Just Too Easy...

[golfmiketango]

Somebody should fix this, it's like taking sprockets from a flying frame, or...

Like Taking Kernel Pointers From an Embedded Operating System

LikeTakingKernelPointersFromAnEmbeddedSystem.png (8.1 MiB) Viewed 7022 times

(lest you think I'm not kidding: five minutes after this photo, my 12GW+ base lost power).

[Koub]

Where's the robot to bring the power for your base ?

[Kayanor]

Where's the robot to bring the power for your base ?

Out of power and running slow.

[quadrox]

I don't understand - is this somehow about the "bots vs belts" discussion, or is there something else I am not getting?

Even though it probably is a joke, I would like this one explained...

[Koub]

My answer was a tentative reference to https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/2988262d-3 ... ffedb24e1f

[golfmiketango]

I don't understand - is this somehow about the "bots vs belts" discussion, or is there something else I am not getting?

Even though it probably is a joke, I would like this one explained...

Pretty much yeah. Non-obvious from the picture, but what this illustrates is: blueprints in a robotic network are no magical wand of wish-granting in factorio gameplay. I wanted more iron smelting and so I thought "no problem, just grab a blueprint and slap it down, here's some free space.... moar iron please, magical robots!". I failed to consider:

• how things had changed in my logistic network since smelters number 1 and number 2 were placed. At that time, there was very little ore kicking around in the network, and literally 1/200 as many bots, so nothing dramatic happened.
• that my build had some layout assumptions that were not going to hold naively "stamping down" another copy; at least, not where I put it (hence all that crap flying all over the place with dramatically negative "logistic utility," and creating a big mess I'll have to spend a lot of time and effort cleaning up (not to mention a power crisis).

That's not terribly clear in the picture but since this was more for comedic effect, I figured, although you might not know why, you can kind of guess a picture like that usually represents bots running amok and breaking my base as per my request.

Also, this is pretty subtle, but the picture contains evidence of similar problems that have happened in the past and have never been fundamentally resolved (because: bots are hard). Plus I always think it's just cool and funny when I discover that, despite considerable efforts to be organized and meticulous, I've created a hellish dystopian mess in factorio

[quyxkh]

Plus I always think it's just cool and funny when I discover that, despite considerable efforts to be organized and meticulous, I've created a hellish dystopian mess in factorio

The factory grows

[Daid]

Plus I always think it's just cool and funny when I discover that, despite considerable efforts to be organized and meticulous, I've created a hellish dystopian mess in factorio

The factory grows

The expanding factory expands to meet the needs of the expanding factory.
-Oscar Wilde

[FactorioParadox]

Plus I always think it's just cool and funny when I discover that, despite considerable efforts to be organized and meticulous, I've created a hellish dystopian mess in factorio

The factory grows

That's gonna become a meme now, isn't it?

[HurkWurk]

Plus I always think it's just cool and funny when I discover that, despite considerable efforts to be organized and meticulous, I've created a hellish dystopian mess in factorio

The factory grows

That's gonna become a meme now, isn't it?

The factory has grown to meet the needs of the growing factory.

[Aeternus]

Mhyea. Smelting is one of the few things which I would -not- bot-ify. Reason here should be fairly obvious - the bot stations charging the bots near the source of the ore cause a backlog, eventually grinding the thing to a halt. The bulk-in bulk-out nature of smelters just screams "Belt it" to me.

I've had this wildgrowth happen on me before - esp when you automatically add bots to your network if the amount of available bots drops below a certain count (flying bot frame factory -> 2x bot factory -> load into a Roboport with the circuit network controlling the inserters based on the number of available bots in the network). Didn't realise I had created a loopback with Stone until after 2 hours I noticed a rather dense line of bots... turned out there were 5000 of them on that one loop. Oops.

Without power... I went to the stone age.

[golfmiketango]

Mhyea. Smelting is one of the few things which I would -not- bot-ify. Reason here should be fairly obvious - the bot stations charging the bots near the source of the ore cause a backlog, eventually grinding the thing to a halt. The bulk-in bulk-out nature of smelters just screams "Belt it" to me.

I've had this wildgrowth happen on me before - esp when you automatically add bots to your network if the amount of available bots drops below a certain count (flying bot frame factory -> 2x bot factory -> load into a Roboport with the circuit network controlling the inserters based on the number of available bots in the network). Didn't realise I had created a loopback with Stone until after 2 hours I noticed a rather dense line of bots... turned out there were 5000 of them on that one loop. Oops.

Without power... I went to the stone age.

Very true and also very much to the point I was hoping to drive home in OP. Belts are better for many things. They are in fact quite effective at moving things in bulk which is supposedly what makes bots so great. The previous picture was from an unusual "disaster". But here is another picture of the same train->multi-smelter system operating normally. Business as usual, and I'll be damned if it isn't...

Like taking iron plate from a steel smelter

LikeTakingIronPlateFromASteelSmelter.png (6.56 MiB) Viewed 5796 times

[/url]

The whole way this came about was, since I usually build things like this using belts, to see what the whole kerfuffle was about, and also to experience how magically OP bots were in case the window of opportunity for that was about to close. But my conclusion is: bots are not OP and I should redesign this thing using belts because bots basically aren't able to scale throughput this high.

It hasn't completely broken yet, but it's fraying at the seams, and I doubt I can place enough roboports to make it scale much higher, even though I have a respectable level of robot flying speed infinite research completed. Converting it to belts, perhaps with robotically maintained buffers, seems to me like it will fix the problem. Then again maybe I'm just not experienced enough at building for bots. I usually use them only for incidental demands. But in that case, I also seem to fail to confirm the hypothesis that bots are OP -- instead, in this case, it would seem, they are well balanced, constituting a design-skillset that must be carefully developed if you want anything amazing to happen.

[Frightning]

I suspect you could get something that size to run smoothly with bots if you think carefully about how to make the most out of your robots (minimizing travel distance and number of 'moved-by-robot-' steps in the process), and made your layout properly compact. Your problem seems to me to be that you're storing all your Iron ore below the smelter, just use the Requester chests that feed the furnaces for storage space (set their requests to a full 2400 Iron ore) and you will have ample storage capacity.