Factorio Forums

To be clear: I'm talking about the basic modular armor. Not the power armor! I love how the advanced circuit requirement was removed. That makes it worth getting. I just skipped it before. Also with the night vision change, night is now basically like day. I've even stopped placing lights everywhere.

But is it feasible to use a personal roboport with it? All you have are the portable solar panels and those suck for anything serious. I tried a battery and it was immediately sucked empty when the robots recharged. Not surprising when looking at the numbers. Would using more of them help? I have a feeling that it doesn't work. Especially for serious construction where you have many recharge cycles.

Are there any other items that you can power with solar panels in a practical way?

You can use personal roboports without any power. Just pick up the construction robots by hand when they are done.

It is possible, but not for extended projects, bot recharge will overwhelm the power requirements very quickly. I recommend 7 solar panels and 4 batteries. This leaves 3 2x2 slots usable - a basic shield, one roboport mk1 (20 bots) and nightvision is what I go with.
Batteries will drain very quickly if the shield or roboport is used and will take a long time to recharge on solar power, but it's certainly possible (and useful) to have this basic version of the power armor. Once you get power armor and a fusion reactor, switch to that, much more convenient.

Aeternus wrote:It is possible, but not for extended projects, bot recharge will overwhelm the power requirements very quickly. I recommend 7 solar panels and 4 batteries. This leaves 3 2x2 slots usable - a basic shield, one roboport mk1 (20 bots) and nightvision is what I go with.
Batteries will drain very quickly if the shield or roboport is used and will take a long time to recharge on solar power, but it's certainly possible (and useful) to have this basic version of the power armor. Once you get power armor and a fusion reactor, switch to that, much more convenient.

If you hold right click and wave your mouse over the bots as they fly back to you (so you mine them all up), then all they automatically get fully recharged (even if you have no power source of any kind in your armor) and then immediately redeployed if there are other outstanding orders within range. It requires some active management (i.e., can't go afk while bots work) but it does allow for construction bot use without having a power source in your armor. I find myself using this trick even in my current game (2x fusion, 6x mk2 roboport and 150 bots) if my batteries get drained and the bots take forever to charge from the armor.

Sounds like a cheating

Oh, it absolutely is. Robots should drain power to launch instead.
Still, you trade convenience of use for manually picking up robots.