Exporting both logisticts network content and robot statistics to a circuit network

[vorner]

TL;DR

It would be great if a roboport could be configured to provide both its logistic network modes instead of selecting one when connected to a logistic network.

What ?

When you connect a roboport to a circuit network, you can choose to export either the content of its logistic network or the robot statistics. But these are radio buttons, not checkboxes, so you can't have both. I believe it would be useful to have the option to export both informations (eg. make the options checkboxes, like a train stop can export the train ID and the train content at the same time).

Why ?

If you build small outposts, you often end up having some kind of train re-supplying them with walls and turrets and ammo. To know when and how many to unload from a train, you want to see how many there still are in the chests. But the robots making the repairs die during the battle too, so you want to restock them. But unlike the walls, they are not stored in the chest. My own solution is to connect both the roboport (to export the number of robots) and the chest I directly unload into to know both information, but that's a little flawed as the latter doesn't include all the materials in other chests (buffer chests, for example) the robots already moved stuff into. I guess I could alternatively use two roboports, but for a small outpost I really don't need two.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, ran into the same issue, IIRC for the same use-case (though also another one, was that for repair packs or smart bot building ?) and the same two solutions.
Would be really nice to have... if possible. (Separate them as red and green signals ?)

[vorner]

I don't think you'd need to separate them in any way (and I don't think anything in factorio can output two different „colors“ of signals anyway, you just can connect the two wires, but they always get the full output of whatever you connected them to). I'd actually like to have them mixed in the same wire.

I hope there's no reason why this wouldn't be possible. I mean, you can't really expect to both read content of a requester chest and set the request according the circuit network, because that would feedback-loop. But these two are both outputs and even if they collided on the same signal, they would just sum up like anything else.

My guess would be this might actually be a very small change, but I can't really be sure from the outside.

[BlueTemplar]

Right, no reason that the content of the logistic network and roboport network in conbots use the same signal...

[ssilk]

Would break upward compatibility and I don’t see any reason why not using two roboports?

Another reason: All changes on the wire signals use up CPU time. Why using a signal, that’s never needed?

Another reason: more beginner friendly, if the robot signals are separate, much simpler to understand versus a list of 50 or more signals.

[netmand]

this and/or broadcast the bot stats on wireless as well.

[Olacken]

this and/or broadcast the bot stats on wireless as well.

What do you mean bot stats are already accesible on every station of the network and are the same on all of them

[vorner]

Would break upward compatibility and I don’t see any reason why not using two roboports?

By upwards compatibility, you mean going eg from 0.17 to 0.18 or in the other direction? I think going to upper version should be fine, and does factorio actually support the other direction, like, fully?

Using two roboports takes more space (therefore bigger outpost to defend), more power and they are kind of expensive by the time you get them for the first time and want to make sure all your little outposts out there can finally repair themselves without you visiting them all regularly in a train. Besides, it feels wrong to build roboports not for robots to recharge and sleep in, but to use them only as adaptors to read signals.

All changes on the wire signals use up CPU time. Why using a signal, that’s never needed?

I believe there might be some misunderstanding of what my intention was. I didn't ask to just outright enable both modes by default. I want the user to be able to enable both, but it would still require configuration action on the user's part. Why would they enable it if they didn't need it? And, would it really take more CPU to produce them from one roboport than if I build two to get the same signals?

I'm not really good with an image editor, but let me try to „draw“ it in ascii art. Currently, you get this configuration menu when you connect roboport to a wire:

Code: Select all

(o) Read logistic network content
( ) Read robot statistics

If you click on the robot statistics, logistic network gets unchecked.

My proposal is to change this to:

Code: Select all

[X] Read logistic network content
[ ] Read robot statistics

Then I could have either both checked, or decide I don't need the logistic network content and uncheck that one.

As for compatibility, going from older version to newer would be possible, as the new version can handle both configurations of the old one. Going the other way would be problematic only in case someone enabled both or neither mode. And I suppose there were bigger changes between versions than this, previously?

[ssilk]

Ah yes, I misunderstood you. No upward incompatibility. But still big questions how useful this would be and the reason, that you build outposts but can not afford a second roboport is in my eyes a luxury problem.

But maybe some find that useful, so I keep silent.

[Veklim]

The number of times I've wanted to pull both sets of data from a single port is surprisingly high actually, self-repairing wall and turret sections, outposts, even my 2n nuclear reactor setup found use for it, and I always had to use either just the one or hook up multiple ports to make it work. So glad this change has been implemented!