Mining and Resource-Harvesting Robots

[OutbackCatgirl]

Now, there's already a good number of robots in and planned, but unless I missed a memo somewhere there's nothing mentioning robots capable of collecting resources from the land, such as ores, trees, or fish. Oil would be infeasible, of course, being a liquid.




That's the basic idea in a nutshell. My own personal thoughts on this are below, if you feel like reading something more in-depth:

The mining robot would have to be larger than many robots, in order to carry a decent amount of the material it's been tasked to collect. Say about 2x2. My vision is that they would search for any of the filtered materials around the robot network in a radius defined by the user, land, and then mine it into internal storage. They should be somewhere between burner miners and electric miners in their mining speed for balance reasons. Once mined, materials are placed in logistics chests as normal.

This would enable setting up lumber operations, as well as allowing small pockets of resources you had overlooked previously to be collected and shunted into your processing setup.

Please do suggest improvements to this, as it's a bare-bones idea.

[Schorty]

Trees already can be harvester by constructionrobots. You just habe to use the deconstructionplanner and place a roboport nearby

[SHiRKiT]

Wow this is actaully an excellent idea, I totally loved this concept since I use robots for everything (I don't use conveyor belts once I get the tech). I would really, REALLY love to see this implement, but along with colored (layered) logistics networks. I'd REALLY REALLY love this!

Maybe could be converted into a simpler form of a mod?

[EditorRUS]

This would be total OP. Why? You cannot place tons of mining drills all over a field of iron or copper, you have to carefully place them, place modules inside and so on. If you'd use robots for mining - you would be able to do that and thus literally "suck" a resource field in mere minutes. So you should make your idea more balanced.

For now (my current factory have taken 34 hours of playing) i have ~1400 logistic and construction bots. I turned off construction of bots because i have so many and I don't need even more of them.

[Boogieman14]

This would be total OP. Why? You cannot place tons of mining drills all over a field of iron or copper, you have to carefully place them, place modules inside and so on. If you'd use robots for mining - you would be able to do that and thus literally "suck" a resource field in mere minutes. So you should make your idea more balanced.

That's entirely a matter of proper balancing. As flail already suggested, mining speed should be below electric miners. Then, make it so only one bot can be in the same spot at once and the problem you're suggesting doesn't exist.

[Gammro]

You could let a mining bot take only a few ore at the same time? So you'd still need a massive amount of them to have any kind of significant output.

[The Phoenixian]

Rather than balancing based on mining speed alone, why not use power requirements as well? If it's 2x2, or larger it would make sense that a robot might be too large and have to much energy requirements to charge up at a roboport, or even be unable to fly at all. Thus it makes sense that the best fuel source for the thing would be coal or oil as electricity is difficult to store. (Lack of modules could also be a balancing factor, but I don't see it being all that much of one.)

Furthermore, If the goal here is to have a robot that mines with a reduced need for infrastructure* at the mine itself why not have an autonomous land robot, a la your classic C&C style harvester. Provide the thing with fuel and then give it a waypoint to and from the nearest train station/(or unloading dock if it's not too far a drive) and it can slowly fill itself up with ore return back, and refuel as needed. From there you just need to make sure the thing is worse for long distance transport than trains (lower range, speed and/or capacity) and you could have something pretty interesting. Moreso if it's mining speed is slow enough that you're encouraged to use dozens of the things at once.

And while I'm on it, having these thinge be land based burner robots could add another factor here: Defense. If these things pollute heavily but can't defend themselves and are too slow to flee biters, that likewise encourages you to use automatic tanks to watch over your mining robots.

*I say reduced because I think laser turrets and their attendant balance problems are a good demonstration of why eliminating too much of the need for infrastructure is a bad idea.

[gogasos]

Now, there's already a good number of robots in and planned, but unless I missed a memo somewhere there's nothing mentioning robots capable of collecting resources from the land, such as ores, trees, or fish. Oil would be infeasible, of course, being a liquid.




That's the basic idea in a nutshell. My own personal thoughts on this are below, if you feel like reading something more in-depth:

The mining robot would have to be larger than many robots, in order to carry a decent amount of the material it's been tasked to collect. Say about 2x2. My vision is that they would search for any of the filtered materials around the robot network in a radius defined by the user, land, and then mine it into internal storage. They should be somewhere between burner miners and electric miners in their mining speed for balance reasons. Once mined, materials are placed in logistics chests as normal.

This would enable setting up lumber operations, as well as allowing small pockets of resources you had overlooked previously to be collected and shunted into your processing setup.

Please do suggest improvements to this, as it's a bare-bones idea.

that'd be to much automation imo, think of it. just put like 10k roboports blueprint with electric pole's (Small,Medium whatever) and there u go, just set-up all oil on the map and there u go, automation for like 200h+

[ludsoe]

that'd be to much automation imo, think of it. just put like 10k roboports blueprint with electric pole's (Small,Medium whatever) and there u go, just set-up all oil on the map and there u go, automation for like 200h+

Im sorry I thought this was Factorio, The game ABOUT automating everything.

[The Phoenixian]

that'd be to much automation imo, think of it. just put like 10k roboports blueprint with electric pole's (Small,Medium whatever) and there u go, just set-up all oil on the map and there u go, automation for like 200h+

Im sorry I thought this was Factorio, The game ABOUT automating everything.

Perhaps he meant, "too much for too little effort" rather than simply "too much". Part of the fun with automation in Factorio comes from the logistics puzzle you need to solve to get everything working and given that logistics bots themselves are a concern to many for that reason it is understandable that one might consider a buff to them enough to make them all out overpowered. It's part of why I had the whole, "land based harvester" idea here myself.

[ssilk]

The current target is just to built the rocket defense, but the game target will change to something much longer lasting.

Something like automated mining is needed then, cause otherwise you can't keep up with the needed speed.

I don't see much difference between a harvester on ground or in the air - gameplay wise. So I think cause it would make much problems to coordinate hundreds of harvester routes, the devs will choose a flying version of a harvester.

And not to forget: They promised to add underground ressources / hidden ores. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... p?f=9&t=10

[bobingabout]

This is something a construction bot could probably do already, the issue is that you can't currently mark a resource to be deconstructed.

As for the issue of ballance... it's just a question of number of bots. A mining bot comes over, grabs a peice (or small stack) of ore and takes it to a chest. 1 bot would take far longer than simply placing a mining drill, and using a belt.
Have about 20 bots, and then they might be faster.

Another issue here could be how close the destination chest is to the ore field, the further away it is, the more mining bots you need. If it is closer, you're likely to need less mining bots, and more logistic bots to carry the ore from the mining chest to where it is needed, but if it is further away, you might need more mining bots, but fewer logistic bots.

To use a mod as an example, take DyTech with a high end mining drill, those things can fill a chest with ore in about 30 seconds, the challenge is moving it fast enough. I think an army of a few thousand MKII logistic bots(also in the mod) has issues moving it fast enough.

Overall... I think yes, I would like to see some kind of mining bot in the future.

[KrzysD]

Joined into this thread -- ssilk


As the title says, Miner bots that use the construction and logistics network of the roboports. Something like the resource mod you click that you want the miner bots to mine that location, and they get to work as long as its in the network, would use the same speed and carrying cap tech as the other bots, but adding another tech to increase speed of mining.

Would be very balanced as well considering your bots will have to fly back a fourth to empty themselves, instead of a belt taking the ore.

yeah that's my one little idea.

[DaveMcW]

Put an active provider chest in front of a mine, and the logistics bots will do it.

[NitrousWolf]

I like the idea that you could use the bots to mine the no-mans land between your fortifications and the biter nests.

Currently if you were to mine no-mans land with logistics bots, an active provider chest and a mine they would quickly get swarmed with biters as the mine is stationary and giving out pollution.

[ssilk]

And you mean, that if you do that with bots, they won't do that?

[NitrousWolf]

And you mean, that if you do that with bots, they won't do that?

Yeah the bots are still screwed if they encounter biters

Maybe one day bots will flee from biters and you might want to send these bots out to dangerous places