Personal robots prioritizing nearest first

[wobbycarly]

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The rendering cost and simulation cost to them is miniscule, and if it actually matters to your computer it might not be suited for Factorio in general.

For my PC, the high load is not a problem.
But for my nerves, it is a serious problem, waiting for the drones to bother to build what I need.
It's annoying!

But if you are standing still, the time taken to build will be the same whether the bots build closer first or further away first. The distance travelled will be the same in the end. IMO, it just looks inefficient because we generally like to see things done in order or symmetrically.

[SoShootMe]

Let the drones build, starting from the closest objects to the hero. Ending with the most distant ones.

The player, by moving around the area, could speed up the construction of the highest priority objects.
This would reduce the construction time and reduce the load on the video card.

To deal with the simple part first: I don't think load on the video card related to this is significant for any computer you might reasonably play Factorio on.

I doubt picking the closest tasks for personal robots first will make much difference. Moving the character will often not change the order they are completed because ones that were further away will already have been assigned, to other personal robots or to "base robots" (ie those from roboports). There is always the option of placing the highest priority entities manually - hover over the ghost and use the pipette (default: Q) to pick the item from your inventory, then place it.

The changes for Factorio 2.0 described in FFF-374 (already mentioned by computeraddict) under "Smarter robot tasks" will often provide benefit in terms of (de)construction time by reducing the assignment of base robots to tasks. This is demonstrated by the videos of deconstructing trees.

Robots start off pretty slow and their speed is greatly improved through research. This includes infinite research so if they are not as fast as you want, you can direct research accordingly. If you think they are not fast enough at a given level of research, that is a question of balancing but you can also try a mod such as Faster Robots.

[SANTIMEL]

You are not taking into account the time that the drone spends on long-distance flights.
The distance that the player is able to reduce ↴
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Yes. In the current situation, it is more profitable to stand in the center and wait for the drones to build everything.
But if drones were building nearby facilities first. Then the construction time would decrease due to the player's movement. From buildings that have been built to those that have not yet been built.

[Panzerknacker]

I think you are severely underestimating the amount of optimization that has gone into bots already. I think you should also research first how things work and why, and what is already planned for 2.0 before making threads like this.

[DarkShadow44]

Not gonna lie, there is something cool to the bots filling in the blueprints in those patterns. But I agree that for personal bots it would often be useful if they did them from closest -> farthest instead of randomly.

[SANTIMEL]

I think you are severely underestimating the amount of optimization that has gone into bots already. I think you should also research first how things work and why, and what is already planned for 2.0 before making threads like this.

Before creating a topic. I use the site search.
So it is obvious that in related topics, just some other title, or other wording.

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into an older thread with the same suggestion.