Bots Versus Belts - Vas's Take

[Vas]

Today someone mentioned that he feels bots are too over powered. I wasn't around during the whole bots versus belts debacle of that one FFF, so I wanted to provide my take on things, even though its yet another topic on it.

-- Mmm, now if only I was good at formatting... >.>

I hear people even talk about wanting bots to be nerfed too, and it bothers me hearing that... If you nerf bots, I'm relatively sure lots of people will be angry, and mods will come along to undo your nerfings and in the end you'll accomplish nothing at all other than making some players angry or disappointed in you. Like that FFF with all the bot hate.

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So, here's a short version: Enhance belts, don't nerf bots. (And fix the forum input box to not be the same exact color as my cursor! -.-)
Inserter Pickup/Drop Locations, Stackable Belts, Underground Belt ID Saving, Stack Inserters actually stack things.

Before you read the long version, a short bit on the way I play;
I play to relax and do some random stuff I find entertaining. I don't want to solve advanced algorithmic calculations and have to get an engineering degree or go to programming classes just so I know how to use the circuit network. I just want to build and enjoy. So I play with logistics instead of belts, allowing me easier control. Not to mention Bob's Inserters mod, because I think its silly robotic arms can't rotate to more than one location.

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Now for the long version: (My semi-tired and detailed view with how I play the game.)
Belts, are limited to the laws of physics. Currently within the game, you can only have one layer of belts, allowing one single item in a specific spot. That single item takes up that space so no other items can go there, and this item must travel along a belt that can not go diagnally, must make lots of turns, wiggling down a path, till it gets picked up by an inserter, that is only capable of moving one item at a time, unless researched, it then has to wait for another item to come into contact with it, which reduces the time taken to move items if the belt is backed up, however it still has to wait for another item to be in range.

Belts can't go through buildings, and are rather limited in their functionality, with an issue in base game making things worse, the underground belts can't be used in the same line as another underground belt because belts do not save their partner's entity ID, so you can't place two underground belts in the same path to compress things a little better. Underground belts also suffer from crafting menu spam, if you want something longer than 5 in length you need mods to add longer distance belts and this gets annoying when you have 3-5 lengths of every speed of belt spamming up your crafting menu.

Belts are bound by the laws of physics, and if you want them to be enhanced, stacking machines should be added to allow stacks to be created for items.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/DeadlockStacking - This for example, works in a way.
But it would be better to allow items to have a setting that says how high they can stack to, and let stack inserters, create the stacks, and when the item gets to th destination, the stack is picked up and placed into the inventory it requested not as a stacked item but as the amount of items that make up the stack, with the inserter/stack inserter holding onto the rest till they are all placed. I imagine this to be something only possible via base game till the devs release more of the core to modding.

Stackable belts, could be another way to help with the issue of space and maneuverability. Being able to create a second layer of belt on top of an existing one would allow you to move 3 belts worth of items in a single line if you need to send 6 different kinds of items to some small area of assemblers.

One of the thoughts I had as well for making belts a little more reasonable, is Bob's Inserters mod, being able to specify input output locations. I disabled the "long inserter" research so that inserters max at the current long inserter ranges, but it is nice to be able to tell an inserter where it can pick stuff up, and where it can place it. This helps speed up and compress things a little better too, making belts more efficient than bots. Base game, belts are truly the worst part of the game in my personal opinion because inserters just blow. I simply refuse to play without his mod as a result.

So, there's four things you can do to improve belts without nerfing bots; Inserter Pickup/Drop Locations, Stackable Belts, Underground Belt ID Saving, Stack Inserters actually stack things.

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As someone told me earlier, that they feel bots are over powered. I will now explain my experience and views on bots;

Are bots so overpowered? Well, I don't think so. I can do things a lot faster with belts than I can with bots. For example with bobs mods, starting out with the same stuff I start out with now in my alternate starts mod, I can get to "red circuit" production within 2 hours or so. OR. I use my bots, starting out with 100 logistics bots, and I spend 2 hours, barely getting to "green circuits" with huge power failures as a result of bots consuming too much power. Except I can be lazier and enjoy the game more, because I don't have to figure out crazy big designs using lots and lots of land to move items around on early game slow slow belts.

So are bots over powered? No. In base game, with no mods, you must get to bots, and then create the bots. Then supply them with large amounts of power. You might feel they are over powered, because you can't stand to see people using bots to evade the puzzle solving portion of the game, but they aren't, they are slower than belts early game, and by late game, they are just a convenience that lets you compress your factory.

One thing I personally like about bots though, is the precision control. I don't need large circuit networks to control the flow of items. I can simply connect inserters to the logistic network and say "keep doing this till this". Another is request chests letting me request specific amounts of items. Train stations where I can just dump all ore regardless of whats mixed in, into passive provider storages and bots sort it for me. Smart Splitters helped slightly, needs more than -one- filter option to really be helpful, but eh. Bots add convenience and remove an intended portion of the game and allow those of us who don't want to solve puzzles or get advanced programming/engineering degrees to play, to enjoy the way we want to play.

So in the end; Improve belts, don't nerf bots.

I wouldn't mind some changes to bots, but I don't want them nerfed into oblivion to be useless. Don't force us to play the way you want us to, let us enjoy the game each in our own ways. Add unique achievements that encourage people to play in a way you want but don't force it. I play games vastly different from the way most people play, which is why its so hard for me to find topics relevant to what I want to say or do or whatever.

[impetus maximus]

yet another topic on it.

bean_house.png (270.18 KiB) Viewed 8265 times

[Vas]

Well Maximus, someone asked for my input on robots versus belts, and I provided a long explanation of my input and felt that I should share it with others too instead of just a private message about the same size as the first post here.

[batorfly]

TL;DR

[Caine]

I wasn't around during the whole bots versus belts debacle of that one FFF, so I wanted to provide my take on things, even though its yet another topic on it.

Indeed. The old topic is still open as far as I know. Just add your opinion there. And read it before you post, "don't nerf bots, buff belts" has been said in about 50% of all posts there.

For the rest: TL;DR. Add an abstract if you are going to post a wall of text.

[Vas]

For the rest: TL;DR. Add an abstract if you are going to post a wall of text.

An abstract?

[Caine]

For the rest: TL;DR. Add an abstract if you are going to post a wall of text.

An abstract?

Oh, sorry. I essentially mean a brief summary. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_(summary)

You did have a short version included, but it doesn't really say anything meaningful but starts rambling about why and how you play.
Frankly, I could not care less. That is also where I stopped reading. If you have an idea then get the reader interested.

And do your homework first to see if it has already been proposed.

[Vas]

You did have a short version included, but it doesn't really say anything meaningful but starts rambling about why and how you play.
Frankly, I could not care less. That is also where I stopped reading. If you have an idea then get the reader interested.

And do your homework first to see if it has already been proposed.

I rambled about how I play, because it seems like the devs wish to force people to play the game the way they designed it and don't like that people play it different ways. At least thats the vibe I get.

I'm sure some of my ideas have been proposed, but bringing old topics back from the dead is usually frowned upon, and I looked already in a few boards to see topics of current active consideration to see if anyone was talking about belts versus bots, and didn't see any.

Adding my post, increases the number of posts related to the topic, showing a stronger resistance to nerfing bots should the devs be considering a bot nerf at any point in the future. Its not like they have a page where you can go vote on potential future ideas and I can go there and click a button on "no" to "nerf bots".

Seriously though, if a dev is reading this, change the background color of the input here so I can actually see my cursor when I'm highlighting and editing my posts... I won't be spending time formatting posts till I can see my cursor when I select stuff.

[Jap2.0]

You did have a short version included, but it doesn't really say anything meaningful but starts rambling about why and how you play.
Frankly, I could not care less. That is also where I stopped reading. If you have an idea then get the reader interested.

And do your homework first to see if it has already been proposed.

Seriously though, if a dev is reading this, change the background color of the input here so I can actually see my cursor when I'm highlighting and editing my posts... I won't be spending time formatting posts till I can see my cursor when I select stuff.

I believe that's only on IE. There have been topics on this before.

[Zavian]

You did have a short version included, but it doesn't really say anything meaningful but starts rambling about why and how you play.
Frankly, I could not care less. That is also where I stopped reading. If you have an idea then get the reader interested.

And do your homework first to see if it has already been proposed.

Seriously though, if a dev is reading this, change the background color of the input here so I can actually see my cursor when I'm highlighting and editing my posts... I won't be spending time formatting posts till I can see my cursor when I select stuff.

I believe that's only on IE. There have been topics on this before.

I have trouble seeing the cursor as well. Chrome on win10. Once the mouse pointer changes to a vertical bar it has very low contrast against the grey background in these text boxes.

[Koub]

This is getting off topic, and can be discussed here :
viewtopic.php?f=55&t=47533
and has also been mentionned here :
viewtopic.php?f=55&t=3457

Not that the topic adds much new things after :
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=56218
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=56519
and the various threads I failed merging into these for different reasons, and can be found in this board.

[leadraven]

Hello, factorians.
I came up with another metric to formally compare belts and roboports.

1 tile of blue belt moves 45 items per second by 1 meter.
Blue belt : 45 item*meter / second*tile.

Roboport : 1 MW * 4 / 16 tile
Robot : 5 KJ / 1 meter / 4 item
Divide one by another (MW = MJ/s) :
Roboport : 200 item*meter / second*tile.

1 tile of roboport allows to moves 200 items per second by 1 meter.
Also robots fly straight, but they need to go back empty.
Anyway, from this perspective roboports are several times more efficient then blue belts at the cost of energy.
Power consumption can also be transformed into tiles with solar panels (~6 panels per 1 tile of roboport), but panels can be placed anywhere far away.

I'm not saying anything, just sharing my thoughts.

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into one of the existing topics debating about the infamous bots vs belts flamewar that tore our forum apart one year ago

[Glyph]

Bots win in at least three situations that cannot be fixed by buffing belts:

• In megabases, bots conserve the only resource that matters, UPS.
• In the endgame, bots win in optimal beacon setups due to their low space and flexible positioning. The space is already lower than any conceivable buffed belt setup, so buffing belts doens't help here.
• Bot throughput is essentially infinite at bottlenecks like train unloading/loading, and trivial to set up.

Factorio will be a better game when the vanilla game encourages a use of both bots and belts in endgame bases. Bots can be powerful, but not so powerful as to eclipse belts entirely. The reason belt gameplay is important is because belt strategy and aesthetic are valuable aspects of the game. Replacing belts in your factory with bots is not analogous to replacing burner inserters or coal, because those earlier techs don't have the intricacies, aesthetic, etc that belts bring to the game (and which the devs mention in their post).

Your argument that bots are difficult to set up does not counter the argument that bots completely replace belts later and that this is not good for the game for reasons stated above. The only way to make the game better is to balance bots so that they excel in some niches and not others.

[Hannu]

Bots win in at least three situations that cannot be fixed by buffing belts:

• In megabases, bots conserve the only resource that matters, UPS.
• In the endgame, bots win in optimal beacon setups due to their low space and flexible positioning. The space is already lower than any conceivable buffed belt setup, so buffing belts doens't help here.
• Bot throughput is essentially infinite at bottlenecks like train unloading/loading, and trivial to set up.

You are right. It is obvious, that bots, which has non physical model, beat belts with physical model. In my opinion bots are practically teleporting (with delay).

Factorio will be a better game when the vanilla game encourages a use of both bots and belts in endgame bases. Bots can be powerful, but not so powerful as to eclipse belts entirely. The reason belt gameplay is important is because belt strategy and aesthetic are valuable aspects of the game.

I agree. Physical model of bots would make them perfect. If they had to avoid collisions their throughput would be dramatically reduced, flock dynamics would make their flight aesthetically very pleasant and they would serve very well in complex low throughput situations, like malls, locomotive fueling etc. Megabase building would be possible to be kept and even improved with teleporting chest system. They would be easy to program and they would have suitable throughput, energy consumption and delay limits, which could be improved with infinite research. As a bonus, megabases would work without annoying visual noise from thousands of flying bots. And player who do not like that kind of simplicity could just not use them.

Your argument that bots are difficult to set up does not counter the argument that bots completely replace belts later and that this is not good for the game for reasons stated above. The only way to make the game better is to balance bots so that they excel in some niches and not others.

I do not understand these statements. How can a player who uses hundreds of hours to build a huge megabase with tens of thousands of assemblers say bots are somehow difficult. They certainly cost some resources, and time to set up at midgame, but at megabase level it is very simple task to build 100000 bots in reasonable time. Just make one unit with 10 or 20 assemeber and copy it by blueprinting. Bots find chests automatically and route transports. And using them effectively is even more simple. Just keep networks separated and requester and provider chests near each other.

[Honktown]

I was thinking an "extender" underground belt would be a neat way to enhance belts: it'd be a 1x1 bump, and you could grab from it. Would make it fit well with beaconed set-ups and tight spaces. The prototypes suggest underground belt behavior is hard-coded though ; (