Aren't construction bots available too late?

[BlueTemplar]

Construction Bots are not too early at all. My build order is basically Red & Green Science, A basic mall and then a bot facility. In my last no spoon run, I had bots up within 3:45mins. Now this can be done even faster as my Bot facility was 4 roboports away from my basic mall (caused by some inconvenient ore patches that I need in between).

You won't always have oil nearby...

[Darklaser]

You can change everything in your data if u need this so much. If not you can try nanobot mod it's simple and for early game. it works very similar to construction bots

[mrvn]

Yeah, I don't think that I knew about that yet when doing the above...
But wouldn't it be kind of problematic to do it where you don't have sight ?

Yes, it is. But small holes in the radar coverage where you only need to go straight is no problem. No different from placing blueprints though.

[zOldBulldog]

Yeah, I don't think that I knew about that yet when doing the above...
But wouldn't it be kind of problematic to do it where you don't have sight ?

If you can afford to extend your roboport coverage so that you are building remotely... then you can use a small gadget like this one (derived from Mark Lodato's "Minimal Autonomous Radar" design) to extend your sight. Note: DO NOT connect it to your power grid, it runs 100% on solar.

Code: Select all

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[4xel]

In my last no spoon run, I had bots up within 3:45mins. Now this can be done even faster as my Bot facility was 4 roboports away from my basic mall (caused by some inconvenient ore patches that I need in between).

You won't always have oil nearby...

The no oil nearby is a huge fallacy. Even assuming that you did not use the preview and don't already know where it is, unless you use some extreme ore generation setting/mod or biters settings, in which case you asked for it, there's always oil close enough.

In the run I talked about :

I just got mine in a new game in 3h30 without try harding.

Which was beeline to the first robot port and robot assembly line, there was no oil nearby. I lost 5 to 10 minutes top runing around with science going in background to search for it, as well as to know where the nearest biters are.

When I still found no oil, I just plopped down a radar (IIRC I put it about 1h30, but with a bit more foresight, you can easily put it at 30min-1h without it being taxing on your ressources or time) and got ready to build a car (possible under 1h30, realistically 2h-3h if you wan to build what you can build in the base beforhand). The radar was virtually free time wise, and had found an oil depot well withtin its scanning range.

Had it failed, I would have spent 20 minutes top to go around my base in a coal powered car until I find oil. That time could barely even be said to be lost because driving is fun and because exploring is necessary at some later point anyway, and coal car is not that suboptimal of a way to explore.

If anything, you eventually have to explore because your ores run out ; but it can even be said that a map with no oil nearby suck regardless of whether you have access to construction bot or not without oil, because construction bots do not help exploring (real robotport + radar might though).

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, I don't think that I knew about that yet when doing the above...
But wouldn't it be kind of problematic to do it where you don't have sight ?

Yes, it is. But small holes in the radar coverage where you only need to go straight is no problem. No different from placing blueprints though.

Yeah, I guess that even when placing rails towards a no sight area, even if you "run" into a tree/spawner/rock, you'll feel/hear it, and will be able to restart it, eventually from within sight?

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, I don't think that I knew about that yet when doing the above...
But wouldn't it be kind of problematic to do it where you don't have sight ?

If you can afford to extend your roboport coverage so that you are building remotely... then you can use a small gadget like this one (derived from Mark Lodato's "Minimal Autonomous Radar" design) to extend your sight. Note: DO NOT connect it to your power grid, it runs 100% on solar.

Code: Select all

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

Thanks, but remember, I'm talking about pre-oil, so no bots and no accumulators !

(Funnily enough, my very first circuit design (much later) was similar to this one (but without combinators) :

2018-06-07 (3).png (4.44 MiB) Viewed 3512 times

)

[BlueTemplar]

The no oil nearby is a huge fallacy. Even assuming that you did not use the preview and don't already know where it is, unless you use some extreme ore generation setting/mod or biters settings, in which case you asked for it, there's always oil close enough.

Ah sorry. My current game has indeed colored my expectations somewhat...

[osric_athanasius]

Construction Bots are not too early at all. My build order is basically Red & Green Science, A basic mall and then a bot facility. In my last no spoon run, I had bots up within 3:45mins. Now this can be done even faster as my Bot facility was 4 roboports away from my basic mall (caused by some inconvenient ore patches that I need in between).

You won't always have oil nearby...

It should be noted that should you not have oil nearby, you need a completely different plan in base design. A complete switch to rail-centric design would be advisable or moving your base as you will not be able to get blue research without it.
If your having an oil shortage which is more likely, then my design is based on 4 robot frame factories and they pull about 30 oil/s with basic oil refining.
The real difficulty is producing the roboports at a speed that I am happy with. I settle for 1 roboport every 100s, which basically doubles the oil demand.

Finally, I realised that my time I put in my previous was wrong. It was actually 2 hours 45 minutes with clear bee-lining to bots then to a rocket at 6 hours and 39 minutes. I have attached a map view of my base to give you an idea of the distances between the pumpjacks (red circle), Bot facility including integrated smelting (Yellow) and Starting Mall (purple) the locations were very far from ideal. There is a full radar coverage between oil and the starting mall.