Factorio Forums

Right now, bots transfer items to logistic chests very quickly (it seems to be as fast as a single update). Just like bots need a moment to charge, maybe they need a moment to transfer items into (or out of) a chest? This would be a flat latency increase of bot logistics that more bots can't really mitigate, right?

Wrong. Given a 3 second delay "per transfer", at transport size 3:

1 Bot takes 3 seconds to transfer 3 items. Transfer time per item = 1s
100 Bots still take 3 seconds to transfer 300 items. Transfer time per item = 0.01s

You'd have to limit the input speed of requester chests or make bot overlapping impossible for that to work.

With a steady item flow, this wouldn't matter. It will be just the first bot would start 3 seconds later and the last ends 3 sec later. Introducing loading/unloading time would mostly nerf small versatile low quantity bot-based production lines instead, but that's totally against what devs want because this is the prime niche for bots.

Limiting in- and output of chests would be very annoying for Blueprint building. You would counteract it by scattering items over hundreds of chests. You would build large fields of provider chests to buffer items. The gameplay wouldn't get more interressting, just more annoying.

I think bots should need a resource to operate, next to electricity. Not in the form of real fuel, but maybe something like lubricant cartridges. Or maybe their accumulators should decay and be replayed every tenth loading cycle. Or something like that.

Similar to my suggestion viewtopic.php?f=6&t=56556, you could only limit the logistic bots not construction bots.