Aren't construction bots available too late?

[galibert]

Construction bots are a QoL thing for everybody but the very new player. They allow to do obvious things like copy/paste or efficient planning. If they didn't exist we would all be yelling for something equivalent.

But they happen extremely late. Even if they pretend to be pre-oil, it's a lie. The research is, but building the robots themselves is post-oil, with a requirement of lubricant and acid. It's more than a little annoying not to be able to use blueprints fully for the damn refinery. Or to upgrade yellow belts/stone furnaces to red/steel whenever some version of the upgrade planner gets in. In addition the initial construction bots are damn slow.

I think part of the problem stems from wanting to tune the balance of logistic bots, which makes perfect sense and works rather well. But construction bots don't really count in the balance, they're there to make our life better.

I think construction bots should be buffed independently of the logistic ones, and something not horribly costly available earlier. Possibly something similar to the existing nanobots mod, but simpler (only one type in particular), and possibly slightly less powerful (e.g. equivalent to the current initial construction bots in speed, and single personal roboport in range).

Comments?

OG.

[darkfrei]

Construction robots must be earlier, but logistic robots must be later for balance.
Using without roboports, just equipment roboport for first power armor.

[Koub]

TBH I have hard time playing without construction bots since I have played enough to unlock them in my first games .

[dog80]

Construction bots are a QoL thing for everybody but the very new player. They allow to do obvious things like copy/paste or efficient planning. If they didn't exist we would all be yelling for something equivalent.

But they happen extremely late. Even if they pretend to be pre-oil, it's a lie. The research is, but building the robots themselves is post-oil, with a requirement of lubricant and acid. It's more than a little annoying not to be able to use blueprints fully for the damn refinery. Or to upgrade yellow belts/stone furnaces to red/steel whenever some version of the upgrade planner gets in. In addition the initial construction bots are damn slow.

I think part of the problem stems from wanting to tune the balance of logistic bots, which makes perfect sense and works rather well. But construction bots don't really count in the balance, they're there to make our life better.

I think construction bots should be buffed independently of the logistic ones, and something not horribly costly available earlier. Possibly something similar to the existing nanobots mod, but simpler (only one type in particular), and possibly slightly less powerful (e.g. equivalent to the current initial construction bots in speed, and single personal roboport in range).

Comments?

OG.

build a decent working mall then you dont need logistic bots early on
- prob with const bots is that it require batteries and red chips (and lubricant) so every product out of refinery, which is a bit *much to setup
so making refs acid bats plastic redchips - then you have to make the bot frames as well - then you can start making bots / roboports
- perso roboport reqs blue science so this would be even more to setup...

so the curve from hey cool i have setup iron steel and copper smelting to - what is next - ( refinery ) is a pretty large thing that takes a lot of effort and building to get the products out of it and advance in the game.

greets

[dog80]

one solution - what might be strange - is to replace red-chips requirement of ropoport to green chips . this way you could skip plastic/redchips production and already head to construction bots

[BlueTemplar]

Construction robots must be earlier, but logistic robots must be later for balance.
Using without roboports, just equipment roboport for first power armor.

So invert roboport and personal roboport in the tech tree?
Have you tested how usable personal roboport is without batteries ?

[galibert]

one solution - what might be strange - is to replace red-chips requirement of ropoport to green chips . this way you could skip plastic/redchips production and already head to construction bots

Won't work, robot common body requires acid and lubricant.

[bobucles]

Modular armor needs red circuits at the minimum.
Personal robo needs RC.
Regular roboport needs RC.
Robo frame needs batteries and lubricant.
No amount of tech tree shenanigans will make construction bots come earlier. You will always need a complete oil tech line to use bots because of the ingredients. Granted if you build a very tiny bit of everything you can have bots fairly quickly but not much is possible until you can reasonably get blue science.

Have you tested how usable personal roboport is without batteries ?

I have. You don't need batteries or suit energy to use roboports, which is great because personal solar panels are terrible. Jam 4 roboports into your modular armor, do the thing, mine the bots when you're done. Or use normal roboports and don't worry about it.

[ASDFGerte]

Yes, working without robots is slow and obtaining them for the first time in a game feels like a good step forward. That's also the point. The game is about progression, and obtaining useful technologies, gadgets, items and entities along the way. If players get everything from the beginning, there won't be any rewards on the road to the first rocket. You will just build the stuff you need to make the rocket, but not get anything for yourself in the meantime (as you got everything at the start already).

That being said, robots are available roughly in the middle of a normal game (start to rocket). Sure, at first they are slow, and roboports are still expensive, but they do their work. You can plant large facilities even at worker-robot-speed 2 (which you will have at the time, and robot-capacity is not needed), faster than you would by hand (and you can just walk away while they are building, and do something else!).

It's more than a little annoying not to be able to use blueprints fully for the damn refinery.

( refinery ) is a pretty large thing that takes a lot of effort and building

Here is my XS refinery, which boosts me far past robots. How is that more than a few minutes to setup? It's one of the smaller things to build! Placing overly large refineries early on is a mistake new players make and has nothing to do with game balance. After you got bots, removing the micro-refinery and placing a new, medium sized one (you still don't need too much!) is no issue either. Alternatively, just double it later by placing a second one (with bots already!), that will make it last some additional time before having to finally upgrade it to a larger build.

XS refinery

Last but least, if you played the start dozens of times (i mean like literally 30+ start-to-rocket games) or just have a different attitude towards the situation and don't even want to do it a second time ( Koub), there is absolutely nothing stopping you from starting with everything available instantly. Here is your ticket:

Start equip and tech commands

Code: Select all

/c	local player = game.player
player.insert{name="power-armor-mk2", count = 1}
player.insert{name="fusion-reactor-equipment", count = 2}
player.insert{name="exoskeleton-equipment", count = 6}
player.insert{name="personal-roboport-mk2-equipment", count = 3}
player.insert{name="night-vision-equipment", count = 1}
player.insert{name="battery-mk2-equipment", count = 2}
player.insert{name="construction-robot", count = 100}
player.insert{name="steel-axe", count = 5}

Code: Select all

/c game.player.force.technologies["worker-robots-speed-1"].researched = true; game.player.force.technologies["worker-robots-speed-2"].researched = true; game.player.force.technologies["worker-robots-speed-3"].researched = true; game.player.force.technologies["worker-robots-speed-4"].researched = true; game.player.force.technologies["worker-robots-speed-5"].researched = true;

(purposefully didn't include the command for worker-robot-speed 6+)

If you complain you don't get achievements that way, think about why they are called "achievements", or search for the post that explains in detail how to just hack them all.

[darkfrei]

Construction robots must be earlier, but logistic robots must be later for balance.
Using without roboports, just equipment roboport for first power armor.

So invert roboport and personal roboport in the tech tree?
Have you tested how usable personal roboport is without batteries ?

Yes, the roboport has own accumulator:

2018-06-20 20_43_18-Factorio 0.16.51.png (177 KiB) Viewed 13576 times

The mod with earlier construction drones: Early Construction Drones

[dog80]

one solution - what might be strange - is to replace red-chips requirement of ropoport to green chips . this way you could skip plastic/redchips production and already head to construction bots

Won't work, robot common body requires acid and lubricant.

ugh i didnt say a thing that this requirement would be changed - only to skip plastic and red-chip production - which are only required for roboports or blue-science which leads to perso roboport

[dog80]

Here is my XS refinery,

thats a neat setup though you require advanced oil prod already nvm - what i was initially talking about is that you have to setup production for ALL OIL products in order to get to construction bots ( ACID+reqs.WATER, lay COAL to ref for PLASTICS + Iron/Copper lane etc steel so actually everything is required^^) and this hurd is big i'd say after you where just finishing your steel line for new things now to get to the next chapter of the game you need suddenly AALL THESE THINGS ffffssss....

actually though the ratios are broken af but - when you have setup working construction bots you have all the ressources (production wise) rdy to finish the game or am i wrong here

[rcp27]

Construction robots must be earlier, but logistic robots must be later for balance.
Using without roboports, just equipment roboport for first power armor.

While logistics bots are available early, they aren’t particularly useful until requester chests are unlocked, which are behind yellow science, so pretty well late game. While I can see the usefulness of construction bots earlier in the game than they are, it feels a bit wrong to me to put them before blue science.

[silenced]

When in earlier games I tried to rush robots, now I take a different approach. Especially with Angel's and Bob's and Yuoki in combination, I make a big huge mess, which is still functional, even without robots.

Seeing iron, copper and steel meandering through the base to build piercing ammo, which again meanders on belts through the base to the outer beltline to refill all the turrets, it's awesome. Much better than seeing bots everywhere.

Especially all the different ways to make ore with Angel's = awesome with belts only, and even more fun with the recently added splitters that can sort.


It's more fun, for me, to play without any bots at all. I actually don't even miss bots.

[galibert]

Yes, working without robots is slow and obtaining them for the first time in a game feels like a good step forward.

You're conflating logistic robots and construction robots. My point is, they're really different. I'd even say that the coolness of construction bots is almost hidden by the arrival of logistic bots, since they happen roughly at the same lime.

OG.

[galibert]

Seeing iron, copper and steel meandering through the base to build piercing ammo, which again meanders on belts through the base to the outer beltline to refill all the turrets, it's awesome. Much better than seeing bots everywhere.

When you're seeing bots everywhere, you're seeing logistic robots. I'm talking construction bots. Not the same thing, especially not the same gameplay impact.

OG.

[silenced]

Yes galibert, I know, but even these meandering spaghetti abominations are hard to build with construction robots, and with this the strange factory setups too.

Having each base looking the same due to using blueprints over and over again made 20 playthroughs ago or downloaded somewhere = game killer.

Keep the robots back where they are, AI and flying is high tech, so they should be behind some high tech barrier, even the construction ones.


Additional, you can always mod everything to your liking.

[BlueTemplar]

Construction robots must be earlier, but logistic robots must be later for balance.
Using without roboports, just equipment roboport for first power armor.

So invert roboport and personal roboport in the tech tree?
Have you tested how usable personal roboport is without batteries ?

Yes, the roboport has own accumulator:

2018-06-20 20_43_18-Factorio 0.16.51.png

The mod with earlier construction drones: Early Construction Drones

Yeah, I'm aware of that, but I didn't realize that it was almost as good as 2 Mk1 Batteries !
(Honestly, the tooltip should show its max capacity.)

It also feels a bit cheesy, especially since the Mk1 Battery is not even a requirement for it !

[zOldBulldog]

I understand the rationale for making bots available early or late in the game, and there are valid reasons in both points of view. We don't really want to mess with the progression for the first play through but we want to make bots available early from second playthrough on except for special achievement games.

I think a good solution could be:

- Make the creation of the first space science bottle unlock a new Space Science = "launched the first rocket" research that carries from game to game.
- Space Science research gets used as an "alternate prerequisite" for some researches.
- Use the Space Science research as alternate unlock research so that all of the researches for prerequisite materials for bots get unlocked with just red/green science + space science. (In addition to being unlocked the normal way if you don't have space science)
- Provide an option in the settings to disable Space Science research so that it does not interfere with special types of games (like spoon runs).

With the above,:

- A first run (for new players) or one with the option disabled would remain just like the game is today.
- Runs after having beaten the game would allow you to build an early (and small) robot assembly line (with oil, lubricant, acid, batteries, etc) right after setting up your beginning red/green science. No more need to research up to blue (or yellow if you include all logistic chests) or scale up before you can use bots the way you want...whatever that way may be, and it will be different from person to person.

I think that should satisfy everyone, it gives the learning experience during the first playthrough and beating the game, preserves the limitations for special challenge-type playthrough, and allows players that want early bots to have them and use them as much or as little as *they* desire, without forcing other players to fit in the preferences of a few "fanatic purist" players.

[leoch]

You could just use a fast-start mod; that's what I do now.

Aside from that, you can build construction bots using only a very basic refinery set-up. Carry a bunch of engine units over to a simple electric engine assembler. Pip petroleum out for a small plastic & battery facility. Important point: you don't need to automate the next tier of science to get the bots.