Robots seem required at this point

[8BitToaster]

Hello, I'm a new player on Factorio. I only got the game about 93 hours ago, but I already have 76 hours in the game and I've almost completed one of my worlds.

From what I can tell the logistics/robots seem required at this point. I got to the end game and I have a bunch of blue circuits and whatnot, but I can't get enough science potions for the life of me. It seems like transporting (even using trains) isn't efficient enough without the train loading/unloading systems used with robots.

Where should I learn how to use them, or even better, how can I be more efficient without them?

[Serenity]

It seems like transporting (even using trains) isn't efficient enough without the train loading/unloading systems used with robots.

Not true. Lots of people have train logistics with belts. The loaders and unloaders can be somewhat complicated, but with the maximum stack bonus 4 stack inserters are enough to fill a blue belt.
You need to use chest buffers so there is a constant supply even when there is no train present. Then you can use train stackers to have multiple trains per unloading station.

Robots can make things easier (you don't need to balance belts for example) and have a very high throughput. But you don't need to build your entire base around them. I often only use them for personal supply and to transport certain low volume things.
Threads where people complain that belts are not competitive are about very different scales than what you're at

[Greybeard_LXI]

Robots are useful.

Points to think about for efficiency:
-- Are you using blue belts? If splitters or underground pieces are not blue, that restricts the throughput of the whole belt.
-- Are things well organized?
-- Do you have enough lanes? Enough trains?
-- How is your stack inserter bonus?

To get started find one thing in your factory that isn't working well or is new. Experiment with this.

For example, I'm adding yellow science potions to my factory. The low density structures, blue circuits and flying robot frames are not very close together, and on the far side from the labs. Belting this stuff would be a pain, and it's only temporary until I move to a dedicated research area. This is a decent place to start with bots.

I have been adding coal fired electric generation manually, a couple boilers at a time when I need more power. I am almost at the end of what I can do in my starter base and it's a long time before nuclear. I need another full coal set up, and don't have room at my base. I'm thinking about a temporary section just to make 20 boilers and 40 engines. I can add provider chests to my bus for the iron, copper and stone and then stick the assemblers near my passenger train stop and when I'm ready just pick them up and go build a power plant. I already have a provider chest for the pipes. (I need to remember to disable the assemblers before picking up the boilers to avoid wasting materials.) Then replace the requester chests with provider chests to clean out the inventory.

I have seen some common problems that you might want to avoid.
-- Active provider chests can fill up your logistics storage. Stick to passive providers and requestor chests to start out with.
-- If the logistics area is too large, your bots can run out of energy and slow down. They will also take a straight line to where they want to go, even if this takes them outside an L shaped logistics area. And if there is a biter base in the middle of that L ...
-- Use multiple logistics areas. I have one on my main base and another that just covers the ore unload and moves coal to the engines.
-- Sometimes you need more bots to get the throughput you need. Sometimes you have too many bots. If you see bots circling a roboport, you need more roboports there.
-- Put the roboports in the path you expect the bots to take so they don't have to go out of the way to recharge.

[8BitToaster]

Thanks! I think the main problem with robots being weird in my first base was that it was a terrible spaghetti mess at the end with my trains being semi-unorganized. I started a new world with more organization and an easier factory to start with and I can finish the game now even without the use of robots. I'm still going to try to figure out what they do, but just a plain fresh nicely organized start helped me out.

[Honktown]

Robots have their usefulness, but it's mostly at the end-game i.e. space science phase. Before that, they're awfully slow, carry <4 things at a time, and roboports are quite expensive (45 red chips and 45 steel, not counting the 45 gears). Robot frames are slow to produce, and are a bit logistically complicated, requiring everything but stone, with the electric engines and batteries requiring many steps.

Blue belts take a lot of iron, but reds are only 11.5 iron per belt, take NO energy or red chips (NEVER ENOUGH), and can be made quite early with their full potential available immediately. The old rate was 26.66 items per second, now 30. Base speed of logistic robots on wiki is 3 tiles per second. A single logistic robot can carry 4 items max. Creating an even comparison of 30 item-tiles per second and 12 item-tiles per second, you have to speed up the logistic robot more than 250% to get the throughput of one red belt. Not counting any non-item time of the robot to get to the destination, recharge, etc. It might still sound like the robot is better (they take no floor space and you can make more and more), but when you start adding in the costs of materials, engines, research, etc, it goes up and up. That comparison was just for a red belt. Blue is 45 items/s, 50% faster.

The worst part of robots is their energy is fixed, and their energy use is based on distance. It doesn't matter if the robot flew instantly, it will always have nearly the same range as the starting robot (the cost of staying in the air is relatively low, there's only like a 20% range difference from base speed to infinite speed). The only way to increase the density of transferring stuff per recharge time (which can't be faster) is to add more bots. Buuuuuuut roboports only have 4 slots, and since distance/recharge is fixed, to double the density more than one recharge distance, you have to double the number of roboports at each recharge spot. The roboports being 4x4 don't fit evenly with everything else that goes in 3x3 grids or 2x2 vacant spaces. This quickly gets out of hand if you're transferring plates, and you end up putting a dozen roboports near the train, and another dozen near the furnaces since plates stack better than ore. The whole setup is just not "economically" feasible if you're trying to reach the rocket at a decent pace. After a few rockets it's fine. After a few hundred it's a drop in the bucket.

Robots are best used for final-tier items like science bottles, engines, furnaces and modules, etc. When you use them for trains the energy cost skyrockets, because you're transferring 1 plate, vs say, the electric engine, which is 14 plates worth. On the other hand, people could do the no-spoon achievement with red belts, and then they got buffed in .17 from 26.66 items/s to 30.