[2.1] Feature request: quality multiplier for flying robot energy consumption

[Martynka]

Hi,

I’m working on a small Space Age mod focused on making large logistic-robot megabases more practical without adding runtime-heavy scripting.

At the moment, FlyingRobotPrototype exposes:

energy_per_move
energy_per_tick
max_energy
Quality already has native support for robot battery capacity through:

flying_robot_max_energy_multiplier
What seems to be missing is an equivalent quality-dependent multiplier for the robot’s actual energy consumption.

I would like to propose adding something along the lines of:

flying_robot_energy_per_move_multiplier
flying_robot_energy_per_tick_multiplier
to QualityPrototype.

The intended use case would be:

Normal 100% energy consumption
Uncommon 85%
Rare 70%
Epic 50%
Legendary 20%
This would allow higher-quality logistic and construction robots to become more energy-efficient rather than only receiving a larger battery.

The important distinction is that increasing max_energy does not provide the same gameplay effect. A larger battery increases range, but it also increases the amount of energy that must be restored when the robot recharges. Reducing energy_per_move and energy_per_tick would instead let robots perform more work per unit of stored energy without proportionally increasing recharge time.

Currently this appears impossible to implement cleanly in a mod:

energy_per_move and energy_per_tick can be changed at data stage, but only globally for the whole robot prototype.

They cannot vary by quality.

Runtime scripting could emulate the effect by modifying robot energy, but doing this for potentially tens of thousands of active robots would defeat the purpose of an UPS-oriented mod.

Creating separate robot prototypes for every quality would interfere with the otherwise native item/quality behavior and adds unnecessary complexity.

A native quality multiplier would therefore allow this to remain entirely engine-side, with no on_tick scripting and no additional robot prototypes.

It would also let the existing tooltip system correctly calculate values such as maximum flight range for each quality.

Would exposing these two multipliers in QualityPrototype be feasible?

Thanks.

[eugenekay]

This belongs in Modding interface requests; not in Implemented. It really should not be possible to use the New Topic button here at all.