Friday Facts #225 - Bots versus belts (part 2)

[Paul_Kauphart]

Hello Factorio Devs,

I really like that new splitter, and I tend to agree with everything you said regarding Bots/Belt balance.

That said, I have a strong suggestion (and sorry if it was already given in the last 30 pages).

Please make the blue belt speed twice the red belt speed (and four time the yellow belt speed), so we can merge two fully compressed red belts in one fully compressed blue belt and vice versa. This has been bothering me since I started watching factorio (before I even bought the game). Having to use two blue belts to merge two red belts makes me unwilling to invest in the blue tier before changing to bots.

Paul

[RodrigoCns]

IDEA: Vacuum Tubes
Like the ones in portal 2 or Oxygen not included... they would work very much like belts (one way only), with insane throughput speed, and being able to deposit contents directly inside chests (like pumped liquids inside a storage tank)?
This way the throughtput could be buffed (even more with research), and inserters can behave like normal, using only an "item storage tank" where contents will be picked up.

[Guardian667]

THX for your conclusion in the FFF. That's matches exactly what I have intended with my post:
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=56218&start=880#p333636
I'm fine

[bobucles]

Everyone is talking about Bots and Belts... what about Pipes?

Uh. What about pipes? They may have some strange behaviors but pipe throughput is simply great. It's very easy to fill multiple belts of plastic or solid fuel from a single pipe. Oil trains struggle to be relevant vs. a pipe line, which can satisfy rich wells even at a hundred underground pipes distance. A single pipe's throughput can satisfy some considerable beacon builds, and water supply is never a problem for industrial recipes. The only place where pipe throughput may be lacking is with steam power. The amount of water used to generate electricity is nothing short of immense and nuclear builds easily become a tangled mess of massive water/steam pipelines. IMO that kind of issue is more related with steam power in general and doesn't have much to do with the effectiveness of pipes.

[vampiricdust]

Because I love calculating costs....

For example, this part of my base only creates white science and they have 18,000 bluebelts inside.

It would take about 32,000 bots with capacity 4 & 187% speed to move the same number of items ideally. It would probably be more due to having to fly around, but with that many you would need 320 roboports, 1.28 GW of addition power, and all of the nessecary chests to load/unload. Just bots & roboports is about 6.5 million resources. You used 927k for your belts, which is ~14% of the resource costs ignoring the chests & extra power production.

the core of my base has forty-seven thousand (47,000), these numbers are insane, and that does not include mineral extraction zones.

That is about 83,555 bots with above researched with about 835 roboports. So that's just shy of 16 million resources.

I didn't multiply out the bots to take flying to charge & flying back to the starting point mainly because the base probably could have been built smaller overall, reducing flight times, but my general point stands. Belts cost less than 20% of what logistics bots do, but according to Kovarex, they are only 2 to 5 times better. So yeah, unless you can build the same production levels and get the cost ratio below 3x what the cost of the belt base is, your base is better resource for resource.

Where do you get those numbers?, The mega base that started the discussion in "bots vs belts 1" in the core of the base has 6000 bots and produces 1000 sciences per minute, that base has twice the production of my base, and it works fluid, with my base the game works slow and uses much more CPU. Everything looks slow.

and the electrisity is not a problem, in the game it is very easy to have energy to spare.

It's called the Factorio wiki. Besides, I calculated them for only 187% speed, which is easily surpassed. By the way, the base that started this was compactly built and had probably way more than 187% bot speed. My point is to show that it takes a great deal of research. You get 240% before space science, but at that point the game is "won" and balance isn't really important.

It has worker speed 16, which is 955% speed, so 28.65 tiles per second. So at that speed, you would need 23k bots assuming the same spacing. Given the size of the main base and judicial use of max beacons, 6k bots seems quite accurate. Which still only proves my point that bots are only good for train stations and beacon builds. Level 16 worker speed was 2.048 million science packs. The cost is quite ridiculous, but I think you deserve bots with ridiculous throughput at that expense. Each level costs more than the whole rest of the base.

[Nomadic Steppe]

Because I love calculating costs....

For example, this part of my base only creates white science and they have 18,000 bluebelts inside.

It would take about 32,000 bots with capacity 4 & 187% speed to move the same number of items ideally. It would probably be more due to having to fly around, but with that many you would need 320 roboports, 1.28 GW of addition power, and all of the nessecary chests to load/unload. Just bots & roboports is about 6.5 million resources. You used 927k for your belts, which is ~14% of the resource costs ignoring the chests & extra power production.

the core of my base has forty-seven thousand (47,000), these numbers are insane, and that does not include mineral extraction zones.

That is about 83,555 bots with above researched with about 835 roboports. So that's just shy of 16 million resources.

I didn't multiply out the bots to take flying to charge & flying back to the starting point mainly because the base probably could have been built smaller overall, reducing flight times, but my general point stands. Belts cost less than 20% of what logistics bots do, but according to Kovarex, they are only 2 to 5 times better. So yeah, unless you can build the same production levels and get the cost ratio below 3x what the cost of the belt base is, your base is better resource for resource.

Where do you get those numbers?, The mega base that started the discussion in "bots vs belts 1" in the core of the base has 6000 bots and produces 1000 sciences per minute, that base has twice the production of my base, and it works fluid, with my base the game works slow and uses much more CPU. Everything looks slow.

and the electrisity is not a problem, in the game it is very easy to have energy to spare.

It's called the Factorio wiki. Besides, I calculated them for only 187% speed, which is easily surpassed. By the way, the base that started this was compactly built and had probably way more than 187% bot speed. My point is to show that it takes a great deal of research. You get 240% before space science, but at that point the game is "won" and balance isn't really important.

It has worker speed 16, which is 955% speed, so 28.65 tiles per second. So at that speed, you would need 23k bots assuming the same spacing. Given the size of the main base and judicial use of max beacons, 6k bots seems quite accurate. Which still only proves my point that bots are only good for train stations and beacon builds. Level 16 worker speed was 2.048 million science packs. The cost is quite ridiculous, but I think you deserve bots with ridiculous throughput at that expense. Each level costs more than the whole rest of the base.

If the goal is to launch a satellite and leave the game, the current game would be fine, I would not take out blue belts, but the problem is for the mega bases, after more than 50 hours and 20 or more satellite launches, the belts they are a burden, although I do not use bots of logistics in my map "150 hours" I have speed 14, and the belts kill the performance of the game and increase without brakes the difficulty of increasing more and more the production.

I want to achieve more with the belts but every time it is more difficult and more without my computer, I am traveling and I only have my laptop.

that is why I ask for an infinite technology for stacked belts, which costs the same as speed technology, but which increases the maximum stacking.

On my laptop and factorio 15.xx, the game was so slow that my character moved as if he did not use exoskeletons.

[nsalyzyn]

I like bots best for short bursts of high throughput. That's where they solve interesting problems that belts can't do. Therefore, the best fix IMO would be to solidify that behavior. It would still leave train (un)loading, character loading, rarely used item recopies, etc viable, but would leave the main bases best off using belts - unless you sacrifice hugely for space.

Some ways of acheiving this goal would be to modify the power usage and recharging for bots:
10x power consumption
1 recharging station that recharges at half speed as today

[DeznekCZ]

We hope, we are waiting. Stack-belt

Stack-belt.gif

Hi WIZ4
Nice solution but i thing this one can be used only for plates (exclude steel), gears or circuit. Other items wold look bad.

But I thing we need something else like:

Pallet belt + Crane - Transports all intermediate products (like gear, circuits, wood) and final products (modules, weapons, armours ...)
Bulk transporter + Hopper - Transport all ores, coal, stone, sulphur ...
Fluid pipe + Pump - Transport all fluids

These all need have defined positions for connect (like pipes before see https://mods.factorio.com/mod/AssemblyLines)

[Avezo]

nvm this post

[Caine]

Oh please, playing a game for a long time does not make it a special interest. Nor does being overly organized or being a perfectionist imply that you have OCD.

Please refrain from diagnosing the playerbase as being on the spectrum. You really cannot state that based on hobbies and/or a couple of forum posts.

[Szpak]

Nerfing bots is a stepback. Yet, you should boost belts but especially inserters. 90° is a must. Also, maybe add a sockets in assemblers that allows placing an inserter 'inside' of an assembler, thus making possible to feed assembler from a belt touching it.

[Pascali]

Nerfing bots is a stepback.

Or a stop forward to getting better game.

[taikodragon]

Overall, it seems that beacons are the real problem, the only reason micro-builds are so popular is because of the beacon coverage, belts and beacons just don't go together as it currently stands.

[deef0000dragon1]

After reading more and more posts, I keep coming to the same conclusion, as much as I hate it.

The only way to currently solve the balance problem without simply changing a number that already exists, (which would only lead to ups issues as the player solution would just be to add more, and I can do the path to prove it) is to limit chest throughput with bots.

Now, that is to say that I believe in nerfing bots at all. I dont. but as far as I can see, that is the MOST viable solution to nerf bots without causing a whole heck of a lot of problems and lashing out.



what I would perfer would be improving the belts. In whatever form that comes in. The result of that would be to add something to the game and increase the fun that group [A](Belts) without harming the the fun that group (Bots) has, and yet still balances out the game.

You have pushed so hard to keep the game on track. dedicating time to make the game work instead of releasing as a pile of garbage because of that magical 1.0 mark. Dont mess it up now and ostracize a large part of your community.

P.S. Side note to anyone doing the math on the number of people making mega bases; The people who care about that is larger than one expects because though the number of people who MAKE mega bases may be small, a lot of people aspire to do so in the future, and so dont want something that MIGHT effect them negatively, even if it most likely never will.

P.P.S. you cant just lower the ceiling of max science per minute now that you have placed it where it is. It can only go up, or people will throw a fit. Easy to give, hard to take away. Keep that in mind.

[Zarylo]

I agree with everything Twinsen and Klonan said.
And I love the splitter upgrade.

I suppose you could always add an easy mode where bots have no limits. And while we're at it, enabled from minute one.
So that creative people doing creative bot bases can stay creative.

But for the players who want challenging gameplay...
I think bots/belts/trains need distinctive advantages and disadvantages over each other.

Trains are sucessfully established as long range transportation method. With very high potential throughput. But pretty clunky in terms of versatility. (I.e. they can't change their behaviour using automation. Their schedule is set in stone manually)
belts should be more versatile than trains, and lower potential throughput (which is the case) they offer good logistic network integration options.
bots should be the most versatile transport entity. And the least performing one.

I have read some players stating that bots are an integral part of factorio.
They are not.
Neither are belts or trains.

Inserters are integral. You can use inserters as your sole transportation method.
And you can't use belts, bots or trains without them.

[Avezo]

nvm this post

[Tricorius]

Overall, it seems that beacons are the real problem, the only reason micro-builds are so popular is because of the beacon coverage, belts and beacons just don't go together as it currently stands.

This. And as far as there are people that view bots as cheating there are those that consider “belt weaving” to be cheating (I’m one of them). As unrealistic as it might be to have more than one robot accessing a chest at the same time, it is equally (perhaps more) unrealistic to have a belt cut in half with another belt underneath the ground and yet have two perfectly unneffected belts come right back above ground.

It may be out there, but I’ve yet to see a belt-based beacon block which doesn’t take advantage of belt weaving. (There are a few examples in the various threads on these topics.)

[taikodragon]

Overall, it seems that beacons are the real problem, the only reason micro-builds are so popular is because of the beacon coverage, belts and beacons just don't go together as it currently stands.

This. And as far as there are people that view bots as cheating there are those that consider “belt weaving” to be cheating (I’m one of them). As unrealistic as it might be to have more than one robot accessing a chest at the same time, it is equally (perhaps more) unrealistic to have a belt cut in half with another belt underneath the ground and yet have two perfectly unneffected belts come right back above ground.

It may be out there, but I’ve yet to see a belt-based beacon block which doesn’t take advantage of belt weaving. (There are a few examples in the various threads on these topics.)

Adding to this, belts would compete with bots footprint wise if requester chests were 2x2 instead of 1x1 as that would be the same space needed to underground 2 belts through the same setup.

I think overall chests are too small for their storage capacities. Steel chests and all the logistics chests should also be 2x2 since they hold around as much as 4 wooden chests.

[Pinaka]

Wanted to start this off by saying I'm a nub. I haven't even really played with bots all that much. But when I put down my first roboport the first thing that popped into my head was "their range is WHAT?!"

So what if instead of nerfing the capacity of bots, you implement a way to make the process of deploying logistics bots more involved? (Personally I see construction bots as quality of life)

This is a game about logistics and it feels like there should be more logistics to logistics bots. Maybe they need radio towers to work in an area and towers can only have X frequencies with Y number of bots per frequency. Or maybe you need to design a power grid specific to bots so that they can function within a range. Maybe they can only fly a very short distance and need a distribution network to get around your base? Or possibly they need a levitation grid of some sort or (probably getting a bit crazy here) that they might need to walk instead of fly.

The limiting factor to belts is that they occupy a physical space that prevents anything else from being set up there and you have to work around other objects. A lot of my enjoyable "eureka" moments are when I managed to find a really convoluted way of getting a belt to an assembler or a lab that I didn't know I'd need to future proof. I think if I had to phrase it one way:

It feels like Factorio is a puzzle game and bots are a transparent image of the puzzle you can put over it.

[Coren]

So, not sure if something like this came up in all of the brainstorming, but what about a pathing constraint on bots that would allow them to continue to be very effective over small distances, but weaker at medium/long range?

My thought goes like this:
When ever you set down a roboport, that is considered the areas prime roboport.

All roboports set down within the logistics area of a prime roboport are connected to only that prime roboport and are considered subordinate roboports. (this allows for more charging/bot density.)

Any roboport set down outside of a prime roboport's logistic zone that is close enough to connect them would create a new prime roboport zone that includes all of the new ports logistic network that is not covered by a pre-existing prime roboport (thus, if you set it right out side of the first roboport, you're wasting 1/2 of the potential coverage).

Bots can only move from the prime zone they are currently in to another prime zone that is directly connected (including diagonally) but must also "check in" to that zone's prime roboport by touching that roboport before moving on.

I don't know if this is anywhere close to a good idea nor how complicated the logic would be to make something like this function, but it seems like it would make for some potentially interesting choices.

I'm hoping that description comes across as legible.

Well, regardless, happy building.