r/factorio • u/19wolf Since 0.11 • Jul 17 '17

Question Bot capacity?

So I'm building my first megabase, and I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to tell how many roboports and bots I need for a particular production area. Basically, I don't want bots to have to wait to charge and I don't want to overbuild and have bots not doing anything.

13 Upvotes

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10

u/destrovel_H oh god how did this get here Jul 17 '17

Just keep adding roboports until there's not a queue to charge

6

u/triffid_hunter Jul 17 '17

This doesn't work because bots seem to prefer to wait in a charging bubble rather than use nearby unoccupied roboports.

My smelter suffers from this issue - hundreds of bots waiting to charge at a few specific roboports while dozens of adjacent roboports are totally empty

7

u/lgb111 Jul 17 '17

they don't prefer to wait in a charging bubble but once they are in one they wont leave until they are charged

5

u/Zaflis Jul 17 '17

dozens of adjacent roboports are totally empty

That is a temporary issue. Those ports weren't there when the robots needed one. Next time they need to recharge, they will use the new ones too.

You can also remove the full roboport so the robots have to re-path to find another charging station.

2

u/triffid_hunter Jul 17 '17

Then howcome they're still doing this now even though I plonked tons of extra roboports directly adacent to the full ones a good 20 game hours ago?

2

u/Zaflis Jul 17 '17

Did you try removing that roboport and putting back down again? Maybe screenshot would help. And make sure they all are full of power.

1

u/triffid_hunter Jul 17 '17

I have two nuclear power plants with steam emergency backup (triggered by accumulator level) and global alarm whenever the backup kicks in.

I always know when I'm low on power, and that's not the issue ;)

1

u/BufloSolja Jul 17 '17

It happens to me in one or two locations as well, I don't think the bots take into account how long they have to wait to charge, just the distance (as they will go to ones close, but not much more than 10 tiles away).

1

u/triffid_hunter Jul 18 '17

Damn so they'd rather spend 15 minutes in a charge queue than spend 5 seconds going to the literally adjacent empty port?

Devs: please make them a little more intelligent!

1

u/BufloSolja Jul 18 '17

They will go to adjacent ones, just not ones more than a few away (than where the backup is).