mid game.

If anything this will actually slow down the process of robot charging. A full bot refill only takes a second or so. You are adding steps to remove old batteries, craft new batteries, and insert them back in, and this process somehow makes it faster than 4 pads each refilling a dozen bots a minute.

Bots won't properly charge in player armor if the suit energy is depleted. This problem can already be addressed with suit batteries.

I have previously suggested this, myself. (Sorry, don't have a cite.)

Perhaps an alternative would be to allow use of the higher-end armor batteries in robots?

I like the idea. However, I am not sure if the suggestion is feasible, for the already stated reasons. It would have to be implemented in such a way that it is significantly faster to use batteries.

Also, I like the suggestion of exchangable batteries being used for power armor.

Tym wrote:I have previously suggested this, myself. (Sorry, don't have a cite.)

But I was able to find your post. It was easy to find. Just click on your name and click on "search user's posts".

On second thought: The idea of having an additional industry to support bots is very good. I am strongly in favor of this, but not for the reasons that the original poster stated, but for the following reason:

In the discussion thread on Friday Facts #224 - Bots versus belts, it has been stated many times that bots are overpowered when compared to belts, and that bots should therefore be made less powerful. The requirement of setting up an additional industry to support bots would certainly make them less attractive. It would be nice if, the more frequently you use bots, the higher the requirement of this additional industry.

That way, players would still want to use bots, but only for items that are required in small amounts. For items required in large amounts, belts would be better, especially if the production of the items required to maintain bots would cost "real" resources instead of only electrical energy (which is virtually free in the end-game).

On the other hand, maybe the problem is that electric power is free?

However, for all this to work, the requirement of the additional industry would have to be obligatory, instead of optional (which the original poster suggested).

Klonan's mod that adds infinite robot battery research sort of does the thing battery pack wise I think. The only bottlenecks then are charging speed and number of charging ports,although the latter isn't much of an issue since you can just place more roboports.