Disabling roboports via circuit connection

danbopes · Post by **danbopes** » Mon Sep 14, 2026 5:40 pm

TL;DR: Let roboports be disabled by a circuit condition, or let their robot requests be set from circuit signals.

What I'm doing

I have a roboport near my mall set to request 50 bots so an inserter can pull them out into a chest, where they get cycled out for MK2s.

The problem

Once that chest fills, the inserter stops, but the roboport still sits there holding its 50 requested bots and asking for more. And because it's right next to the mall, those bots are usually the closest ones to any new construction order, so they get dispatched instead of the MK2 bots I just added to the network. The old bots keep winning the job, and the upgrade loop stalls out. There's no way to tell the roboport to stop, since I can't disable it and I can't change the request count without walking over and editing it by hand.

eugenekay · Post by **eugenekay** » Mon Sep 14, 2026 5:41 pm

120073

Good Luck!

Alfonse215 · Post by **Alfonse215** » Mon Sep 14, 2026 6:03 pm

danbopes wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2026 5:40 pm Once that chest fills, the inserter stops, but the roboport still sits there holding its 50 requested bots and asking for more. And because it's right next to the mall, those bots are usually the closest ones to any new construction order, so they get dispatched instead of the MK2 bots I just added to the network. The old bots keep winning the job, and the upgrade loop stalls out. There's no way to tell the roboport to stop, since I can't disable it and I can't change the request count without walking over and editing it by hand.

In my mind, a disabled roboport would act like an unpowered roboport. Which means that it can't charge anything, and it loses logistic connections to other roboports. So while the bots in that roboport wouldn't be assigned any tasks, that roboport also wouldn't be part of the network. And that could easily break things.

What you probably want instead is some means of using circuits to control roboport requests.

Also, if your goal is to remove all of the Mk1 bots... this doesn't fix that problem. Mk1s can still be assigned; just not the 50 in that roboport. You need to dispose of the excess bots in the chest so that more can be removed.

Factorio Forums