Jap2.0 wrote:
Okay, that's interesting. I haven't paid much attention to speedrunning since AntiElitz sub-2hr one in 0.14.
Science revamp is what made the game long enough for bots to be useful in speedruns, so no wonder you have not seen them in 0.14.
Deadly-Bagel wrote:4xel wrote:Initial cost being high is not really an issue, and the usability is tremendously high. The same thing about prohibitive entry cost can be said about solar panels, MK3 modules and beacons.
<Solar Panels are useless>
Sure, not everybody agree, but you're entilted to an opinion. How does that invalidate my claim about similar prohibitive entry cost?
Besides, you're missing the point.
NO U.
Deadly-Bagel wrote:
My problem with them is their initial cost vs usability.
I think I pretty much addressed this point by saying the cost is not that high (comparable to commonly used SP and modules) and later explained why the usability is "tremendously high".
Bots are supposed to automate the setup of your factory (to a degree), but you actually need a reasonably large factory to use them in the first place.
Which boils down to "bots come to late", while I initially thought you were trying to make a slightly different point. And I've already ansered that.
On that, let's agree to disagree. In my opinion, a factory with barely more than one line of iron and less than one line of copper and steel, with 5 to 20 research lab and one or two refineries, is what I call a bootstrap base, not a reasonably large factory. And you can build it and research and automate robots within 1,5 to 4 hours, which is what I call early game.
I'll edit this post later with a save game to prove my claim of 4h, 2 metal lines and <20 research labs.
What are we, a bank? "We won't give you a loan until you can prove you don't need it."
There's no bank in factorio, you have to build anything that you want to be built, with your own ressource, that's worse than any optional investement system involving a bank you can imagine. If you played any economics simulator, you'd know that, most of the time, having any money right now is good thing, even when you don't strictly need it. We're not talking about consumer loan, we're talking about investement loan in a video game when you're near 100% sure to have higher ROI than the interest rate.
And you always need bots. They are the only things which do what they do. Unless you stop playing after your first rocket (and even then) or sooner. In which case I'm not sure you'rre after the full unmodded experience.
4xel wrote:By the time you got robot port, even much earlier actually (1/4 to 1 hour), you can have practically infinite ressources
As you said, the most valuable resource is time.
As I said
later. I was preparing my point which was, no, bots are not too expensive for their purpose. My line of reasoning is "very soon, building/having bots is the only meaningfull way to spend ressource".
Does bot come too late? that's an other question, to which my stance is, as you already know, 4h is not late.
Hopefully you don't need any rails any time soon because they're a real pain to set up by hand, and slow with low-research bots. Oh yeah, it also requires the Personal Roboport so good luck with that.
That's just plain wrong. On the surface, building rail with personal bots sounds like a good idea, and it is indeed a decent one, but in no way is it the only nor the best solution.
Solution 0 : Building by hand.
Solution 1 : going on site, using personal roboport, running around, babysitting construction.
Solution 2 : going on site, dropping a temporary roboport, babysitting construction, dismantling roboport and repeat.
Solution 3 : open radar view and drop blueprints containing rails, radars and roboport.
- Solution 0 is really not as bad as you think, maybe 2 to 3 times slower than other solutions to build new double railways.
- Of course solution 2 are much lower tech than solution 1, but that's part of what you want to change, so I won't touch further on this.
- A mobile roboport like solution 1 benefits from the thin long characteristic of the structure, since you can cut robot wandering time by running around.
- For solution 1, you're limited by the power of your armor, and by the construction bot count. That's not too bad for thin long structures, but it does mitigate the advantages.
- Solution 2 can be refined by dropping the whole railway at once, going from roboport to roboport with a car, for robot to build the whole railway in parallel. It goes from significantly slower than solution 1 for a single track to siginficantly faster. (In a sense, it makes the power and robocount advantage matter, despite the structure being long and thin).
- Solution 3 is probably the slowest, in the sense construction time is the biggest, but it also is the one requiring the less player time, by a huge margin. You only have to click the blueprints, and you can order dozens of other bluprints during the construction you'd have to babysit otherwise.
- One disadvantage of solution 3 and refined 2 is the roboports (and chest) you have to leave along the way. It can be mitigated by removing them during a one pass after the track is built. For that particular use, I'd recommend personal roboport if available, but they're not a gamechanger.
Which is why I say personal roboport are mostly useless,
reguardless of their cost and technology requirement.
The only way I see to make them temporarilly useful would be to make them available before normal robot port, as well as the necessary infrastructure, which effectively means making power armor available before or at the same time as construction bot, which I don't think is desirable. (I think we should be able to slowly -15mins to 1h- reload modular batteries from the main grid, but that's for another topic)
4xel wrote:The question you should be asking is :
who are the fastest at mass construction, one Human player, or 50 unupgraded construction bots?
If it's straight rails or Mining Drills we're building then the player shouldn't have too much trouble being faster, especially if you initially skip non-junction signals.
I'm ready to take bets. I'll probably do the test tonight. I'll do semi-dense mining area rather than straight line, because you're choosing the one particular case robots struggle with, and a single straight miner line don't make sense (semi dense mining still favors human an awfull lot, compared to sparse mining and dense mining with underground belts to make room for poles).
Or If I do rails, I'll use refined solution 2 explained above and double straight rails and power poles.
In fact I'd say trying to use bots with just the Modular Armour is pretty painful in general.
The correct way to use them with just the modular armor is to mine them as they try to recharge. Painful indeed, but you should be using real roboports instead. Even for things you think personal ports are necessary.