Worker robot cargo size infinite research

[mward]

TL;DR

Make the "worker robot cargo size" research infinite to allow larger bases that rely on logistics robots.

What ?

The worker robot cargo size research could be made infinite, probably with exponential cost, like the worker robot speed research.

Why ?

The infinite robot speed research is great, but the exponentially increasing cost means that a large base which relies on logistics bots for all transport has poor performance.

My current base, which produces 140k iron per minute and 80k copper per minute with bot-based smelting, needs over 50,000 bots: which drags performance down to 20ups.

If the worker robot cargo size research were made infinite then fewer bots would be needed, performance would increase, and I might even be able to catch a glimpse of my base underneath the cloud of bots!

[Tekky]

I agree with this suggestion.

It seems illogical to me that worker speed research is infinite, but not worker cargo size.

[Optera]

Are bots no longer limited to a single stack?
In 0.14 each bot could carry a maximum of 5 roboports even with 00 capacity.

[FrodoOf9Fingers]

I like the idea, it helps reduce the need for charging stations.

[Rakshasa]

This looks like a bad idea, it would allow increasing efficiency of logistics to a degree that would imo be bad for gameplay.

Having natural limitations is what forces you to come up with innovative solutions and expanding your base.

[Hannu]

This looks like a bad idea, it would allow increasing efficiency of logistics to a degree that would imo be bad for gameplay.

Having natural limitations is what forces you to come up with innovative solutions and expanding your base.

I think you talk about different thing. If you have an extreme megabase only practical limitation is how low FPS your nerves can stand and can you afford to suitable gaming PC. It is very easy to copy enough production units to overload any computer in the world. In any case it would be ultimate endgame thing and would not affect to any normal situations. Any sanely sized base can not produce enough to feed exponential costs many steps. If you do not like, then just do not research those things.

[kc8hnz]

Yes, this is a wonderfull idea. Im about at the same stage, 150k uron per minute 4 rps base and running at 25 ups with 100k robots doing my dirty work. I cant see going much bigger if the ups gets much worse and an infinite cargo size would certainly reduce the number of botd needed.

[Krusnik]

This would certainly help reduce the number of bots required!

[impetus maximus]

please no.

[Optera]

Increasing bot cargo capacity by either making the tech infinite, or introducing much more expensive upgraded bots that can carry say 20+ items at once, drastically improves performance.

This test setup was an belt fed smelter consuming 20k/min iron ore later converted to a bot setup.

2017-08-27-12-14-52-6037103.jpg (545.37 KiB) Viewed 5430 times

Rearranging the smelter could itch out a bit more, but it's already very obvious how much performance is gained from just going for bots over belts and increasing bot cargo size from 5 to 20

Here's the numbers of benchmarks running for 10k ticks.
Belts: 13862
Bots +4 cargo: 11558 -16.62% of belt, uses ~2500 bots
Bots +19 cargo: 8882 -35.92% of belt, uses ~800 bots

This shows the improvement of using bots over belts being rather situational in pure 0.15 vanilla. However once bots have their capacity increased their performance improvement becomes massive 36% over belts and 23% over the same bot setup.