"Logistic network"-independent robot recharging

[MeduSalem]

I have searched around the forum, but I haven't found anything in particular to this. Yeah, tons of other stuff related to logistic networks, their current shortcomings and improvements to them.

So what I'd like to suggest is that robots should at least be able to recharge at any roboport in vicinity even if the closest roboports belong to a seperate logistic network.



If you want to know why this is an issue... then build 2 seperated logistic networks next to each other; but one goes like an "L" or "U" around the other. Or in the worst case build an entire logistic-network as a "ring"/"circle" around another centered logistic network. The bots will go nuts.

The robots of course will choose the shortest distance to travel from point A to B, even if this means they travel across an area that isn't covered by its own logistic network. And even if this area isn't covered by its own logistic network it may be that it is covered by another logistic network but yet the robots chose to ignore to use the roboports for recharging. So what happens is that they will travel all across the gap and there's no way to recharge until they reach the other side.

This is normally not an issue if you have the means to just expand the logistic network by placing another roboport without thinking too much.

BUT if you have two or more seperated networks in close proximity to each other you may not be able to expand the logistic network the way you like to because of the auto-connect problem.



And yeah, I sure do want to leave those networks seperated from each other because I don't want to have a bazillion of bots flying all over the place. I chose to seperate the networks so the bots stay where they are and because no mass storage system would work if the bots would start to mess it up with the wrong items. Also the trainstations would cause havoc everytime a train arrives if I'd not seperate them from the rest of the network.

[ssilk]

The current favored idea is to have "colored logistic networks". Here is the overview: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... tic#p38564

About the routing: The devs planed to have a smarter routing for the bots exactly because of that. But this is indeed a problem.