Roboport undocking speed

[immibis]

Currently, if a lot of logistic bots transfer items between the same chests - like if you add a large request - it looks like this:



Maybe there should be a limit to how fast robots can undock from a port, something like 2 robots/second instead of 1 robot/frame.

[syneris]

I'd like this just for aesthetic purposes.

[sparr]

Alternately, robots could collide and/or path around each other and/or with some minor randomness to their path.

[ssilk]

I would say one per 0.1-0.2 secs would look fantastic and avoids some queues at the ports.
I would also like to be able to limit the docks per port, so that the bots are better spreaded.

[Chrotesque]

Alternately, robots could collide and/or path around each other and/or with some minor randomness to their path.

I am currently having ~900 robots flying around, I'd very much like to see that happening and I'd probably not be able to see the ground underneath.

[Coolthulhu]

Collisions and randomness in bot paths sound like a bigger problem than bad aesthetics.
They can be rather wonky already, with robot suicide and whatnot. Add bots crashing into each other and waving around unpredictably and you'd be likely to get something that not only still looks ugly, but also plays ugly.
It would also nerf logistic bots hard.

Limiting bot release speed sounds like a much better idea to me. It would make active bot number vary smoothly - as long as there are jobs, bots are released at relatively constant speed, then docked at similar speed until equilibrium of jobs created/jobs taken is achieved. Look at a logistic network with more jobs than bots - those can look good, as long as it has many nodes and not just 2 chests exchanging ores.

An acceptable variant of collision I can think of would be pushing other bots away like flying units in Starcraft. The maximal force of being pushed away would need to be low, to avoid the possibility of a cluster of bots surrounding a chest and pushing each other away, creating a deadlock. Or they would need to wait in queue, like for a recharge.
Of course the CPU cost of this would probably be non-negligible.

[ssilk]

I suggested - some time ago - that the bots fly a bit "right handed": instead of flying directly "on the shortest line, they shift a bit to the right, depending on distance to the source and target. This is only a graphical effect, they're not faster or slower with it.

[kovarex]

Actually I like the effect when lots of them gets out of the roboport (usually when the train arrives).