Friday Facts #224 - Bots versus belts

[floodo1]

Just don't use bots if you don't like them (-8

[yfcz]

tl; dr

[m44v]

So, let me preface this by saying that I read all 15 pages of this thread, those that post stating that didn't read it have my eternal damnation.

I use logibots a lot but I agree that they trivialise a lot of the logistics in the game, buffing belts sounds like a good idea but I think It wouldn't change the situation since they will still have the scalability problem that bots don't have. Limiting logibots to one robotport isn't really a solution since it doesn't really address their scalability: having a big network of logistics bots isn't equal to high throughput, think of those low volume (and perhaps expensive) products that you might want to move across your base without a belts, such as satellites, nuclear fuel cells or fuel for trains. Another use for logibots that needs a big network is for prototyping stuff, if you need to bring a lot of material in one place and doesn't fit your inventory.

Limiting the access rate of chests can be a solution, and I can support that if the devs decide to go that way but frankly I don't find it very interesting. A proposal that some users made and wasn't very discussed but I like it a lot is to add a lifecycle to bots:
Bots would have limited battery cycles, after some recharges, they would return to the roboport and become "used" (sort of like spent nuclear fuel), and the player would need to remove the used bots from the roboports and recycle them (the recipe could be used bot + battery + gears, something, but not be a fast one).

The reason I like a lot this idea is because it adds a new puzzle to solve: you need to remove the used bots from the roboports before they get clogged (presumably not to difficult to do if you have lots of bots, remove some of roboport's slots otherwise) and since the easiest way of moving the used bots to their recycling assemblers would be by logistics bots, the more bots you have, the quicker logibots will degrade. I presume that, depending of the bot's lifetime and the speed of the recycling recipe it would naturally put a cap to the scalability of bots. And in order to have sustained high-throughput you will want to have several recycling assemblers as close as possible, or remove bots from their roboports by belt, which sounds good to me.

it's never a good idea to remove a solid polished feature of any game, especially after it's been in the hands of players for so long. Beside that if people don't like how bots play you simply don't have to use them

Those with the opinion "If you don't like bots don't use them" (I even read some calling Twinsen selfish) aren't seeing that Factorio is the realization of the developer's vision, if logistic bots go against that vision then they have to go or change, is simply as that. Going against that is trying to impose your own vision and that's selfish. I understand many players have a lot of time invested in their bot bases, and don't want that go to waste, but really, Factorio is in beta state, you knowingly signed up for this.

People want to build megabases (its pretty much the aim of the game) but building it with belts is much more difficult then bots.

Since when? why?
I have over 600 hours and I never build anything that could be called "megabase" nor I aim to, and by looking at the steam's stats the majority of factorio players never do. This notion that building megabases is the end goal of factorio should go away, the game is open ended, there is no goal at all, 1000 SPM is a self imposed objective by some players, not by the game or by the developers. Because megabase builders are overrepresented there's this fixation in maximizing UPS and catering those players can be detrimental to game mechanics, keeping logibots OPness being just one example.

[mcvey]

Factorio is a game about automation and optimization. I don't see the removal of bots as they are a powerful tool for automation.

I've read the first several pages, and plan to read more later, but most proposed changes to bots would likely only hurt performance. Buffing belts would bring a more balanced solution especially with belt stacking adding layers to the game. Most belt research is done in the early tiers of science, and bots later so bots feel like an upgrade to moving things around. I haven't built megabases or beacon rows, but I think the boring beacon row is more a problem with beacons than with bots, because there are belt based versions (not many though).

[Dezaro]

I think they could introduce a bot cap and an infinite research that increases the bot cap.

I only use bots to help out in a production stall or something so I can quickly boost production of something, so I should be able to live with no more than 100 ... but if I feel like it I could research more tech and make a train unloaded or something.

[jonatkins]

I do too, in general, prefer belts/trains for the bulk production areas of the base. However, they do allow simple and compact lower volume production (e.g. base building materials, player supplies) and wouldn't want to loose usefulness in this area.

I did play one game, in 0.15, where I tried a 100% bot base, and compared to my usual style, the major benefit was better performance of the game, allowing about 4 times the production rate before game performance issues made it impractical to continue expanding. The current 0.16 builds have doubled the UPS on my current belt+train based game, which is a huge help.

One thing to consider - what's the current 'curve' of usefulness of logistics bots throughout the game? Does it matter if post-rocket + multiple infinite research levels they're overpowered? How useful should they be when first introduced? How quickly does research improve things? How expensive is that research?

Some ideas for logistics bot limitations I've had.

1. Currently, bots take up no space - any number can be accessing a chest at any one time, so no limits on throughput.
Suggestion: no parallel access to chests for bots. Only one at a time, and it takes a certain amount of time. Roboport charging is already like this, so why not item collect/deliver too. (not as slow as charging, but perhaps starting at 2 to 3 bots/second at a chest)
- for mods (e.g. warehousing) it should be possible to define multiple 'access points' for bots on chests
- research could increase the access speed, and possibly for increasing parallelism too (at least for modded research), to restore some power late-game
(of course, players will just place more provider/requester chests to improve throughput again. But it would help...)

2. Currently, energy is the only real limiting factor on active bots - and once you have nuclear, energy is no issue. Just increasing energy costs won't make a lot of difference - just place down additional nuclear reactor block blueprints as needed.
Suggestion: change primary energy usage of bots from distance to time.
- they'd start off needing to recharge at nearly every roboport (when spaced at maximum), but speed upgrades would improve things.
- once at (near?) the end of non-infinite bot speed research, they'd match current capabilities.
(currently slow bots can be countered with increased numbers - more items in transit, but throughput and charging costs basically the same. This would mean more bots also need more charging in the mid-game at least, making an early switch to bots less practical)

3. Other limits.
Things I've given less thought to
- roboport density limits? Currently, roboports can be placed as dense as space allows - maybe some limits on this, so they can't be too close together? Perhaps not out-right prevented, but "charging field interference" makes dense roboports exponentially energy expensive (even when idle).
- limits on number of bots? Just having an arbitrary limit (with research to increase) would seem artificial. Perhaps decreasing the number of bot storage slots in roboports, and preventing more bots in a network than there are storage slots for them? Would probably make sense if logistic and construction bots had separate slots in this case, to prevent one class of bot saturating storage in one area.


And if limits along these lines are introduced, I'd really like to see the science changes for the final bot stage (requester chests) moved earlier as it was a couple of versions ago - the current high-level of these compared to the rest of the bot+logistics system seems out of place, and is really annoying.

None of these ideas are 'magic' solutions to nerf buts, but perhaps some combination of tweaks like this would limit their usefulness until the post-rocket game?

[mathturtle]

Having read through the first few pages of this here are my thoughts:

Removing bots: please don't. You will prevent anyone who doesn't spend their life in-game from making >1k spm factories if you do this. I've seen some factories that do 1k spm or greater with belts, but the level of work involved is greater than anything I have time for... and I still have my goal of mining productivity 1000 to reach. I don't have time for a belt megabase and I've done all the non-megabase stuff I'm interested in already so I'll probably just stop playing the game You guys have historically been some of the best developers for listening to your community and improving things... what happened the last few weeks? Belt compression, fluid wagon splitting and now logi bots... why are you taking away things that significant parts of the community want?

Buff belts somehow: sounds great, please do. Someone mentioned that 2 blue belts can supply 80 items per second and asked why you would need more. Because those 80 green circuits per second only supply 4 (actually less than 4) blue circuit assemblers if you 8-8 beacon the assemblers. We need a way to get more throughput for belts to be truly viable in the megabase stage. Also, get your miners to productivity of +400% and see how many it takes to fill a blue belt. Then add speed modules... Bot outposts are the only way to go (especially given how many you need and how much quicker they are to set up than belt outposts).

Nerfing bots somehow: The only nerf that has a chance of working is limiting the bots access rate to chests. And I don't like it... It seems like you'd have to make the bots smarter to search nearby chests of the same item for the shortest queue, and that would clearly affect UPS (Look at how a bot mining outpost works when there isn't enough demand from the station and imagine if the bots had to queue to access chests).

Making logi bots an option in the game config: I'm actually Ok with this one as long as they continue to be supported and optimized. I can leave them on (for most games anyway) and others can disable them and everyone is happy. You could even add new achievements that can only be earned without bots if you want.

[kevincool87]

Me gripe with bots is that they remove the challenge. It's true that it's easier and quicker to design and build things that way, but that very aspect is makes it uninteresting. Building a factory IS the fun part of the game, and bots remove it neatly. Bots feel a lot like 100% refined sugar cereal: there's nothing wrong with it, it doesn't tastes bad, and it does everything it's supposed to do. The only downside is that you can't really enjoy it past age of seven.

So don't use them. I don't find belts to be a challenge, they are just tedious, time consuming, and you still have to build a factory. Your argument is as childish as you tried to make bots sound.

So bypassing playing the game is supposed to be a better, more mature way to play the game? Why not have player start with rocket launch kit so the game can be finished in under a minute? Why not have all recipes unlocked from the start and cost nothing to produce the items? Same reason applies to using belts over bots. Imagine if in Skyrim you had a key that opens all locks in the game? That would be boring and lock picking aspect would vanish.

Also. Imagine someone used that argument against you. Don't like guns? Don't use them. Don't like TV programs? Don't watch them. Don't like poor road safety? Don't ride cars. That argument is dumb.

Nice use of red herring argument fallacy there. Bots don't bypass anything, it's only (arguably) superior to belts. Maturity has nothing to do this at all. No one is asking for easy cheated method to get to end game in a minute. Points made for bots have nothing to do with such detrimental view that you are so obviously delusional and mistaken about. A Skyrim where a key that opened all locks in the game? You think bots accomplish that? How does guns and tv shows factor in to this? Bots aren't violence. They're not nonsensical porn being shown during the day for kids to watch. Cars and road safety? How does that compare to bots vs belts?

That argument is dumb.

The irony is strong here.

[Loewchen]

The reason flying logistic bots become overpowered is that they take up zero space and pick up/drop things instantaneously. As someone else said they act like teleporters. If we could have bots repulse each other somehow, or have to wait in line to take things out of a chest, that would nerf them in a reasonable way, I think.

I was thinking similar, having a load/unload duration for bots interacting with a chest and a limit on how many bots can do that simultaneously would feel very fitting imo and had the desired effect of discouraging mass usage of bots while not harming small scale bot based setups.

[vampiricdust]

I was thinking similar, having a load/unload duration for bots interacting with a chest and a limit on how many bots can do that simultaneously would feel very fitting imo and had the desired effect of discouraging mass usage of bots while not harming small scale bot based setups.

Make belts better? If belts were not so tedious and boring to do, maybe people would be ENCOURAGED to use belts. We dont need to be beaten by sticks because you guys dont want to make belts more useful and interesting.

[Nemoricus]

It seems like there are two main objections to bots in their current form: Infinite throughput and ease of use. If bots are limited in how many can access a chest in a given period of time, the infinite throughput goes away, but it then adds a new challenge for players to solve. How do you maximize the number of chests that bots can access so that you meet demand? I for one consider that an interesting problem to solve.

Belts do need more options and support, though. Higher level belts and item stack compression are two ways to improve this, perhaps alongside smart splitters.

[vampiricdust]

It seems like there are two main objections to bots in their current form: Infinite throughput and ease of use. If bots are limited in how many can access a chest in a given period of time, the infinite throughput goes away, but it then adds a new challenge for players to solve. How do you maximize the number of chests that bots can access so that you meet demand? I for one consider that an interesting problem to solve.

Belts do need more options and support, though. Higher level belts and item stack compression are two ways to improve this, perhaps alongside smart splitters.

Bot throughput is not infinite. Roboports can only charge 4 bots at a time and the more bots per tile you have the more congested they become. You can easily have hundreds of bots queued for charging or going ridiculously far to find a less used one. Since each bot in flight still counts as filling an order, it can quickly halt a factory that uses too many for too much.

I love how people bashing robots dont play them because they are overpowered but have zero clue about the challenges in scaling we bot users deal with.

[reichennek]

I think belts could be improved with some buffing, maybe add a belt speed research, and consider adding the direct belt chest fillers that are avalible in the map builder to the game for late game. Belts always have a purpose in this game especially with the logistic network being moved so late to the skill tree. By the time you get to bots you've already researched 90% of the things.

[Inspired]

I like to play Factorio with numerous complex recipe and production mods, this means that many items of which you don't need lots are an immense hassle to build using belts, so I use drones for that. On the other hand, there are less complex items that need to be supplied in bulk, and for that purpose belts do a better job.
For me that strikes a perfect balance, where both systems are useful.
And if you get to a point where you can supply all of your copper/iron needs without belts, well, that's an achievement of its own.

[EpicFail1403]

Factorio is not Diablo, we don't want things to be severely overpowered. While I agree that generally, balancing should prefer buffing over nerfing, I think logi bros are now severely overpowered and should be nerfed a bit.

In my understanding, the purpose of the logistic system should be:

1. Handling short distance item transportation in short bursts.

1. Handling complex item requests in small scale.

The problem I see currently in logi bros is that they are abused in massive and intelligent item transportation, which is not intended purpose of logistic bots.
A logistic network can either be high throughput or large, but it can't be both.

My suggestion is to put a limit on total bot count for each logistic network, and make this limit grow slower than the area of logistic network. Small networks can have throughput and large networks can't handle high volume item transportation. For instance, a 2500 tile(50 x 50) logistic network can support 250 bots in the air simultaneously. For each additional 2500 tiles, there can be 10 more bots in the air.

I think currently the bot battery charge mechanism partly serves as a bot count limit, but it can be easily bypassed by spamming more roboports. With bot count limit in place, bot battery system could get some love(or revamp?) too. Maybe bot battery volume and charge rate can be raised to a very high value so that:

• No more roboport spamming needed.

• Bots can actually cause some serious electricity usage spikes.

Turn some of the logistic challenges into power management challenges. Because I heard electricity mechanism is boring.

[aRatNamedSammy]

why not just add an option at start menu of new game "with or without logistic bots", or kind of game mode for that purpose

[reichennek]

Building these giant beaconed moduled farms with thousands of bots is super resource intensive and end game, It seems silly to be upset about the power of the player in end game, especially in a single player builder game. I feel the .15 changes where more than sufficient to balance the use of belts in most factories.

Heck, why not put a slider for bot strength in the game so we have options like we do in every other aspect of the game. or some checkboxes to set options. Removing features from the game should be a last resort i believe.

[Loewchen]

Make belts better?

Belts will always need to be layed from start to finish and will always need surface area to be placed on, that is intrinsic to its mechanic. There is is no adjustment you could make to belts that would make it competitive with a mechanic that has no limitations at all.

[Xaik0n]

Good morning,
I have read the friday news and have also made a few thoughts.

before the infinite explorations were integrated into the game, i always built my bases in a kind of hybrid hissing belt and bots.
Since we were able to massively increase the speed, it was no longer sensible for me (also because of the ups) to put on good luck.

Now a completely new idea for the game!

1. Logistics bots:
instead of many small logistics bots, a large "slow" spacecraft (similar to a train = 2000 content or expandable by exploration) will start and land from fixed spaceports.
From there, the transport would continue to be belted up to the surrounding productions. the routes should,like in the Game "ANNO", then be determined individually per port and logical circuits as with the train should be possible.
Spaceports should be very expensive and power-intensive. Likewise, the spaceships fly exclusively with rocket fuel and are only in the late game unlock. There should be two (or more) transport spaceships available. Long distance transport similar to a train system, only across water / cliffs / trees, and short-range spaceships that have consumed their fuel within a maximum of 1000x1000 until they have to refuel.

2. Construction bots:
Here I would put it that it is still possible to build on blueprints building, etc. however, there should be a time to set up a building that does not exist when building manually.
the robot need "10 seconds to set a solar panel"
or he also needs a kind construcion set from the warehouse that allows him to build the building.

Again, you could reduce the number of construction bots and integrate them into the spaceport, but limit the number to a maximum of 20 bots per port (or expand by research update)

The logistics bot must first store the building in the spaceport, and from there the building robot flies and can erect the building. the construction bot has no direct access to the logistics network.

that was my brainstorming about it. of course, this is not yet thought out and only an impulse of possibilities.

Daniel

[golfmiketango]

I think people are focusing on the wrong thing here. The question is not "should bots be debuffed" but "how can we make gameplay with bots more interesting?" When we use belts there are a bunch of intrinsic logistical challenges that emerge but when we use bots, the logistical challenge eventually becomes "where can I fit more and more roboports?"

I mostly play vanilla lately but I do very much miss the way Bob's mods adds robot charging pads and different tiers of robots. That was interesting and fun and potentially challenging (although, last time I tried, with Bob's mods the higher tier bots are so fast and powerful that you'd might as well just replace them with teleporters).

Another thing that kind of sucks about robots is they are programmed a certain way and you just don't have much control over them. Fixing that would be very challenging and risky (insofar as it would tend to break well-established game dynamics that are pretty well balanced now) but also potentially quite interesting if done cleverly. Another risk is that too much freedom could make bots prohibitively difficult to use (sort of like combinators, where only certain people are ever going to go deep enough to even understand the mechanics -- that's fine for combinators, but not, imo, for bots).

Also I like what folks are saying about belts. Basically we want to find ways to enhance non-bot gameplay in ways that provide viable and fun alternatives. Some things I think would be great:

• Something like loaders. Maybe just hoppers that could move items en-masse between trains would be a good place to start.
• Something that can sort items. Filter inserters are just too weak, and splitter sorting hacks are just ways of hacking the game engine. In real factories many items can be almost perfectly separated by putting them all in a box and shaking the box. Right now, the only reasonable way to sort things en masse is with bots or some sort of huge elaborate pain-in-the-ass contraption that is simply more trouble than it's worth, hence almost all belts tend to carry a single resource. Rainbow belts should not be a big joke but a viable way to play the game.
• Containerization! Some sort of big object that I can move between trains would be just amazing. As would the ability to automate attaching and detaching rolling stock.
• Multilevel belts sounds interesting, why not?