Robot Battery Research

[FasterJump]

Klonan has released a mod that adds research to increase the robot battery size.
Whether the purpose is to inquire this feature popularity or just to demonstrate a new modding possibility, I suggest to discuss it.

Do you think it's a good feature? Do you see downsides?
Are you bothered like I am when supply bots come to you but at the last moment decide to turn back to recharge ?
I think it could be a promising research.

[fregate84]

very good idea !
I like it. should be on vanillia

[Mooncat]

The robot technologies have some problems in 0.15, mainly about balancing.
Many people have complained that the full logistic system is too late to be unlocked, making the logistic robots useless in early to mid stage.
Some people suggested removing the requirement of high-tech science pack, but increasing the requirements of the robot upgrade technologies. That way we may still stick on spaghetti transport belts, which the devs may want us to do, and at the same time, use logistic robots for some complicated setups which don't need high transport rate. I personally think this is a very good suggestion.
The introduction of robot battery research will make balancing a bit more complicated in this case, as it can make robots more OP.

While the robot battery research is a good candidate, I think the Laser Beam Turrets is worth much much much much x9999 more to implement into vanilla. I have even made a suggestion for fixing the display issue of beam entities. But it has sinked to the bottom of the sea of ideas and suggestions, as usual. lol

[mrvn]

The robot technologies have some problems in 0.15, mainly about balancing.
Many people have complained that the full logistic system is too late to be unlocked, making the logistic robots useless in early to mid stage.
Some people suggested removing the requirement of high-tech science pack, but increasing the requirements of the robot upgrade technologies. That way we may still stick on spaghetti transport belts, which the devs may want us to do, and at the same time, use logistic robots for some complicated setups which don't need high transport rate. I personally think this is a very good suggestion.
The introduction of robot battery research will make balancing a bit more complicated in this case, as it can make robots more OP.

While the robot battery research is a good candidate, I think the Laser Beam Turrets is worth much much much much x9999 more to implement into vanilla. I have even made a suggestion for fixing the display issue of beam entities. But it has sinked to the bottom of the sea of ideas and suggestions, as usual. lol

Laser beam turrets change nothing in the game. It's a purely visualization change.

Instead of that I would rather rename laser turrets to phasma turrets. There, problem solved, current behaviour matches the technology.

[Mooncat]

Laser beam turrets change nothing in the game. It's a purely visualization change.

Instead of that I would rather rename laser turrets to phasma turrets. There, problem solved, current behaviour matches the technology.

But visual matters. The plasma turrets in some games also shoot laser beam instead of projectiles.

[Woodmn]

I'd just like it if the devs put in an option that (should your power armour be speced out right/enough to allow it) would allow normal construction or logistics bots to charge off you if you have personal roboports equipped. They still cant be dispatched or retrieved automatically from your inventory so still have to return to a roboport, but can at least recharge before/after making a long trip.

[Valrandir]

The current lack of such an upgrade force the spamming of robot ports to handle massive recharge operations when using massive numbers of bots.

Robot battery capacity upgrade would indeed be quite interesting.
However, the larger the battery capacity, the more joules should be used to charge it.

Together with this, a robot port mark II, with faster battery recharge rate and possibly more stations could be nice.

[Tubig]

The current lack of such an upgrade force the spamming of robot ports to handle massive recharge operations when using massive numbers of bots.

Increasing the robots battery will not help with the problem. It would just mean that the robots spend more time being charged. The MW output of the roboports would still be the same as would the MW required by the robots.

To reduce the number of roboports needed the tech would need to reduce the power requirement per distance moved or match the increase in battery capacity with an increase in robot port power throughput. Another option would be to make robot cargo capacity an unlimited research.

[Tym]

or, recharging robots could take a completely different approach.

Rather than -recharge-, replace the discharged battery with a charged one. Upside is that robots need not spend -time- charging, -and- that infrastructure to charge and maintain battery replacement stations becomes an infrastructure tasks. Downside... may mess with current robot AI and path-ing.

[Faen]

That moment when a cloud of robots is about to deliver your mats but decide they are low on battery one meter before reaching you. By the way, logistic network is ok as it is, it makes all that belt madness pointless, and that just kills the game's core, specially for beginners. If you want them earlier use a mod.

[mrvn]

The current lack of such an upgrade force the spamming of robot ports to handle massive recharge operations when using massive numbers of bots.

Robot battery capacity upgrade would indeed be quite interesting.
However, the larger the battery capacity, the more joules should be used to charge it.

Together with this, a robot port mark II, with faster battery recharge rate and possibly more stations could be nice.

As you say, a larger battery means more recharge. So you would need the same number of roboports regardless. It just changes how often a bot charges. Not the percentage time spend charging.

There is another factor to consider: With a larger battery robots can get far further from a roboport before they have to return for recharge. And returning when empty is really slow. Wouldn't your bots all get stranded in the middle of nowhere without charge and take hours to return? Imho it's a bug that bots fly around till near empty and only then look for a roboport. They should plan ahead.

So I would be more interested in more charging stations and faster charging over bigger battery. That would actually reduce the number of roboports.

[Lubricus]

I don't like the idea to have bot's to solve the logistic puzzle. So i dislike a buff that makes the bot's more effective for that. I like the bot's to fetch stuff for my inventory (logistics slots) and to build stuff for me.

[featherwinglove]

The robot technologies have some problems in 0.15, mainly about balancing.
Many people have complained that the full logistic system is too late to be unlocked, making the logistic robots useless in early to mid stage.

AHHHhhhh... I hate you just a little bit.

That was back in 0.12 by the way.

[Jürgen Erhard]

Sadly, it appears there's no way (except for another "clandestine"(?) C++ hack) to change the threshold robots decide to recharge: it seems to be fixed at 20%. My bots are at 270% bonus battery now and run to recharge at about 1MJ-ish (it's nigh impossible to get a proper look at the bastards in flight), while they recharge at an a lot lower threshold in the beginning.

[Klonan]

Sadly, it appears there's no way (except for another "clandestine"(?) C++ hack) to change the threshold robots decide to recharge: it seems to be fixed at 20%. My bots are at 270% bonus battery now and run to recharge at about 1MJ-ish (it's nigh impossible to get a proper look at the bastards in flight), while they recharge at an a lot lower threshold in the beginning.

Its defined in the robot prototype:

Code: Select all

    min_to_charge = 0.2

[Jürgen Erhard]

Dang, that's bad… well, it isn't if you assume a fixed battery size But with increased capacity, at some point they'll go recharge when they still have more energy left than vanilla bots have max. Not that the research isn't useful anyway, because 80% of more is more