[MOD 0.16.x] Assembly Bots

[antichaos]

This mod is for those looking for a new layout challenge, without having to learn loads of new recipes. It also does some things with technology that I hope are rather innovative. Plus, surprises!

- Every (non-smelting) recipe require an assembly bot. This depletes the bot, which then has to be recharged.
- Assemblybots cannot be crafted directly, but with every craft they have a chance to replicate. More bots is better, right? However, they can't be destroyed, or even stored - at least not safely.
- If you put them in chests, they will replicate on their own or start to break. If the chest fills up, bad things happen.
- If you drop them on the ground, they will move across the ground to the nearest chest.
- Assemblers all have an extra input slot to accommodate the new recipes.
- There are technology options which control how the bots are used and how they are recharged. These technologies are mutually exclusive. When you research one, the others are replaced with more expensive versions. So you can switch between them, but the costs increase, and there is a limit to the number of times you can switch. Also, these technologies change every recipe and automatically update the recipe in every assembling machine.
- Added long filter inserters. To succeed at this you'll have to learn to love filter inserters.
- Press N while over a filter inserter to cycle bot filter settings.
- AssemblyBot Management research will allow you to keep bots in chests more safely by giving them things to do. You'll have to experiment to find the recipes (or cheat and read chest-recipes.lua). The efficiency of these recipies depends on how many bots you have in the chest. An iron chest needs to be at least half full of bots to be worth it. The 2x and 8x Recharge techs also allow bots to recharge in chests.

Current version
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0.2.2 Released 10 April 2018
Mod Portal Link https://mods.factorio.com/mods/antichaos/assemblybots
For contributions and bugs use https://github.com/antichaosdb/AssemblyBots

Changes
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0.2.1 Hopefully fixed a mod conflict with missing amount

Known Issues
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- This won't work with large, recipe changing mods like Bobs or Angels. It could probably be made to, but that's a whole extra level of crazy. If there are things that break with non-game changing mods, let me know. DON'T use an auto-research mod with this.
- My homemade tech icons are particularly rubbish. Any assistance would be appreciated.
- It's meant to be awkward, but the balance may be way off. config.lua has a load of values that control various balance factors. Most of these require starting a new map.
- Part of the "fun" of this mod is trying find ways around the problems it introduces. Some of the allowed workarounds are intentional, others are things I can't control.

Credits (Mods I studied while working on this)
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- Angels Refining
- Advanced Logistics System
- Picker Extended

[junhinhow]

pls.. post some more pics or even a video...
make a spotlight...
that's appears been interesting...

[antichaos]

Here's a screenshot of my test Red and Green science setup - main bus style. It's spaghetti-mania and far from optimal. Filter inserters everywhere, and no buffer chests because, well - you should try it for yourself.

[Liquid5n0w]

I am starting a game with your mod, but I am having a lot of trouble managing how many bots I have, I just have boxes and boxes of them now and I can't get ahead of the curve. What am I suppose to do with the bots once I have too many?

[antichaos]

How far along in terms of science are you?

Look at the new bot related techs. There is Assemblybot production mode which consumes a bot and gives you a production boost. Make sure you have access to the next level of science as you will need it to switch back. Or you could go for the other modes which stop or reduce replication

Have you got the Assemblybot management tech to keep the bots in chests busy?

[Liquid5n0w]

Yeah I'm using the chest management tech now. It's more efficient material wise or not? I thought it was at first, but in writing this it isn't more efficient is it? The recipes seem to imply that the gear recipes needs 1/10th of an assembly machine 1, but that costs 22 iron and some copper, making each gear cost 3.2 iron and some copper? But that isn't what I'm seeing in game.

I would use the production tech to reduce how many I have, but because I can't switch back and forth at will it's really difficult and not worth putting effort into.

[Liquid5n0w]

Here is a link to the save for how much progress I made. I am frustrated with the huge difficulty with controlling the number of bots. I think 10% chance of replication is way too high because it makes it impossible to made any kind of sustainable build. Maybe consider a tech to drop it to 0% without hurting productivity, and make it give a productivity boost when it's at 10% replication.

https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code ... 5A9LH86pUV

[antichaos]

Thanks for the feedback I really appreciate your taking the time to play this. Once the mod portal wakes up I'll have a look at your save, and get to the bottom of that bug.

The chest recipes are balanced around having at least 20 stacks of bots. It uses 1/10th of an assembler each time the chest crafting runs, but the number of crafts depends on the number of new bots that would be produced. With 20 this is 4 on average and each craft saves you 1 iron plate, since the recipe is 1 to 1 instead of 2 to 1. This means you're saving 40 iron for each assembler. With more bots, the resource saving is even greater.

I can certainly dial down the replication a bit. All the balancing factors are in config.lua. It sounds like what it really needs is another bot sink. One of my goals for the mod was to make it about difficult choices, rather than just 'research this to fix things'. Maybe a way to get rid of bots that uses a huge amount of energy, or produces loads of pollution? Maybe instead of the suppression mode, we have increasingly expensive technology that progressively reduced the replication rate to near zero?

[antichaos]

Here's an example of how you can use bot management. Belt and inserters for green science made in chests. It requires a fair amount of circuit filtering to manage the level of items in chests. This version has plenty of problems as the chests still tend to overflow with bots if the outputs back up. Bot recharging is done in chests too (1 iron = 2 bots recharged). The next challenge is to make something scalable. I agree that the balance is definitely off and I'm experimenting with some solutions.

[Anson]

the description sounds very interesting, but also a bit confusing to me. I'll have to try it myself ... BUT:

I'm using lots of mods and didn't check this mod separately, but here is the error message that i got on starting factorio after enabling the new version 0.2.2 for the first time. is this error really caused by interaction with other mods?

> Failed to load mods:
> assemblybots/data-updates.lua:46:
> attempt to concatenate field 'name' (a nil value)
> Mods to be disabled: assemblybots ((disable/restart/exit))