Factorio Forums

What did you do?

I installed the Vehicle Grid Mod, and placed personal roboports, bots and fusion reactors as well as construction materials into a cargo wagon. I then sent the train in automatic mode on its way to a blueprint.

What happened?

The bots won't build if the train is in automatic mode, even if the train is in a station. The changelog for .17.0 says: "Changed personal roboports so they won't send construction robots if you're driving in a vehicle that they can't keep up with or if in a train in automatic mode." So this seems somewhat intended, but:

What did you expect to happen instead?

I expected it to work like in .16 and before, bots getting out at stations, as implied by Friday Facts 153: "By default cargo wagons won't deploy robots while the train is in automatic mode and not in station or [...]"

I know this may seem like Not-A-Bug with the announced change in .17 but I feel like that change was not thought through. There is still the Train Condition "No Robots are deployed", which is now entirely useless since robots don't get deployed anyway.

Please change it back, thank you.

This is a duplicate of one or both of viewtopic.php?f=23&t=67932 and viewtopic.php?f=18&t=69242

I don't, however, have a good answer for "What is the 'Robots inactive' wait condition good for" question. It seems like it only appears with modded wagons, so my original theory that it's intended to read the busyness of the local fixed-location logistic network doesn't hold up.

Not deploying robots from a train in automatic mode makes sense (it could leave at any time and be out of range way before the recalled robots make it back).

Would "robots inactive" apply to, say, activity in the Logistic Cargo Wagon?

robot256 wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 11:21 pm Not deploying robots from a train in automatic mode makes sense (it could leave at any time and be out of range way before the recalled robots make it back).

It doesn't tho, properly using the "No Robots are deployed" Condition to for example build a train that goes around the defensive walls and repairs them periodically. I have done that in .16 to great success and would like to do something similar again.

Thanks for the report. The mod(s) that add the equipment grid to trains need to add the prototype property "allow_robot_dispatch_in_automatic_mode = true" to the trains.

thanks, i'll try to let them know