Friday Facts #374 - Smarter robots

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-374

[Xuerian]

So to make things clear, the reason that we make and present these kind of changes is not because we don't want to make new flashy features, we just want the new stuff to be enjoyable without a burden of having too much to deal with.
But don't worry, we will show something new next week!

Proceeds to show massive foundational improvements in robot usage that we have been wishing for

yeah ok

[danbopes]

These are some nice changes. I'm curious though, how much these extra calculations (Flight time, etc) are going to effect UPS. Bots are cornerstones of megabases, and I can see this potentially really effecting UPS.

[kovarex]

These are some nice changes. I'm curious though, how much these extra calculations (Flight time, etc) are going to effect UPS. Bots are cornerstones of megabases, and I can see this potentially really effecting UPS.

With the optimisation mentioned, it is basically the same as before.

[asdsasdsasdsas]

Great looking robot improvements, just one question. Will the roboport robot requests be configurable with circuits?

[MEOWMI]

Wow, I find this very exciting. As a long-time player, you really notice these quirky downsides and they have sometimes been very annoying, so this is really quite a big improvement! Even better to hear that the code is still super performant after these additional features!

[raven2k3]

Hi,
very nice update, finally the robots get smarter, which was really annoying tbh.
The biggest problem for me was that the robots always ignored the nearest filtered storage chests (same type and smaler distance),
because they always prefer chests which already have one item of the same type.

Would it be possible to implement different/selectable robo channels?

With different robo channels, it would finally be possible to have a common (and powerful) logistic robo-network,
which can be easily splitted up by changing the robo-channel when needed.

[wekkka]

Love the robot improvements!

- A thing that would be super awesome is if bots wouldn't even leave the construction zones while travelling which would prevent most bot deaths over biter bases outside the walls, but I guess the calculation of these paths would be too much? So far most players build robo bridges for this which are pretty fragile.

- Also the repair mechanism for bots isn't the best: Walls get attacked, flame throwers put biters and the walls on fire, bots come in to repair / rebuild walls immediately and die in the fire or to the biters themselves. Maybe you could solve that by not assigning any construction bots to tasks in chunks that are on fire or under attack? Maybe even let players be able to turn that mechanism on or off in the roboports themselves since sometimes we want bots to fly in still to put up walls within a fighting zone to prevent a breach.

I think those are my main two points for now =)

[pointa2b]

Very cool FFF. Even if there is slightly more overhead, I could imagine there being less overall bots needed at any given time to perform the tasks in a larger base, which would still be a net positive?

[aka13]

I love it, it's amazing! It's almost everything that was needed.
Will the fire resistance-fly-into-fire-close to wall thing stay?

[Cabble]

Very nice update! The mentioned example with "local" deconstruction within a robot network using personal roboports was really annoying.
About QoL vs flashy new features I'm even more excited about the QoL stuff. We got a lot of awesome mods to enjoy new content while some very appreciated features such as the robot changes are simply not moddable.
When it comes to the addons content, I'm most excited about the potential interactions with my favorite mods, such eas space exploration.
Thats just my personal optionion.
Anyway every week I'm more excited for the FFF than for the next episode of any TV show. I enjoy your well thought work.

[Necrowizard]

I haven't played in a while, so maybe this has already be fixed, but what QoL always bothered me was how inefficient robots were at moving stuff around.

When you cut / paste something, it seems like the tasks being made are:
- Pick stuff up from position 1, and bring it to roboport
- Pick stuff up from roboport, and bring it to position 2

A lot of the time, a much more efficient path would just be to pick stuff up from position 1, and move it directly to position 2

[JackTheSpades]

Well dress me up and call me Sally, robots are finally given some QOL changes! Much appreciated.

I think that just about the only thing really needed for robots at this point are No-Fly zones. It is a real shame how mid-game Factorio always forces you to live in a box/rectangle shape because letting your robots fly over corners is just a big no-no.
You could create a separate network and use requestor and provider chests with inserters across the "gap" but since we are on the topic of QOL I feel that this really is the last big thing needed.

[Hares]

Personally, I always struggle with the following bots' behaviour:

1. Bots returning to recharge

• Construction robot has a task that's near the edge of the construction area
• Bot flies from afar, losing its charge when near the destination
• Bot slowly returns to the dock station, then proceeds to complete and finish the task

Possible solution: When the robot flies near the roboport, it stops to recharge even on medium-level energy OR the robot plans its route to pass through the roboports.

2. Construction bots stuck due to inventory being full

• You order to deconstruct something, like trees or chest container
• Yellow chests are full
• Robots pick up the items and can't put them in the chests
• You notice that, and order to build a new chest
• However, all bots are already busy picking up items, and no one can build a chest
• An external solution is required (like spidertron)

Possible solution: Don't accept tasks that can't be completed OR allow bots to drop items on the ground if needed.

3. Construction robots can't build on the edge of the area

• You are expanding your factory, and order some building tasks
• One of them is to build something on the far edge of the building area
• In the target location, there's a cliff or tree on a way that is marked for deconstruction
• Bot flies with the materials and waits until that obstacle is removed
• However, that obstacle's centre is located behind the building area, so no robots are queued to deal with it
• Robot is stuck forever

Possible solution: Allow such entities to be deconstructed

[Gergely]

One thing about the logistic system that has been bugging me is how by default requester chests ignore buffer chests. In some of the use cases I have for them, I do want them to supply all requests, and it's super annoying to have to remember to check the "request from buffer chests" box every time I set up a new requester chest that I didn't blueprint before. Sometimes I wish there was also a "supply requester chests" option in the buffer chests, but the ability to change the default behaviour when building a requester chest would still be great.

[Hares]

- Also the repair mechanism for bots isn't the best: Walls get attacked, flame throwers put biters and the walls on fire, bots come in to repair / rebuild walls immediately and die in the fire or to the biters themselves. Maybe you could solve that by not assigning any construction bots to tasks in chunks that are on fire or under attack? Maybe even let players be able to turn that mechanism on or off in the roboports themselves since sometimes we want bots to fly in still to put up walls within a fighting zone to prevent a breach.

An obvious solution: make bots immune to the fire AoE DoT

[Peter34]

Nice, but one thing I'd like is for a toggle to have the Logi Bots distribute themselves roughly evenly through the factory, or maybe just 33% of the Logi Bots, and not on a per-chunk basis, but more like on a per-25-chunk basis or something like that, so that if they're not busy, some of them will spread out actively.

[dog80]

HYPE!!!

[Techfish3000]

These updates are already sounding awesome, definitely like to see all of the QOL changes too.

Also I second the above suggestion for a bot No-Fly zone planner or similar to stop bots from becoming lunch on the way to constructing an outpost or similar, plenty of my bots have needed replacement from situations like these.

Robo-channels as suggested above sounds interesting also and could make megabasing easier when you can have local networks of requester and provider chests that aren't supposed to interact with the rest of the factory at large.

[rhynex]

the bot improvements really look nice, that is nice work there.

I have a question/request to devs though. do not get me wrong, I like the ideas but also I am thinking about my future play because some new features/improvements might require restarting maps (I guess) I have been investing for hundreds of hours. I would like to know how these new features or improvements apply and when. like is it part of a Wube mod in expansion, or applies to everyone with vanilla (no exp), or just SA mod, or enabled with settings etc?

it might be good to mention how these are organized/enabled. since this is a QoL change, I would make a guess here and say the entire today's FFF topic applies to all expansion games (regardless of SA) but to vanilla (no exp) as well? would this be wrong?

maybe in the future you might introduce something like "this new fancy thing is new but only in SA enabled maps" kind of stuff and then it will make more sense about my request.