This seems like a massive improvement! I might have to start a new base to try this out. I found the late game a bit too grindy since lack of foresight often leads to not enough space for belts...
This seems like a massive improvement! I might have to start a new base to try this out. I found the late game a bit too grindy since lack of foresight often leads to not enough space for belts and you run into this situation where you can either use robots to get your plastic from your oil refineries to your productivity module factories and from there to your purple potion factories, etc... Or nuke it from orbit and start from scratch.
After playing the game through a couple times, I've noticed stupid robot behaviour does really noticeably slow down this stage of progression. I'm sure a lot of people completely refactor their base at that point of the game, but I honestly don't have that kind of free time.
One thing that frustrates me on bot logistics is the inability to segment zones without adjusting roboport placements. I use a modular grid for my bases and my roboports are setup so that the grid...
One thing that frustrates me on bot logistics is the inability to segment zones without adjusting roboport placements. I use a modular grid for my bases and my roboports are setup so that the grid is fully connected. I've had to add special logistics breaker blocks to segment the network. Having more control over logistics network coverage and merging would go a long way towards solving weird bot behavior, at least for me.
I just want robots to not cross lakes in the first place - if there's a chain of roboports from A to B, then the robots should follow the chain instead of going directly, and then running out of...
I just want robots to not cross lakes in the first place - if there's a chain of roboports from A to B, then the robots should follow the chain instead of going directly, and then running out of power halfway so the rest is a crawl. Not every base is convex!
I'm also confused why they would not have some rudimentary path finding for drones. Not looking for anything complex. I respect the Wube team's skills immensely though, so they must have a good...
I'm also confused why they would not have some rudimentary path finding for drones. Not looking for anything complex. I respect the Wube team's skills immensely though, so they must have a good reason.
I assume it's just compute heavy. They're trying to keep the bots as lightweight as possible and even simple pathfinding for 100s-1000s of entities can get expensive quick. I know it's the main...
I assume it's just compute heavy. They're trying to keep the bots as lightweight as possible and even simple pathfinding for 100s-1000s of entities can get expensive quick. I know it's the main reason a lot of Dwarf Fortress forts die of 'fps death' once they get big.
It is a pretty big improvement to robots, but I also find it interesting in how they presented it by stating QOL improvements allow them to add more features, which has a lot of validity, but in...
It is a pretty big improvement to robots, but I also find it interesting in how they presented it by stating QOL improvements allow them to add more features, which has a lot of validity, but in my experience I've not found the robots to be something I was working around too much. I didn't get to the point of like crazy mega bases, partly because it seems like trains are essential to this and for the life of me I can't seem to consistently wrap my head around how to construct large train networks. The signals and what not get too confusing for me once it gets to be a more complex network. Anyhow robots were something that mostly seemed to me like you just dealt with the inefficiencies, rather than having to construct elaborate solutions to them. Compare that to belt balancing and what not, where there are tons of different things you have to control for to balance inputs and outputs and which sides of the belt and so on. Then the fluid mechanics too. Those seem like things that actively take time to learn and understand how to build solutions around that would help make way for more features if they had better QOL solutions.
Of course I haven't really played in awhile, I think I last built a large base capable of launching rocket ships like a year ago, so maybe there has been improvements to those things since I last played.
I find this interesting because even for smaller bases, I felt robots had a lot of inadequacies that I had to work around. Roboports and personal roboports have never gotten along. I play co-op...
but in my experience I've not found the robots to be something I was working around too much.
I find this interesting because even for smaller bases, I felt robots had a lot of inadequacies that I had to work around.
Roboports and personal roboports have never gotten along. I play co-op and would have to tell others to hold back on expanding the roboport network too much because it could make new construction very frustrating. Try to prototype or clear land and your personal supply of bots will do one wave of construction and not touch the rest because some robots on the other end of the earth got assigned the rest of it!
Logistics had a different issue. I'd make a small network for resupply and auto-trashing and I'd be able to clear and replenish my inventory in seconds. Then when someone starts doing logistics crafting or requests somewhere else, bots would drift further away from this resupply area and what once took seconds now might take several minutes, defeating the entire point. I'd go out of my way to isolate my mall just to keep this from happening.
For such an important upgrade, I found myself having to say "please don't build a roboport" far too often!
Yeah I can definitely see a totally different set of problems once more people are in the game. I pretty much only play solo so I never have to worry about what anyone else is doing. I still ran...
Yeah I can definitely see a totally different set of problems once more people are in the game. I pretty much only play solo so I never have to worry about what anyone else is doing. I still ran into the inefficiencies of the bots, as explained in their blog post, but I never came across posts or solutions on how to deal with them really, it didn't really seem like there were solutions, so I just let the bots do stupid things because there was seemingly nothing else I could do.
When it comes to other problems I encountered in factorio, there often was lots of talk about solutions like belt balancing and fluid mechanics and train logistics and so on, so I spent lots of time on these. To me that's what I found interesting in the post, they're aware that QOL improvements need to be made to add more features without making the game too difficult for players, especially new ones, and I'm sure there is some improvement for robots in this regard, but I just never found myself in nearly the same kind of timesink with robot inefficiencies as I did other things in the game.
this reddit post is 7 years old but it still applies because the core mechanics haven't changed, and is the best tutorial I've ever seen (it's the train tutorial that's linked in the /r/factorio...
I can't seem to consistently wrap my head around how to construct large train networks. The signals and what not get too confusing for me once it gets to be a more complex network.
this reddit post is 7 years old but it still applies because the core mechanics haven't changed, and is the best tutorial I've ever seen (it's the train tutorial that's linked in the /r/factorio sidebar, so it's mod-endorsed as well). just about every Factorio YouTuber has published a "let me explain trains to you" video, I think it's practically a rite of passage. but none of them have been as clear an explanation as those slides.
if you haven't done it already, you'll definitely want to make blueprints for your train intersections, so that you only need to figure out the correct signalling once. the essential blueprints I always make are a stretch of straight rail; a 3-way intersection; and "in" and "out" intersections that allow a train to leave the main line and enter or leave a train depot. you can re-use the 3-way intersection as a combined in/out blueprint but this sometimes reduces the train depot layout you can use.
if you have specific questions, /r/factorio has a weekly question thread that's full of friendly and helpful people (including me before I cut back on my reddit usage). if there's sufficient interest on Tildes we could get a similar thing going, though probably not as a weekly thread since I doubt there'd be enough comments.
if you're asking for help with train signalling, a specific thing that's really helpful is to hold a train signal in your hand while taking a screenshot. the colored blocks that show up when you do that are crucial to debugging signalling problems.
I'll have to check that out on wayback machine maybe, looks like a lot of the imgur links in that post are dead, probably from the purge a few months ago related to anything that was not uploaded...
I'll have to check that out on wayback machine maybe, looks like a lot of the imgur links in that post are dead, probably from the purge a few months ago related to anything that was not uploaded with an imgur account. Edit: Nevermind, I see they made a PDF of the images, so I don't even have to try wayback machine.
Yeah the blueprints would probably make a huge difference for me, because the intersections are where I was really getting confused, made worse when trying to incorporate chain signals too.
I think I'll have to pull out my resources again sometime to get back into it, partly what drew me to this post was their talk about QOL improvements and it made me realize it probably is why I haven't played in awhile, because it's just a lot to get back into the game and find the proper and most updated resources (like images of setups, blueprints, other strategies etc.) and so even when I've gotten that itch to play, those things have probably kept me from scratching that itch.
damn, that's annoying, I didn't realize imgur had done that. it looks like the PDF version linked in the top comment is still online. intersections are tricky at first but pretty easy once you...
damn, that's annoying, I didn't realize imgur had done that. it looks like the PDF version linked in the top comment is still online.
intersections are tricky at first but pretty easy once you learn the rules in that tutorial (and it does a good job of explaining the why of the rules too).
one option I like to use is that you can design your blueprints in editor mode, optionally with the "editor extensions" mod which adds some useful things. that would let you play around with trains without having to go through the entire early game to get to train research.
then, if you save your blueprints to the "my blueprints" tab of the blueprint library, they're portable between your "planning" save and your "real" save. (you can always do editor mode in your "real" save, but that disables Steam achievements if you care about that, and may feel too much like "cheating" if you care about that)
This seems like a massive improvement! I might have to start a new base to try this out. I found the late game a bit too grindy since lack of foresight often leads to not enough space for belts and you run into this situation where you can either use robots to get your plastic from your oil refineries to your productivity module factories and from there to your purple potion factories, etc... Or nuke it from orbit and start from scratch.
After playing the game through a couple times, I've noticed stupid robot behaviour does really noticeably slow down this stage of progression. I'm sure a lot of people completely refactor their base at that point of the game, but I honestly don't have that kind of free time.
One thing that frustrates me on bot logistics is the inability to segment zones without adjusting roboport placements. I use a modular grid for my bases and my roboports are setup so that the grid is fully connected. I've had to add special logistics breaker blocks to segment the network. Having more control over logistics network coverage and merging would go a long way towards solving weird bot behavior, at least for me.
I just want robots to not cross lakes in the first place - if there's a chain of roboports from A to B, then the robots should follow the chain instead of going directly, and then running out of power halfway so the rest is a crawl. Not every base is convex!
I'm also confused why they would not have some rudimentary path finding for drones. Not looking for anything complex. I respect the Wube team's skills immensely though, so they must have a good reason.
I assume it's just compute heavy. They're trying to keep the bots as lightweight as possible and even simple pathfinding for 100s-1000s of entities can get expensive quick. I know it's the main reason a lot of Dwarf Fortress forts die of 'fps death' once they get big.
I wonder if there isn't some optimization with chunks they can do, similar to how they are handling tasking.
It is a pretty big improvement to robots, but I also find it interesting in how they presented it by stating QOL improvements allow them to add more features, which has a lot of validity, but in my experience I've not found the robots to be something I was working around too much. I didn't get to the point of like crazy mega bases, partly because it seems like trains are essential to this and for the life of me I can't seem to consistently wrap my head around how to construct large train networks. The signals and what not get too confusing for me once it gets to be a more complex network. Anyhow robots were something that mostly seemed to me like you just dealt with the inefficiencies, rather than having to construct elaborate solutions to them. Compare that to belt balancing and what not, where there are tons of different things you have to control for to balance inputs and outputs and which sides of the belt and so on. Then the fluid mechanics too. Those seem like things that actively take time to learn and understand how to build solutions around that would help make way for more features if they had better QOL solutions.
Of course I haven't really played in awhile, I think I last built a large base capable of launching rocket ships like a year ago, so maybe there has been improvements to those things since I last played.
I find this interesting because even for smaller bases, I felt robots had a lot of inadequacies that I had to work around.
Roboports and personal roboports have never gotten along. I play co-op and would have to tell others to hold back on expanding the roboport network too much because it could make new construction very frustrating. Try to prototype or clear land and your personal supply of bots will do one wave of construction and not touch the rest because some robots on the other end of the earth got assigned the rest of it!
Logistics had a different issue. I'd make a small network for resupply and auto-trashing and I'd be able to clear and replenish my inventory in seconds. Then when someone starts doing logistics crafting or requests somewhere else, bots would drift further away from this resupply area and what once took seconds now might take several minutes, defeating the entire point. I'd go out of my way to isolate my mall just to keep this from happening.
For such an important upgrade, I found myself having to say "please don't build a roboport" far too often!
Yeah I can definitely see a totally different set of problems once more people are in the game. I pretty much only play solo so I never have to worry about what anyone else is doing. I still ran into the inefficiencies of the bots, as explained in their blog post, but I never came across posts or solutions on how to deal with them really, it didn't really seem like there were solutions, so I just let the bots do stupid things because there was seemingly nothing else I could do.
When it comes to other problems I encountered in factorio, there often was lots of talk about solutions like belt balancing and fluid mechanics and train logistics and so on, so I spent lots of time on these. To me that's what I found interesting in the post, they're aware that QOL improvements need to be made to add more features without making the game too difficult for players, especially new ones, and I'm sure there is some improvement for robots in this regard, but I just never found myself in nearly the same kind of timesink with robot inefficiencies as I did other things in the game.
this reddit post is 7 years old but it still applies because the core mechanics haven't changed, and is the best tutorial I've ever seen (it's the train tutorial that's linked in the /r/factorio sidebar, so it's mod-endorsed as well). just about every Factorio YouTuber has published a "let me explain trains to you" video, I think it's practically a rite of passage. but none of them have been as clear an explanation as those slides.
if you haven't done it already, you'll definitely want to make blueprints for your train intersections, so that you only need to figure out the correct signalling once. the essential blueprints I always make are a stretch of straight rail; a 3-way intersection; and "in" and "out" intersections that allow a train to leave the main line and enter or leave a train depot. you can re-use the 3-way intersection as a combined in/out blueprint but this sometimes reduces the train depot layout you can use.
if you have specific questions, /r/factorio has a weekly question thread that's full of friendly and helpful people (including me before I cut back on my reddit usage). if there's sufficient interest on Tildes we could get a similar thing going, though probably not as a weekly thread since I doubt there'd be enough comments.
if you're asking for help with train signalling, a specific thing that's really helpful is to hold a train signal in your hand while taking a screenshot. the colored blocks that show up when you do that are crucial to debugging signalling problems.
I'll have to check that out on wayback machine maybe, looks like a lot of the imgur links in that post are dead, probably from the purge a few months ago related to anything that was not uploaded with an imgur account. Edit: Nevermind, I see they made a PDF of the images, so I don't even have to try wayback machine.
Yeah the blueprints would probably make a huge difference for me, because the intersections are where I was really getting confused, made worse when trying to incorporate chain signals too.
I think I'll have to pull out my resources again sometime to get back into it, partly what drew me to this post was their talk about QOL improvements and it made me realize it probably is why I haven't played in awhile, because it's just a lot to get back into the game and find the proper and most updated resources (like images of setups, blueprints, other strategies etc.) and so even when I've gotten that itch to play, those things have probably kept me from scratching that itch.
damn, that's annoying, I didn't realize imgur had done that. it looks like the PDF version linked in the top comment is still online.
intersections are tricky at first but pretty easy once you learn the rules in that tutorial (and it does a good job of explaining the why of the rules too).
one option I like to use is that you can design your blueprints in editor mode, optionally with the "editor extensions" mod which adds some useful things. that would let you play around with trains without having to go through the entire early game to get to train research.
then, if you save your blueprints to the "my blueprints" tab of the blueprint library, they're portable between your "planning" save and your "real" save. (you can always do editor mode in your "real" save, but that disables Steam achievements if you care about that, and may feel too much like "cheating" if you care about that)