Factorio Forums

I setup a group of spidertrons (anywhere from 10 to 100) and use logistics to fill each spidertron with landfill
They use the following equpiment:

• 1 Fission Reactor
  2 Robort MK2
  3 Exoskeletons
  6 Battery MK3

I will go and start to fil in bodies of water, using a blueprint to select a large body of water to be filled in all at once
The spidertrons will start to fill in the water generally selecting the closest tile of water and working their way out from themselves to keep filling in water
Once the inventory of one of the spidertrons becomes empty, the spidertrons start becoming slower and slower to select tiles of water to be replaced with landfill.
Once 1 or 2+ spidertrons have an empty inventory you can actively watch the selection process for tiles to become slower and slower and can watch the selection process come in sweeping waves. These waves are generally vertical going from right to left, but sometimes (rarely) are horizontal going from top to bottom.

Once I stop all the spidertrons, find the ones with an empty inventroy and move them away from the other spidertrons the placement of the tiles resumes like normal until additional spidertrons get an empty inventory and the placement slows down again.

Thanks for the report however this isn't a bug but simply how construction tasks get assigned to robots.

If not a bug then an opportunity for improvement? We are the spidertrons with empty inventory being envaulted to place items? I would think a simple check to verify spidertron has items in the inventory or not to exclude it from the decision process would speed up everything. As it is it seems like an oversight that something with an empty inventory is allowed to make decisions on items getting placed.

It doesn't know when the inventory might have changed, or if an item to be built might be acquired by performing a deconstruction order, etc. Every active roboport has to scan its area for ghosts and then check if it has the materials for what it found.

Really this is revealing that swarms of spidertrons should not all be equipped with roboports, or they should be spaced out to cover more area. If you want faster building in a small area, then a single spider with additional roboports and robots is needed. If you know the spider will be empty for a while, you can even unequip the roboport.