Bots and Logistic Networks tutorial - Laurence Plays Factorio
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- Опубликовано: 10 июл 2024
- The Factorio bots are amazingly powerful, great for supply runs and building things, but do you know how to use all the different types of chests? Let's take a look into how bots work and how to get everything set up.
Thanks to Tristan for error checking!
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0:00 Intro
0:19 Parts of a robot network
2:11 Basic logistics chests
3:30 The player as a logistics chest
4:34 Construction with bots and blueprints
5:40 Personal Roboport
6:14 Advanced logistics chests
8:30 Chest hierarchy
9:26 Connecting chests to the circuit network 
Игры
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 🙂
Thank you lord, I had to sit through dozens of USELESS let’s plays disguised as tutorials with misleading titles and thumbnails before eventually finding this. Well made mate.
Thanks! I'm glad it was useful 🙂 I do have "let's play"s as well, but they're pretty obvious by their episode numbers.
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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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!
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
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!
Really easy to understand, thank you for the video!
Thanks! You're making good progress through the playlist! 😀
Doing my best hehe @@LaurencePlays
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!
Great video, thanks!
Thanks!
very nicely explained, thank you!
Thanks! I'm glad it was useful 🙂
Very useful ! Thanks ^^
Very clear. Thanks a lot
You're welcome! Bots are very handy 😀
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.
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.
10/10 tutorial thank u
Thanks! I'm glad it was 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.
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!
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
Thank you.
You're welcome. I hope it's useful!
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 🙂
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!
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
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?
@@user-gt2th3wz9cIf 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)
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!
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.
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.