Friday Facts #224 - Bots versus belts

[Yinan]

Don't even think about taking the bots away!
Seriously, what's wrong with you?`

We are still looking to incentivize belt building a bit more, since it is the more fun way to play Factorio

This is NOT an universal truth!
It may be more fun for you, but that certainly doesn't apply to everyone!
I like the bots and I would absolutely hate it if you removed it or nerfed them even further!

Making things worse to incentivise other things is a bad practice. Stop doing that!
You want people to use belts? Then make belts better! It's as simple as that.
But stop nerfing Bots into oblivion just because you think that they're not fun. There are people, like me, who have more fun playing Factorio with the bots than without!

[gaius]

Instead of nerfing bots, I think you should try to make belts and trains better and more interesting.
Right now, there is no real reason to try to be clever with belts. You can of course try to make rainbow belts work, but in most scenarios you can get a strictly better solution by just using more than one belt. This is why I, personally, like using bots: They do the same thing as belts, but they do it automatically, so I can have fun doing other stuff. That won't change if you make bots weaker, I will just have to wait longer for them start being useful.

For trains, there is no real reason to use them for moderate amounts of cargo either. There is no real way to send a single train to a certain station (you can control signals, not trains), thus I usually just use them for things where overkill does not matter at all.

So please, give me a reason to use belts in the late game, don't just make bots useless.

[Rylant]

Oh, god, finally!
Logistic bots surely should be nerfed. Once I've built base like this https://imgur.com/QyftYAW and... It is really not fun at all. You just need to copy&paste the same blueprint to build whatever you want. Furnace, assemblers, science - anything use the same pattern. You just place it and bots do the rest of job.

I believe that belts logistic is more interesting too! Please, reward us to play in a fun way! Logistic bots are too OP. I just don't use them at all because of this. But this frustrates me, since I could have more efficient base using them... But that way I would completely lose fun.

“Fun” is such a subjective word; what’s fun for you, isn’t necessarily fun for me. Some people like the idea of creating massive bot controlled mega bases. “Reward us to play in a fun way”? What if that way isn’t “fun” to me like it is to you? Now the idea of rewarding me to play in a fun way, turns into forcing me to play a way that I don’t think is fun.

In a heavy PVP type of game, it is important to maintain a strong sense of game balance. A game like Factorio, and this doesn’t seem necessary. By nerfing bots, you will anger the people who love to play with this play style. People who don’t like bots won’t care about the nerf because they don’t play that way anyway. The end result is going to just anger the people who don’t want it changed.

There is a group of players who love the mega base. Right now, the only viable way to achieve that type of base, is through bots. If this nerf comes down, I think it would be important to change belt dynamics to make it so they can run a mega base. Otherwise, the end result is going to mean the end of the mega base, which is going to drive some players away from the game.

I have always thought that blue belts are too limiting as the highest available tier of belt, anyway. You achieve blue belts mid game (maybe some consider it late game considering you need purple and yellow science to get them). A fourth tier of belt (I have always like the idea of green belts!) really should be added to the game.

Rylant

[Encrypted]

Well the new ff has brought many replies but i scrolled through them and this one came up many times that I think it deserves a spot here.

Logistics bots are very strong late game due to reasons already discussed in the https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-224 the fact that you can teleport with insane speeds is just too strong.

I propose to limit the amount of logistics bots accessing the same chest at the same time. Much like the charging points. This way you can still use the many powers of bots but you remove the unlimited teleport to more of a max teleport per time. This will hinder highly beaconed bot setups as they need tons of stuf per second.

Since cargo size is already a research it will become more important instead of just adding more bots.

Of course there are workarounds by having multiple chests etc. but I still think that a 1000 bots accessing a single chest at the same time cannot be true.

Why is this under balancing you might ask? Well I think bots outperform belts in every way atm and I would like to see more of a trade of between using bots and blue belt with stack Inserters. If the chest can only be accessed by one bot at a time the blue belt with stack Inserter would have more throughput and thus be an alternative for the flying swarm.

[Edit by Koub] Sorry mate, I merged your topic into this one because things will be more easy for all if all the discussion is in the main thread, and not everyone creates his own thread

[Alice3173]

i hope you are not being anti-bots just because you don't like it.

Far too many people have this sort of utterly moronic viewpoint.

I don't like it therefore it should get nerfed out of existence. Nobody should be allowed to enjoy the game any way except the ones that I approve of because I'm just that important.

Also far too many people are so lacking in self-control that they'll opt for things that make the game less fun for others because it ruins their own fun since they can't simply exercise the self-control necessary not ruin their own fun. Which is a really dumb reason to make the game less fun for others. Those people should just learn self-control, it's kinda a necessary skill to possess in life.

[Tempest67]

When reading latest FFF's I get the impression devs are a bit lost in what direction future development should go.
First the railtanker and now logistic bots. I will not take a stand in favour or against one of them as that is not my point ,instead i would suggest following.
- If your intention is to make "the best game" possible why not make a lot of these "contadictionary" issues switchable by a toggle switch in the start up menu?
- incorporate some of the present mods, maybe partially ,in base game.Bottleneck is a good example as it does not change the game but gives a good insight for new players.
- As mentioned earlier in this FFF maintance or wear could be introduced for all items. That way creating new possibility's, FI you can use beacons but factory will need to be rebuild much quicker due to increased wear.( via toggle)

If the intention of the devs is to make the game "as real" as possible, then their should maybe be a possibilty for bulk transport by ship or container, introducing terminals etc and an option to make inland waterways.
Still plenty of options, keep up the good work and in the end it is in beta state so feel free to experiment in 016 whatever you like. People complaining about changes breaking their factory should remember that. And stay on the stable 015 release, my two cents.

[MINIMAN10000]

Also far too many people are so lacking in self-control that they'll opt for things that make the game less fun for others because it ruins their own fun since they can't simply exercise the self-control necessary not ruin their own fun. Which is a really dumb reason to make the game less fun for others. Those people should just learn self-control, it's kinda a necessary skill to possess in life.

I can understand why though. With both UPS and throughput being limited with no research upgrades to increase the throughput of belts there is no way to grow reliably with belts. It's why I'm for the idea of research to upgrade the items held per space on a belt. It solves both UPS and Throughput issues and allows it to be viable.

It can be irritating when what you want to do is just not possible and you have no choice to either accept lower throughput/UPS or do bots even when you don't want to. So then you lash out at bots.

It's poor form and again you should be looking at ways that make your way a viable option into megabase territory instead of asking to nerf everything else to make it not a viable option either.

[Caine]

Far too many people have this sort of utterly moronic viewpoint.

I don't like it therefore it should get nerfed out of existence. Nobody should be allowed to enjoy the game any way except the ones that I approve of because I'm just that important.

Also far too many people are so lacking in self-control that they'll opt for things that make the game less fun for others because it ruins their own fun since they can't simply exercise the self-control necessary not ruin their own fun. Which is a really dumb reason to make the game less fun for others. Those people should just learn self-control, it's kinda a necessary skill to possess in life.

It is not that black and white. The designers have a role to play in creating a well thought out, balanced and consistent game design. Putting in every feature imaginable and letting users pick which one to use and which to ignore is a bad way to go about that. If you were to install all available mods then the resulting game would be pretty bad, even when the majority of the mods by themselves add to the game.

Sometimes you need to stop, take a look back and ask yourself "does this still make sense?", "does the feature tie in well in the overall game design?". I do not think bots should go and according to twinsen in the FFF they are not going anywhere either.

[ttapada]

Yes, bots do feel about overpowered at times. Even construction bots.. if one just places down BPs and wait for stuff to get done, the challenge goes away a bit (although cliffs did help nerfing that down and created a spatial challenge - and I love them!).

However they exist. And still people play the game differently and some rely extensively on them and some don't. I don't that much, only construction bots.

The only thing I'd suggest is nerfing speed a bit. That will reduce the ability of relying on them only and make trains and belts a better contestants.


Just my 2 cents...

[MINIMAN10000]

- As mentioned earlier in this FFF maintance or wear could be introduced for all items. That way creating new possibility's, FI you can use beacons but factory will need to be rebuild much quicker due to increased wear.( via toggle)

That just reads to me as "Periodically have robots grab items from logistics to repair to stuff that breaks overtime" and it just turns into a resource drain which sounds like a bad idea to me.

[bNarFProfCrazy]

IMO there is another inherent problem with bot based factories:
Bots always tend to be late especially when the base exceeds a certain size.

This in itself is a big issue with them as well, you could counter that by increasing the stored amount,
but that either wastes a lot of resources, by being idle or binds A LOT of robots.

In fact one of my mega bases is that big in size that even with "MAX" speed and carry research that 10k of robots are not enough to satisfy the demand of the robot based parts.

Of course this could be dealt with by decreasing the effective size of the logistic network to trains/station and the factory part, but this in itself is also challenging.

I'm sure that increasing the belt size/speed is sure a very tempting way to solve the trend of using bots for factory supply, but be careful with that as it heavily effects the train usage.
In my current designs I'm able to (and required to) load 4 express belts per wagon using stack inserters, to load enough materials into the trains to satisfy the demand of my factory.
Unloading only 3/wagon. => Desings tends to be a multiple of 12.
In fact the smallest smeltery design (train based) for midgame/early lategame has a throughput of 24 express belts of a single resource and I usually build many more than one.

It is almost impossible to move that much resources with bots. I have currently more than 100 trains with (still) rocket fuel on duty to deliver the resources.
(6k resource consumption / second, while having too few oil)

----------------------------------------------

TLDR: IMO there is no real need to remove logistic robots.
As you only trade effectiveness with easyness.
Which effectively does the same as 90% of all mods do.
Even if you remove them/have never added them, this would probably still available as a mod.
Nuclear power was a thing even before you added it to the game.

[Tempest67]

- As mentioned earlier in this FFF maintance or wear could be introduced for all items. That way creating new possibility's, FI you can use beacons but factory will need to be rebuild much quicker due to increased wear.( via toggle)

That just reads to me as "Periodically have robots grab items from logistics to repair to stuff that breaks overtime" and it just turns into a resource drain which sounds like a bad idea to me.

If you make the drain large enough , some options get less interesting to use them on a large scale.
For instance bots have no wear when used within so many tiles of their deploying roboport , with growing distances actual wear will increase exponentionally that way you can still use many bots over short distances but it gets less intersting on longer stretches. To clarify more, is it realism the devs are looking for in this game or just fun for everybody?
If the answer is logistic realism then long haul transport should be favoured in bulk against a lot of bots moving little quantity's over long distances. The same can be said for belts which to my opinion are a middle to short distance transport solution . So if a line of belts extends behind a certain tile length without interuption the same wear mechanics as for bots could be introduced.

[Roberth]

Hello, after i've read the Friday Facts #224 - Bots versus belts, i immediately thought of somthing i've been thinking about for a long time.

The problem:
I dont think that you have an actual bots problem, i think that you have a late game energy problem. I reason being that once the train logistics and blueprinted base-building really kicks in you will have a massive spike in available resources. When this happens, energy problems will forever be long gone on the map that you are currently playing. The introduced nuclear plants arent really helping since now you doesnt really need massive amounts of resources to build huge solar power fields.

The solution:
The solution is partly nerfing the bots, but its more towards creating late game machines or factories that consumes HUGE amounts of energy ("MODS!" I KNOW! But we will get to that later). This late game machines can either be new features or making existing machines consume more energy.
Maybe making the bots consume more energy when you uppgrade the speed so that it will be a linear transition to the late game.

My point:
Nerf the bots a little bit by making them consume slightly more energy than they do now and rise the need for energy in the late game. This will encourage the player to only use bots where its critical if they want to make late game machines early. Forcing bots to consume enough energy so that it will be a visible spike in the energy consumption display will make belts and bots live side by side happily ever after.

Mods and additional thoughts:
I know that mods might help with this problem if they provide late game high energy consuming machines that will force a more belt oriented design. But i'd really like to see some heavy demanding late game features in the "vanilla" version as well.
I have to defend the bots as well, i honestly think its fine if you are that late in to the game so you easily can provide MASSIVE amounts of energy to your factory, that you can exclude belts completely.

Thank you for reading=)

[MINIMAN10000]

If you make the drain large enough , some options get less interesting to use them on a large scale.
For instance bots have no wear when used within so many tiles of their deploying roboport , with growing distances actual wear will increase exponentionally that way you can still use many bots over short distances but it gets less intersting on longer stretches. To clarify more, is it realism the devs are looking for in this game or just fun for everybody?
If the answer is logistic realism then long haul transport should be favored in bulk against a lot of bots moving little quantity's over long distances. The same can be said for belts which to my opinion are a middle to short distance transport solution . So if a line of belts extends behind a certain tile length without interruption the same wear mechanics as for bots could be introduced.

The way bots have a time delay moving items long distances is already a large enough disincentive to me. Servers always get irritated when separate bot networks get bridged because it causes a large amount of bots to move long distances which drains all the bots. Using bots for huge distances is pretty awful. It's why you don't see people connecting their main base to mining outposts using bots. Because it's already disincentivized.

Even then the game lacks a way to cut roboport connections like you can power poles, so the solution to separating roboports doesn't really exist either.

[Meddleman]

If you want to incentivise Belts, then reintroduce Belt Compression the way it was before, and research that makes belts transport items faster. Removal of established features in the game will not gain much support, and you may find players will stick to legacy-versions of the game, "back when Factorio was still good".

Sometimes it isn't about weakening the competition to make yourself look like he more attractive option, but to actually become the more attractive option. Why else do IRL shops and businesses lower their prices for merchandise when a competitor shows its face?

Bob's Logistics introduced two more Belt tiers above the blue express belt, but even this is a paltry imitation of simply having research that would allow Belts to become faster as the game progresses.

I'll say it again:
If there is research that increases carrying capacity of Logistic Bots, why isn't there research that increases the Belt Speed, and thus capacity?

[megamega]

I think what makes factorio so intriguing is that it allows players to build their own bases in different ways.
It is never a problem of ''bots versus belts'', but rather ''Which one best suit my current need?'', or even ''How to make them work together?''

[Codemaster]

When I read "Removing logistics bots from the game" I was getting torch and pitchfork ready.

My opinions on the belt vs bots matter:

Personally I use belts inside the factory as much as possible. Only where it would be an absolute nightmare to funnel in some required items from the waaaay other side of the factory I might use bots. And only if the items are required in low quantities.
Currently it is very easy to avoid using bots if you don't feel like it.

If you want to nerf the bots, then lowering the amount they can carry at once is the far better solution than increasing the power consumption.
Because you can rather easily get more power, but you can't really place that more roboports for charging all the extra required robots to compensate for nerfing the carry capacity.
Other solution would be to increase the charging time to bottleneck the robots. That might even be the better way to go.

I support the notion that belts should be the solution with the best throughput inside the factory. For long distances obviously trains are the way to go.

[torham]

Just out of interest how would a legacy build work on Steam? Is it possible? At the moment I cant even stop Steam from updating my games. I am starting to think I have made a bad decision in migrating my Factorio copy onto steam.

[Caine]

If there is research that increases carrying capacity of Logistic Bots, why isn't there research that increases the Belt Speed, and thus capacity?

Perhaps because it will completely mess up your carefully balanced flow rate computations. I would not like this unless it only applies to a new tier of belt.

[Zavian]

Just out of interest how would a legacy build work on Steam? Is it possible? At the moment I cant even stop Steam from updating my games. I am starting to think I have made a bad decision in migrating my Factorio copy onto steam.

In Steam, right click factorio. Select properties -> Betas and choose a version.