I'm glad I could help, thank you! I wish I knew how to get mine higher in the searches, but hopefully as people watch more of my stuff and the channel grows, it'll drift upwards. Can you remember what you searched for? I might be able to tweak the keywords!
You're very welcome! Thanks for checking it out - there's lots of other Factorio bits covered (modded and unmodded!) in the Tutorio playlist, in case you'd like to see more!
what you should have said about Purple chest was that they are great for disassembling builds and belts and chests that have alot of item on them, this prevents the construction bots from getting all busy carrying resources 1 by 1 from chests or belts and by putting the resources or emptying belts into purple chest you give this job to logistic bots that have bigger inventory and carrying capabilities.
That makes some sense, you could have an isolated deconstruction happen into yellow chests, then replace them with purples so the logibots would tidy up... Or the opposite way round, do the main transfer to green chests. It would require a certain amount more admin effort but I can definitely see it being more efficient. Good point!
Awesome stuff, thanks for this dude. I'm stuck in a weird limbo right now where I have purple science automated but I'm making only tiny amounts of it because I've just realised my base is woefully inefficient. So I've torn out most of my coal furnaces and retrofitted their outputs as inputs for trainstations that I'm supplying with Iron and Copper plates from miles away. I think it's definitely time to de-tangle some of my spaghetti and bring my base into the computer age though. This has really helped with straightening out how I'm gonna manage that. Chest still seem unreasonably complicated but I'm sure they'll make sense as I go through trial and a lot of error haha. Thanks again dude!
Yeah, early on it's just red and yellow chests - red are for machines to dump into when they make stuff so that the bots can build with it and yellow chests are for the bots to dump stuff into that they might use later, or they might just turn into a rubbish tip! I also find my base follows those lines... I'll build the first one from the starting ore patches, feeding into furnaces and then onto the bus, all directly. Then the initial patches will run out so I'll move mining away and start training in the ore. Then the furnaces will be too slow, so I'll build a smelting area and bring ore in by train and take metal away by train. Oh, and at some point I'll move circuit production off the bus as well, and train that in, with the inputs being trained in too. And eventually if I'm doing a big enough factory, I'll move science off to separate areas as well.
Thank you for the video! It was really well made, I found other tutorials lacking for the meandering, lack of structure, or talking too fast. Your video on the other hand was really helpful for the straightforwardness and clarity, thank you!
Thanks! The trick is to script the video first rather than just try to talk off the cuff! Let me know if there's any other bits of Factorio you think could do with a tutorial.
Thanks! I like to think that I'm quite good at explaining things - and also not taking 20 minutes to explain a 5 minute topic 🙂 I hope you enjoy the rest of my videos too!
You're welcome! I usually have the opposite problem - I put down a blueprint I want my bots to place and they'll do a little bit of it, then I'll have to wait for the factory bots to finish it. Fortunately, that'll be fixed in 2.0!
This video would benefit a lots to have chapters created. Otherwise, I really enjoy watching it. You have a talent for explanation like taking verbal pauses at the right time. Thanks for sharing
You provided the exact answer to what I'm looking for. I was wondering how to store yellow belts but make sure they're used when crafting red belts. It looks like green chests are the way to go. Thank you!
Yes! I just added that in my Space Age run last night; I unlocked full logistics, so I've now been able to put green chests in the middle of my belt assembly plant. 🙂 I just set the request to at least 5000 and make sure the inserter adding brand new ones is limited to maybe a few hundred, so there's always room to pull any spares and it's always trying to.
Oh, boy. This is about to get long. First, good on you for making educational videos for Factorio, and even more kudos for daring to make a tutorial for a gameplay mechanic you don't make intense use of. The video is, as usual, very well explained and factually accurate... mostly. Bots are very useful, and have their own niche next to belts and trains, and can be really powerful if you use them right. Here is what I have learned about using bots, and how to make them not suck, but complement the other two logistic techs (belts and trains): 1. Making a roboport network covering your entire base is as close to a mistake you can make playing Factorio. Generally, the larger the network, the less effective and less responsive it is, and introducing weird and frustrating behavior. At least it is no longer possible to deadlock bots between two prongs of a network, but the crawl over vast distances with no charging spots is still a pain. 2. Placing solitary roboports anywhere where more than 50 bots are expected to pass is... almost anti-factorio. You won't use a single assembly machine to make green circuits, neither are you going to rely on a single locomotive to round-robin all your train stations, so why place a single roboport if you want robots to do work for you? Put a line of them, and if the bots crowd for charging again, make a second line. Yes, it is a power hog, and costs a ton of resources, but this is the price for using bots. The only possible exception to this is building large solar fields, where bots are expected to visit every solar panel once, but it still goes faster if you limit the travel distance of bots by building supply train stations at the edge. The ideal robot network is one roboport (or a line of roboports next to a station) large, and serves a single purpose, like loading a train, or feeding a mall. The more you extend the network, the worse it will perform. If you really want to build everything with bots, beeline Spidertrons and send off you minion army to do your work.
You make some interesting points here, and I do generally agree. I would, however, generally build a roboport network that covers the core of my factory. With my playstyle, that would be the main bus area and perhaps some nearby towns. I certainly wouldn't build it all the way out to the mines, and more remote towns though - for pretty much the reason you say; it would take days for the bots to do anything useful that far out (unless you have Angel's Nuclear Bots!). Since I just use bots for building, that's basically OK - sure, it might take a few minutes to get the bits for the build out there, but it's not too unreasonable. If you're a heavy user of logistics bots though, then it wouldn't be so good. I should also mention that the continent spanning robonetwork in our current K2SE game is NOT my doing! Having a single roboport to charge bots on a route that you don't expect to be especially busy most of the time isn't too bad - especially if you aren't too bothered about how long a (de)construction takes. It's like only having a single machine making assembly machines - that's generally OK because it can catch up during times of low demand. I would never use bots for something that's needed constantly, in significant quantities (eg for making science packs). I've used robots to unload trains (well, to move stuff from the chests the trains unload into) in the past, and yeah, it works... But I still personally think that a swarm of robots flying around is extremely ugly and antifactorio, compared to some nice sweeping belts. And I think this is probably why my video mostly talks about using bots for construction and player supply!
Great tutorial dude!!! Managed to finally make it click for me, you know how to layout things in laymen’s terms very well, that’s the mark of an expert educator.
The only use for purple chest I've found is for nuclear. I could probably simpfy it but I i digress. First fuel cells are created that if a surplus is made they get properly sent back to the feed single. Sometimes the bots bring more than is needed once the load sequence does it thing. The same chest also accepts the spent cells which are cosumed fast enough such that a 2*2 reactor only needs one centrifuge to recycle consumed cells
If you design it so that it doesn't matter if you've got a couple of spare cells in the chest, then all you're using it for is getting rid of spent ones, and that could be done by having a blue chest at the other end asking for them... We're using a purple chest for the unidentified stuff that comes down from space, but that just means it gets moved off to the big yellow storage further South if nowhere else wants it. It just moves it to another "miscellaneous" bin.
Why not both! The roboports are excellent for longer range construction and for refilling your inventory. Personal robots are great for building outposts or when you want something done quickly.
GG! I need to point out that even when you have a separate logistics network other bots can still use the charging ports. Sadly this means that this isolated network can easily turn into a bot collector whenever a bot that's charging there has its task changed. So in order to change this you must put a limit on that network and have circuits setup to count & remove these "nuisance" bots by a conveyor into a separate networks roboport.
Interesting! I've never had that happen (or rather, I've never noticed that happen), but my additional robonetworks tend to be pretty isolated and miles away from the core one, so it wouldn't affect me. Thanks for the tip!
I keep forgetting the copy and paste functionality! I'm going to have to make my next run based on this and feed everything to the robots through the network! That would make things way easier!
Copy/paste is one of the most amazing Factorio features! I've been playing Satisfactory recently on stream, and really REALLY missing copy/paste! Oh, and the circuit network 😀
Build a megabase so you can use all your bots 😀 I'm happy to help - normally, I link to a roboport so I'm only building bots when there aren't any available, hopefully keeping the number at what the factory needs, rather than what'll fit in the roboports!
Despite having several hundred hours in factorio, after coming back from a long break, I ALWAYS forget about the BLUE chests. Why won't this log-net fill my reactors? Oh, because i haven't unlocked blue chests.... Several other factory games i play have bots, but they dont separate the whole 'request' option to a whole seperate research tab. Thanks for reminding me lol
I sometimes forget about them too! I mostly use the red chests to feed the construction bots and use logistics bots to bring stuff to me directly; I don't use them much for general transport.
Thanks! It's one I made myself for the video, so it's not available anywhere else. It's the sort of thing I'd make available for channel supporters (Twitch subscribers, RUclips Members, Ko-Fi donators) on my Discord server, but for something like that, you could just take a screenshot of it. 🙂
@@ДімаКрасько-с7мIf you've linked your Twitch account to Discord, you should have automatically been given the Supporters role, which will give you access to some extra channels, including the blueprint channel. I've just added the pictures in there, if you'd like any other versions of them let me know and I'll add them in. 🙂
You can read information from it - either the contents of the entire logistics network (which is great if you want to check on your supplies), or the number of robots in the system, total or idle. (or several of the above). This allows you to feed more robots into a roboport when "idle robots" drops to zero, because clearly that means you need more of them!
@@LaurencePlays i checked out your channel and i couldnt find any tutorial or anything similar regarding trains and more specifically how train signals and chain train signals work, i personally find it sorta confusing where i can make a train work but i cant explain it to others, i also cannot figure out how to make a double headed train go back and forth in a single rail track, could you consider doing something on this?
@@Mamapuchas3000 ruclips.net/video/J_bYZtP9WRs/видео.html This one covers trains and signals, ruclips.net/video/6DcIU2ZDF6w/видео.html This one covers scheduling. My quick answer for chain vs normal signals is that for a junction, you use chains on the way in, and inside the junction. You use normal signals on the exit and between junctions. I don't tend to use double headed trains all that much, but the main thing to remember is that if you have a signal on one side of the track you MUST have one on the other side, or it becomes a single direction track in that area.
How do you perform the action with the robots to clear a large area of trees for example? When I press the alt-d key it just puts a red x over the trees but does not clear them out. Do I need the regular roboport in addition to the personal roboport to do this?
You're starting off correctly - alt+d and dragging over trees and rocks will mark them for deconstruction, as you've seen. Once you've done that, any construction robot should go out and grab them, either from your personal roboport, or from the regular ones. Let's see... Are you standing close enough, so that they're in the green robocoverage area from your personal roboport? Go hug one of the trees to be sure! Do you have construction bots in your inventory? Do you have a roboport in your armour? Have you got personal robots turned on? It's alt+r to turn it on or off, or there's a button on your toolbar. I can't think of anything else that would break it! Good luck 🙂
You can make the logistics network as big as you want, however remember that bots are quite slow, so if you have a single massive network, you could be waiting a long time for a bot to arrive to do as you've asked. We've got some massive networks in our current game, which I have to admit I don't really like; I think you're often better off splitting them up and delivering supplies by train. Or possibly by spidertron!
No - as long as they're all linked together, a bot will fly as far as it needs to. Do be aware that bots are slooooow though, so if you have a massive roboport area, it could take a long time for a requested build or delivery to actually happen. In Factorio 1, it was possible for bots to get stuck if you had a C shaped roboport network and they were trying to take a shortcut across from one end to the other, and ran out of power part way. That has been improved in 2.0, but I haven't properly tested it yet myself.
@ i put yellow belts in a red passive box in one part of my map. but the construction robot didnt fly there to pick up the belts in that red box. i made sure all the network lines are connected
@@palihensem I assume they didn't pick them up from somewhere else? That sounds about right - the red chest needs to be in an orange area, the area to build needs to be in an orange or green area and the roboports need to be linked all the way. I'd suggest you try testing it by putting a red box with a couple of pieces of belt much closer, and working away until you find the problem. I'm sure it'll be something very simple when you find it! Have you had construction working in general?
@@LaurencePlays i want to thank you so much for replying my comment. forgive my english. now problem is solve. maybe the blueprint needed are red belt not yellow belt. the belts i put in my red chest are the yellow ones. now the bots are flying across my factory bringing the belts. thank you again sir.
@@palihensem Aha! I'm glad I managed to help shake something loose. 🙂 I have noticed over the years that every time I think there's an issue in Factorio, it's actually something that I've done wrong, so I'm glad you were able to find the issue!
So I unlocked logi bots today and put down a roboport. I then put down a red passive provider chest and a yellow storage chest... these are the only two chests that I have right now that are relevant to the logi network. I then put the roboport right beside them, some iron plates in the red one and nothing in the yellow.. just as your diagram shows, the bots do nothing - red doesn't transfer to yellow. I then put a filter on the yellow to only allow iron plates... again, red doesn't transfer to yellow so the bots do nothing. So... I unlocked logi bots and roboports and apparently they basically do nothing until I unlock the end game tech that requires yellow science? ...no wonder why I never bothered with them before... I can manage my own inventory just fine. I mean, I'll use them for that... but what a ridiculously gimped version of logi bots. 😕 Please tell me I'm missing something. (Of note: I do use a personal roboport with construction bots - they're amazing.)
Yeah, the logistics bots don't do a huge amount in the early game - they're basically there to supply the player (and something else if you play Space Age!), which is still quite useful, especially when paired with a personal roboport and construction bots. But yes, construction bots are amazing, logistics bots are a sort of mildly useful side effect. Fortunately, the recipes are almost exactly the same so it's not difficult to make them both! The filter you put on the yellow chest will sort of work - any bots which grab things that are filtered will take them to those chests if they can... But they won't grab from red chests to do so unless you have them deconstruct the chest. That means they're good for ensuring that when you deconstruct a belt of iron plates, they don't just get dumped into general storage. They don't work for feeding assembly machines.
6:24 Too late, I feel. Even the red and yellow chests serve very little purpose by the time you get them due to how established most bases are by the time you unlock them.
I disagree about the red/yellow chests - I'll generally replace all the chests that buildings are dumped into with red ones as soon as I get them. The more advanced chests, I do sort of get what you mean, although I tend to play so much modded Factorio that full logistics systems are still early game for me - even with changes like the recent Space Exploration ones! I also tend to rush basic logistics/bots because I want to stop building stuff by hand, so I'll get them as quickly as I reasonably can. My play style tends to be very belt focussed, so I don't actually use blue/purple/green chests very much anyway, even when I have them, so perhaps I'm not the best person to comment on that!
@@LaurencePlays That's why I say 'little purpose'. Red/yellow boxes aren't completely useless, as I did the same with my storage depot, although I used yellow instead, because they're a two way storage, but that's about as far as their use goes in my experience. And I'm sorry, but I find red to be the most useless because as a passive, one way box, they don't do anything that either the yellow or purple boxes can't do as well or better. With that said, I have the opposite experience to you. I've only played for a few months, and only on switch (so no mods... yet), with plans to upgrade to PC eventually, so I'm all ears if you have any advise. But yeah, to sum up, it would be nice if they either dropped the fourth RP and changed it so you just had to do the other logic bot research first, or at least changed the fourth RP to purple. I prefer belt based factories too, but that yellow pack is brutal.
@@TheShadowofevolution I've not played on Switch, but I'm assuming the game is essentially the same (apart from mods!). I can see the advantage of using yellow chests on a machine's output because, as you say, it gives you somewhere to store any that get picked up but with the exception of belts, I don't really find that to matter. Purple chests, I basically never use - I feel like I might as well keep the machines I've made where they've been made, rather than transporting them to a yellow chest, and then transporting again to where they're needed. Overall, I'd say that logistics in general are fantastic because they allow you to use construction bots, which makes copying and pasting chunks of factory easy (if sometimes a little slow!) and therefore allows you to expand much more effectively.
@@LaurencePlays I can see how you would prefer red over purple. I haven't unlocked advanced logistics to compare them yet, so I may see the difference more once I do. You're right, logistics are fantastic. All the more reason I would like to see advanced logistics available slightly earlier. I personally don't feel the need for full roboports for construction, though. My pocket bots do enough for now, but that may change in the future, too. As for the Switch version, it's... underwhelming, but not terrible. Some minimalisation, but it's still playable.
@@TheShadowofevolution My opinion is somewhat affected by the modded games I play - for example, in Space Exploration, you have the navigation satellite system which means that with roboport coverage you can do a huge amount of your building without actually having to go there yourself. You can do this to an extent with the map view in vanilla, but it's much more powerful in SE.
if you put down a ghost and items are missing in your logistics network and it cannot be built. Usually its a flashing warning. Is it possible to output this as a signal?
@@LaurencePlays i was thinking maybe to use it for space exploration. By Building up a base on another planet via blueprints and ghosts before arriving. then just slap down some roboborts and add the missing items to the shopping list, that would sent to Nauvis to be loaded into the spaceship.
@@lakatosjuraj that makes a lot of sense, except that you wouldn't be able to get the initial shopping list until the roboports were down. You'd be better off copying the whole thing and using the logistics request manager mod to set your requests.
I still dont understand why a simple task: providing pipes to a single factory doesnt work. I have logistic robots. I have over 4k pipes in my logistics network, the factory is out of pipes yet the error I get is that item shortage. How is that possible with over 4k pipes in the logistics network. Everything is in range as you mentikned in the orange box.
If you're trying to build pipes with construction bots, make sure the pipes are in a red, yellow, green or purple chest (it sounds like they are) and that the area you want to build is in roboport coverage and that the roboport for the area you're trying to build in is linked to the roboport for the supply (look on the map, turn on roboport coverage and make sure there's solid orange all the way there). Oh, and that you have construction bots available! If you're trying to supply pipes to an assembler, make sure that you've got a blue chest and that it's requesting them, and also the roboport coverage and linkage I mentioned earlier. Also make sure you have logistics bots available in that area!
@LaurencePlays thank you so much for the reply. I might have zero blue chests. I will check it once I am back home. Wait a second. I thought logistic bots can supply an assembler directly. So I need chests where the bots put the items and I need inserters for that chests the bots are filling up with inlut goods? So in other words, logistic bots can never directly feed an assembler?
@@KopiG86 That's correct - if you want a bot based construction system, you need a blue chest for the logistics bot to deliver the supplies to, an inserter feeding into an assembler, then another inserter outputting into a red chest so bots can collect from it. Bots won't interact directly with an assembler.
@@LaurencePlays Thank you again! So basically logistics bots are completely useless till you research Logistic system. What a stupid system. So thats another science type. Starting to dislike this game.
@@KopiG86 Not completely useless - they can be used to supply the player with useful building materials. You're partly right though, they aren't all that useful early on - the exciting unlock at this point is the construction bots!
Kind of, yes! It's even more pronounced in space exploration because you have the nav sat which allows you to fiddle with circuits remotely as well. I'll miss that next time I play vanilla!
Hah! It's a neat trick, and an excellent way of making sure you don't overproduce because you've got stock elsewhere. If it makes you feel any better, I've got 3,000 hours in, and it was pointed out to me on stream last night that I could have done that and it would've been a much simpler solution than the one I ended up using!
At the simplest, stuff can be taken from red or yellow chests and put in blue chests, if you configure the requests in the blue chest's settings. Using the other chests is similar, but more complex, but most of the time you can get away with putting things in red chests, requesting with blue chests, and having some yellow ones around for things to be dumped in if necessary.
I think it's because they give us logi bots and the 'passive provider chest' way before we get the blue 'requestor chest'... so there's no way to put a request for a logi bot to do things.
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Finally, a tutorial i can comprehend with my smooth, smooth brain. thank you
Thank you! Once you've got your head around them, they're pretty straightforward, just a bit daunting at first glance 🙂
I am so smooth brain, idk why I play this game lol
It will wrinkle your brain
I have been scouring for video tutorials on this and yours wasn’t on top of search results. But only yours made sense for me.
I'm glad I could help, thank you! I wish I knew how to get mine higher in the searches, but hopefully as people watch more of my stuff and the channel grows, it'll drift upwards. Can you remember what you searched for? I might be able to tweak the keywords!
I just unlocked robots and was looking for a guide for it. Thank you for the easy-to-understand guide!
You're very welcome! Thanks for checking it out - there's lots of other Factorio bits covered (modded and unmodded!) in the Tutorio playlist, in case you'd like to see more!
what you should have said about Purple chest was that they are great for disassembling builds and belts and chests that have alot of item on them, this prevents the construction bots from getting all busy carrying resources 1 by 1 from chests or belts and by putting the resources or emptying belts into purple chest you give this job to logistic bots that have bigger inventory and carrying capabilities.
That makes some sense, you could have an isolated deconstruction happen into yellow chests, then replace them with purples so the logibots would tidy up... Or the opposite way round, do the main transfer to green chests. It would require a certain amount more admin effort but I can definitely see it being more efficient. Good point!
Awesome stuff, thanks for this dude. I'm stuck in a weird limbo right now where I have purple science automated but I'm making only tiny amounts of it because I've just realised my base is woefully inefficient. So I've torn out most of my coal furnaces and retrofitted their outputs as inputs for trainstations that I'm supplying with Iron and Copper plates from miles away. I think it's definitely time to de-tangle some of my spaghetti and bring my base into the computer age though. This has really helped with straightening out how I'm gonna manage that. Chest still seem unreasonably complicated but I'm sure they'll make sense as I go through trial and a lot of error haha. Thanks again dude!
Yeah, early on it's just red and yellow chests - red are for machines to dump into when they make stuff so that the bots can build with it and yellow chests are for the bots to dump stuff into that they might use later, or they might just turn into a rubbish tip!
I also find my base follows those lines... I'll build the first one from the starting ore patches, feeding into furnaces and then onto the bus, all directly. Then the initial patches will run out so I'll move mining away and start training in the ore. Then the furnaces will be too slow, so I'll build a smelting area and bring ore in by train and take metal away by train.
Oh, and at some point I'll move circuit production off the bus as well, and train that in, with the inputs being trained in too. And eventually if I'm doing a big enough factory, I'll move science off to separate areas as well.
Thank you for the video! It was really well made, I found other tutorials lacking for the meandering, lack of structure, or talking too fast. Your video on the other hand was really helpful for the straightforwardness and clarity, thank you!
Thanks! The trick is to script the video first rather than just try to talk off the cuff! Let me know if there's any other bits of Factorio you think could do with a tutorial.
Watched a few tutorials, but this was the one that both covered everything in a short amount of time, and made everything "click". Thank you man!
Thanks! I like to think that I'm quite good at explaining things - and also not taking 20 minutes to explain a 5 minute topic 🙂 I hope you enjoy the rest of my videos too!
That was informative. Thank you! Now I know why bots from roboports did nothing, while personal ones did everything.
You're welcome! I usually have the opposite problem - I put down a blueprint I want my bots to place and they'll do a little bit of it, then I'll have to wait for the factory bots to finish it. Fortunately, that'll be fixed in 2.0!
This video would benefit a lots to have chapters created. Otherwise, I really enjoy watching it. You have a talent for explanation like taking verbal pauses at the right time. Thanks for sharing
A good idea - I usually do add chapters to the Tutorios, but I clearly didn't this time. I'll have to add them! Thanks for the compliments too 🙂
There we go, chapters added!
Awesome! Thanks@@LaurencePlays
The chest hierarchy diagram was very useful. Thanks.
I'm glad! It's a tricky thing to show because there are so many different possible connections between chests!
You provided the exact answer to what I'm looking for. I was wondering how to store yellow belts but make sure they're used when crafting red belts. It looks like green chests are the way to go. Thank you!
Yes! I just added that in my Space Age run last night; I unlocked full logistics, so I've now been able to put green chests in the middle of my belt assembly plant. 🙂 I just set the request to at least 5000 and make sure the inserter adding brand new ones is limited to maybe a few hundred, so there's always room to pull any spares and it's always trying to.
Oh, boy. This is about to get long. First, good on you for making educational videos for Factorio, and even more kudos for daring to make a tutorial for a gameplay mechanic you don't make intense use of. The video is, as usual, very well explained and factually accurate... mostly. Bots are very useful, and have their own niche next to belts and trains, and can be really powerful if you use them right.
Here is what I have learned about using bots, and how to make them not suck, but complement the other two logistic techs (belts and trains):
1. Making a roboport network covering your entire base is as close to a mistake you can make playing Factorio. Generally, the larger the network, the less effective and less responsive it is, and introducing weird and frustrating behavior. At least it is no longer possible to deadlock bots between two prongs of a network, but the crawl over vast distances with no charging spots is still a pain.
2. Placing solitary roboports anywhere where more than 50 bots are expected to pass is... almost anti-factorio. You won't use a single assembly machine to make green circuits, neither are you going to rely on a single locomotive to round-robin all your train stations, so why place a single roboport if you want robots to do work for you? Put a line of them, and if the bots crowd for charging again, make a second line. Yes, it is a power hog, and costs a ton of resources, but this is the price for using bots. The only possible exception to this is building large solar fields, where bots are expected to visit every solar panel once, but it still goes faster if you limit the travel distance of bots by building supply train stations at the edge.
The ideal robot network is one roboport (or a line of roboports next to a station) large, and serves a single purpose, like loading a train, or feeding a mall. The more you extend the network, the worse it will perform. If you really want to build everything with bots, beeline Spidertrons and send off you minion army to do your work.
You make some interesting points here, and I do generally agree. I would, however, generally build a roboport network that covers the core of my factory. With my playstyle, that would be the main bus area and perhaps some nearby towns. I certainly wouldn't build it all the way out to the mines, and more remote towns though - for pretty much the reason you say; it would take days for the bots to do anything useful that far out (unless you have Angel's Nuclear Bots!). Since I just use bots for building, that's basically OK - sure, it might take a few minutes to get the bits for the build out there, but it's not too unreasonable. If you're a heavy user of logistics bots though, then it wouldn't be so good.
I should also mention that the continent spanning robonetwork in our current K2SE game is NOT my doing!
Having a single roboport to charge bots on a route that you don't expect to be especially busy most of the time isn't too bad - especially if you aren't too bothered about how long a (de)construction takes. It's like only having a single machine making assembly machines - that's generally OK because it can catch up during times of low demand. I would never use bots for something that's needed constantly, in significant quantities (eg for making science packs).
I've used robots to unload trains (well, to move stuff from the chests the trains unload into) in the past, and yeah, it works... But I still personally think that a swarm of robots flying around is extremely ugly and antifactorio, compared to some nice sweeping belts. And I think this is probably why my video mostly talks about using bots for construction and player supply!
5:00 - you can flip blueprints laterally (vertical symmetry axis) with F and vertically with G (horizontal symmetry axis)
Oooh, I didn't know that! I'd been using a combination of F and R!
Really easy to understand, thank you for the video!
Thanks! You're making good progress through the playlist! 😀
Doing my best hehe @@LaurencePlays
Great tutorial dude!!! Managed to finally make it click for me, you know how to layout things in laymen’s terms very well, that’s the mark of an expert educator.
Excellent work, amigo. Crystal clear.
Thanks! :-D I might need to update a lot of my tutorios now that 2.0's come out, but the basics are still the same.
Thanks this was communicated well without going over the top and into too much detail.
Thanks! I'm glad it helped 🙂
The only use for purple chest I've found is for nuclear. I could probably simpfy it but I i digress. First fuel cells are created that if a surplus is made they get properly sent back to the feed single. Sometimes the bots bring more than is needed once the load sequence does it thing. The same chest also accepts the spent cells which are cosumed fast enough such that a 2*2 reactor only needs one centrifuge to recycle consumed cells
If you design it so that it doesn't matter if you've got a couple of spare cells in the chest, then all you're using it for is getting rid of spent ones, and that could be done by having a blue chest at the other end asking for them...
We're using a purple chest for the unidentified stuff that comes down from space, but that just means it gets moved off to the big yellow storage further South if nowhere else wants it. It just moves it to another "miscellaneous" bin.
Very good, well explained of the order of chest in moving item
Thank you! It was tricky to come up with a good way to show it, so I'm glad it worked 😀
One of the best concise tutorials I've seen for factorio! Maybe now I can stop carrying 50 bots with me and try real roboports 😂
Why not both! The roboports are excellent for longer range construction and for refilling your inventory. Personal robots are great for building outposts or when you want something done quickly.
very nicely explained, thank you!
Thanks! I'm glad it was useful 🙂
So well laid out.
Thanks! You should see my actual, organically grown factories though... They're never anything like as neat!
6:00 I was looking for this all over the internet, thx XD
Hah, yes. The number of times I've had my bots turned off and have been going "Why isn't this working???" is ... higher than it should be.
GG!
I need to point out that even when you have a separate logistics network other bots can still use the charging ports. Sadly this means that this isolated network can easily turn into a bot collector whenever a bot that's charging there has its task changed.
So in order to change this you must put a limit on that network and have circuits setup to count & remove these "nuisance" bots by a conveyor into a separate networks roboport.
Interesting! I've never had that happen (or rather, I've never noticed that happen), but my additional robonetworks tend to be pretty isolated and miles away from the core one, so it wouldn't affect me. Thanks for the tip!
I keep forgetting the copy and paste functionality! I'm going to have to make my next run based on this and feed everything to the robots through the network! That would make things way easier!
Copy/paste is one of the most amazing Factorio features! I've been playing Satisfactory recently on stream, and really REALLY missing copy/paste!
Oh, and the circuit network 😀
Awesome video, thanks, really helped me :D
You're welcome! Thanks for watching. The bots are so useful, you might as well get the most out of them.
10/10 tutorial thank u
Thanks! I'm glad it was useful 🙂
Very useful ! Thanks ^^
You're very welcome! Let me know if you think there are any other topics I should take on.
Very clear. Thanks a lot
You're welcome! Bots are very handy 😀
👍
very useful video. thank you!
Thanks! I'm glad it helped 😀 Let me know if there's any other bits of Factorio you think need a tutorial!
I left my game running over night and I now have 100k bots that are just idle been trying to find a solution. Thanks for the help
Build a megabase so you can use all your bots 😀 I'm happy to help - normally, I link to a roboport so I'm only building bots when there aren't any available, hopefully keeping the number at what the factory needs, rather than what'll fit in the roboports!
Great video, thanks!
Thanks!
Thank you.
You're welcome. I hope it's useful!
Despite having several hundred hours in factorio, after coming back from a long break, I ALWAYS forget about the BLUE chests.
Why won't this log-net fill my reactors? Oh, because i haven't unlocked blue chests....
Several other factory games i play have bots, but they dont separate the whole 'request' option to a whole seperate research tab.
Thanks for reminding me lol
I sometimes forget about them too! I mostly use the red chests to feed the construction bots and use logistics bots to bring stuff to me directly; I don't use them much for general transport.
Hey, where can I find image from 8:30? This image is literally the best, compared to other examples from Internet
Thanks! It's one I made myself for the video, so it's not available anywhere else. It's the sort of thing I'd make available for channel supporters (Twitch subscribers, RUclips Members, Ko-Fi donators) on my Discord server, but for something like that, you could just take a screenshot of it. 🙂
@@LaurencePlays I bought Twitch subscription and joined Discord server, where can I find the picture?
@@ДімаКрасько-с7мIf you've linked your Twitch account to Discord, you should have automatically been given the Supporters role, which will give you access to some extra channels, including the blueprint channel. I've just added the pictures in there, if you'd like any other versions of them let me know and I'll add them in. 🙂
@@LaurencePlays Thanks, got it)
What can be *accomplished* by connecting a robopprt to the circuit network?
You can read information from it - either the contents of the entire logistics network (which is great if you want to check on your supplies), or the number of robots in the system, total or idle. (or several of the above). This allows you to feed more robots into a roboport when "idle robots" drops to zero, because clearly that means you need more of them!
short and useful, just like any good tutorial should be
Thank you! Yes, I try to leave my waffling for the streams and stream summaries!
@@LaurencePlays i checked out your channel and i couldnt find any tutorial or anything similar regarding trains and more specifically how train signals and chain train signals work, i personally find it sorta confusing where i can make a train work but i cant explain it to others, i also cannot figure out how to make a double headed train go back and forth in a single rail track, could you consider doing something on this?
@@Mamapuchas3000 ruclips.net/video/J_bYZtP9WRs/видео.html This one covers trains and signals,
ruclips.net/video/6DcIU2ZDF6w/видео.html This one covers scheduling.
My quick answer for chain vs normal signals is that for a junction, you use chains on the way in, and inside the junction. You use normal signals on the exit and between junctions.
I don't tend to use double headed trains all that much, but the main thing to remember is that if you have a signal on one side of the track you MUST have one on the other side, or it becomes a single direction track in that area.
@@LaurencePlays many thanks
How do you perform the action with the robots to clear a large area of trees for example? When I press the alt-d key it just puts a red x over the trees but does not clear them out. Do I need the regular roboport in addition to the personal roboport to do this?
You're starting off correctly - alt+d and dragging over trees and rocks will mark them for deconstruction, as you've seen. Once you've done that, any construction robot should go out and grab them, either from your personal roboport, or from the regular ones.
Let's see...
Are you standing close enough, so that they're in the green robocoverage area from your personal roboport? Go hug one of the trees to be sure!
Do you have construction bots in your inventory?
Do you have a roboport in your armour?
Have you got personal robots turned on? It's alt+r to turn it on or off, or there's a button on your toolbar.
I can't think of anything else that would break it! Good luck 🙂
Is the logistics network can be connected all over the eorld or does it have a limit for like 5000 tiles or something
You can make the logistics network as big as you want, however remember that bots are quite slow, so if you have a single massive network, you could be waiting a long time for a bot to arrive to do as you've asked. We've got some massive networks in our current game, which I have to admit I don't really like; I think you're often better off splitting them up and delivering supplies by train. Or possibly by spidertron!
@@LaurencePlays thank you
hi, are there maximum orange box that logistic bot can travel?
No - as long as they're all linked together, a bot will fly as far as it needs to. Do be aware that bots are slooooow though, so if you have a massive roboport area, it could take a long time for a requested build or delivery to actually happen.
In Factorio 1, it was possible for bots to get stuck if you had a C shaped roboport network and they were trying to take a shortcut across from one end to the other, and ran out of power part way. That has been improved in 2.0, but I haven't properly tested it yet myself.
@ i put yellow belts in a red passive box in one part of my map. but the construction robot didnt fly there to pick up the belts in that red box. i made sure all the network lines are connected
@@palihensem I assume they didn't pick them up from somewhere else? That sounds about right - the red chest needs to be in an orange area, the area to build needs to be in an orange or green area and the roboports need to be linked all the way. I'd suggest you try testing it by putting a red box with a couple of pieces of belt much closer, and working away until you find the problem. I'm sure it'll be something very simple when you find it! Have you had construction working in general?
@@LaurencePlays i want to thank you so much for replying my comment. forgive my english. now problem is solve. maybe the blueprint needed are red belt not yellow belt. the belts i put in my red chest are the yellow ones. now the bots are flying across my factory bringing the belts. thank you again sir.
@@palihensem Aha! I'm glad I managed to help shake something loose. 🙂 I have noticed over the years that every time I think there's an issue in Factorio, it's actually something that I've done wrong, so I'm glad you were able to find the issue!
So I unlocked logi bots today and put down a roboport. I then put down a red passive provider chest and a yellow storage chest... these are the only two chests that I have right now that are relevant to the logi network. I then put the roboport right beside them, some iron plates in the red one and nothing in the yellow.. just as your diagram shows, the bots do nothing - red doesn't transfer to yellow. I then put a filter on the yellow to only allow iron plates... again, red doesn't transfer to yellow so the bots do nothing.
So... I unlocked logi bots and roboports and apparently they basically do nothing until I unlock the end game tech that requires yellow science? ...no wonder why I never bothered with them before... I can manage my own inventory just fine. I mean, I'll use them for that... but what a ridiculously gimped version of logi bots. 😕 Please tell me I'm missing something.
(Of note: I do use a personal roboport with construction bots - they're amazing.)
Yeah, the logistics bots don't do a huge amount in the early game - they're basically there to supply the player (and something else if you play Space Age!), which is still quite useful, especially when paired with a personal roboport and construction bots. But yes, construction bots are amazing, logistics bots are a sort of mildly useful side effect. Fortunately, the recipes are almost exactly the same so it's not difficult to make them both!
The filter you put on the yellow chest will sort of work - any bots which grab things that are filtered will take them to those chests if they can... But they won't grab from red chests to do so unless you have them deconstruct the chest. That means they're good for ensuring that when you deconstruct a belt of iron plates, they don't just get dumped into general storage. They don't work for feeding assembly machines.
6:24 Too late, I feel. Even the red and yellow chests serve very little purpose by the time you get them due to how established most bases are by the time you unlock them.
I disagree about the red/yellow chests - I'll generally replace all the chests that buildings are dumped into with red ones as soon as I get them. The more advanced chests, I do sort of get what you mean, although I tend to play so much modded Factorio that full logistics systems are still early game for me - even with changes like the recent Space Exploration ones! I also tend to rush basic logistics/bots because I want to stop building stuff by hand, so I'll get them as quickly as I reasonably can.
My play style tends to be very belt focussed, so I don't actually use blue/purple/green chests very much anyway, even when I have them, so perhaps I'm not the best person to comment on that!
@@LaurencePlays That's why I say 'little purpose'. Red/yellow boxes aren't completely useless, as I did the same with my storage depot, although I used yellow instead, because they're a two way storage, but that's about as far as their use goes in my experience. And I'm sorry, but I find red to be the most useless because as a passive, one way box, they don't do anything that either the yellow or purple boxes can't do as well or better. With that said, I have the opposite experience to you. I've only played for a few months, and only on switch (so no mods... yet), with plans to upgrade to PC eventually, so I'm all ears if you have any advise. But yeah, to sum up, it would be nice if they either dropped the fourth RP and changed it so you just had to do the other logic bot research first, or at least changed the fourth RP to purple. I prefer belt based factories too, but that yellow pack is brutal.
@@TheShadowofevolution I've not played on Switch, but I'm assuming the game is essentially the same (apart from mods!). I can see the advantage of using yellow chests on a machine's output because, as you say, it gives you somewhere to store any that get picked up but with the exception of belts, I don't really find that to matter.
Purple chests, I basically never use - I feel like I might as well keep the machines I've made where they've been made, rather than transporting them to a yellow chest, and then transporting again to where they're needed.
Overall, I'd say that logistics in general are fantastic because they allow you to use construction bots, which makes copying and pasting chunks of factory easy (if sometimes a little slow!) and therefore allows you to expand much more effectively.
@@LaurencePlays I can see how you would prefer red over purple. I haven't unlocked advanced logistics to compare them yet, so I may see the difference more once I do.
You're right, logistics are fantastic. All the more reason I would like to see advanced logistics available slightly earlier. I personally don't feel the need for full roboports for construction, though. My pocket bots do enough for now, but that may change in the future, too.
As for the Switch version, it's... underwhelming, but not terrible. Some minimalisation, but it's still playable.
@@TheShadowofevolution My opinion is somewhat affected by the modded games I play - for example, in Space Exploration, you have the navigation satellite system which means that with roboport coverage you can do a huge amount of your building without actually having to go there yourself. You can do this to an extent with the map view in vanilla, but it's much more powerful in SE.
if you put down a ghost and items are missing in your logistics network and it cannot be built. Usually its a flashing warning. Is it possible to output this as a signal?
I believe you can't get that information in vanilla, but the ghost planner mod does allow you to read it from roboports.
@@LaurencePlays i was thinking maybe to use it for space exploration. By Building up a base on another planet via blueprints and ghosts before arriving. then just slap down some roboborts and add the missing items to the shopping list, that would sent to Nauvis to be loaded into the spaceship.
@@lakatosjuraj that makes a lot of sense, except that you wouldn't be able to get the initial shopping list until the roboports were down. You'd be better off copying the whole thing and using the logistics request manager mod to set your requests.
I still dont understand why a simple task: providing pipes to a single factory doesnt work. I have logistic robots. I have over 4k pipes in my logistics network, the factory is out of pipes yet the error I get is that item shortage. How is that possible with over 4k pipes in the logistics network. Everything is in range as you mentikned in the orange box.
If you're trying to build pipes with construction bots, make sure the pipes are in a red, yellow, green or purple chest (it sounds like they are) and that the area you want to build is in roboport coverage and that the roboport for the area you're trying to build in is linked to the roboport for the supply (look on the map, turn on roboport coverage and make sure there's solid orange all the way there). Oh, and that you have construction bots available!
If you're trying to supply pipes to an assembler, make sure that you've got a blue chest and that it's requesting them, and also the roboport coverage and linkage I mentioned earlier. Also make sure you have logistics bots available in that area!
@LaurencePlays thank you so much for the reply. I might have zero blue chests. I will check it once I am back home. Wait a second. I thought logistic bots can supply an assembler directly. So I need chests where the bots put the items and I need inserters for that chests the bots are filling up with inlut goods? So in other words, logistic bots can never directly feed an assembler?
@@KopiG86 That's correct - if you want a bot based construction system, you need a blue chest for the logistics bot to deliver the supplies to, an inserter feeding into an assembler, then another inserter outputting into a red chest so bots can collect from it. Bots won't interact directly with an assembler.
@@LaurencePlays Thank you again! So basically logistics bots are completely useless till you research Logistic system. What a stupid system. So thats another science type. Starting to dislike this game.
@@KopiG86 Not completely useless - they can be used to supply the player with useful building materials. You're partly right though, they aren't all that useful early on - the exciting unlock at this point is the construction bots!
Wait, so everything within the logistics networks suddenly becomes an RTS. nice.
Kind of, yes! It's even more pronounced in space exploration because you have the nav sat which allows you to fiddle with circuits remotely as well. I'll miss that next time I play vanilla!
I HAVE 1000 HOURS IN FACTORIO AND NEVER REALIZED I COULD CONNECT INSERTERS TO THE LOGISTICS NETWORK!?!?!?!
Hah! It's a neat trick, and an excellent way of making sure you don't overproduce because you've got stock elsewhere. If it makes you feel any better, I've got 3,000 hours in, and it was pointed out to me on stream last night that I could have done that and it would've been a much simpler solution than the one I ended up using!
Nope I don't get it. I'm really confused on how to transfer stuff between chests.
At the simplest, stuff can be taken from red or yellow chests and put in blue chests, if you configure the requests in the blue chest's settings.
Using the other chests is similar, but more complex, but most of the time you can get away with putting things in red chests, requesting with blue chests, and having some yellow ones around for things to be dumped in if necessary.
I think it's because they give us logi bots and the 'passive provider chest' way before we get the blue 'requestor chest'... so there's no way to put a request for a logi bot to do things.
So in other words robots are useless until you have yellow science pack
Not at all! They can build the blueprints you lay down and they can bring supplies to you. That's 90 percent of what I use bots for!