Iron Tooth robots kinda suck

[Shas'O O'Kais]

So i've been playing around with integrating robots into my beaver societies and enjoying them, but man, I gotta say the iron tooth robots are kind of awful.

First of all, they take a long time to recharge, almost as long as it takes an organic beaver to sleep through the night, so you aren't really saving any time/getting extra work done unless you increase the overall size of your workforce to accommodate for a third of them being inactive at all times.

Next, the space it requires to maintain a large robobeaver workforce is pretty significant when you factor in the power needs. Thats a lot of waterwheels to power that work force, or if you use the engine/generator then you gotta factor in the extra space for trees to power them, not to mention all that work force for planting, harvesting, loading into generator, etc. Lots of space on recharge stations (approximately 1 for every 3 robobeavers, lots of wheels or generators along with additional forests to cover the fuel costs. It's a lot of space.

Meanwhile, Folktail robots have ZERO downtime, aside from the travel time to head to a fuel tank. They just run in, run out, done. Fully charged. Takes zero time aside from the time to travel there once in a while. You can get by with fewer robots than iron teeth do as a result and they're more efficient.

Also, they don't take up much space at all. You just setup a small farming area for potatoes, a single dedicated water pump, and a single refinery, all in all 4 jobs in buildings you can place right next to each other and you're done. They are so fuel efficient, using far less food and water than organic beavers do.

And then when you are setting up outposts and other distracts at far off locations, rather than having to setup lots of power infrastructure over there or transporting logs endlessly to it to power generators to run the many power stations (again, which all take up a lot of space), you don't have to build literally anything except the supply drop off for the folktail robos because they can deliver biofuel there and you're done. Thats it. No further buildings required. That single supply depot can hold all the fuel they were ever need, as well as being completely free to build. Iron Teeth need lots of resources coming in to build the charging stations, build the engines, etc then need a constant supply of logs.

Folk Tails have always been better in my opinion, but now their robots are far superior as well. I almost feel bad for the iron teeth.

[BigDaddyBulgyWulgy420]

dont forget wind power (can be built far out of the way) + gravity batteries makes them use less wood than engines + less manpower, bees make potatos grow faster so u need less space - but thats made up for having to have a decently large size maple syrup farm + sunflowers for catalyst but realistically you're already farming those with bees you're probably still using less space than iron teeth

and thats not even touching on how iron teeth need berry fields, only far late game iron teeth can build above the ground with tonnes of large platforms and efficient log storage but at that point nothing matters anymore

[Helianthemum the Übernerd]

It's not true that folktails barrelbots have zero downtime. In fact, they never work at more than 92% of their maximum potential, according to empirical evidence.
Also, catalyst production is very resource-intensive and requires a lot of land (about 1 tile of maple + 1 tile of sunflower per golem), compared to the amount of land required for one or even a few engines.

[citablekettle]

Originally posted by Shas'o O'Kais:

if you use the engine/generator then you gotta factor in the extra space for trees to power them, not to mention all that work force for planting, harvesting, loading into generator, etc.

Work hard, work hard!

[jonnin]

did they change the charge time? It used to be only slightly worse than eat/drink runs. I don't like golems generally, so at most I have like 10 for dirt etc, if that... haven't studied them since they took away repairs.

[Shas'O O'Kais]

Originally posted by jonnin:

did they change the charge time? It used to be only slightly worse than eat/drink runs. I don't like golems generally, so at most I have like 10 for dirt etc, if that... haven't studied them since they took away repairs.

Yeah it takes quite a while to charge them. It takes about as long as a beaver to sleep through the night, or close to it at least. You need so many more iron beaverbots than you do folk beaverbots to have the same efficiency, and the amount of space and resources for iron beavers is way higher.

[Shas'O O'Kais]

Originally posted by Helianthemum:

It's not true that folktails barrelbots have zero downtime. In fact, they never work at more than 92% of their maximum potential, according to empirical evidence.
Also, catalyst production is very resource-intensive and requires a lot of land (about 1 tile of maple + 1 tile of sunflower per golem), compared to the amount of land required for one or even a few engines.

92% is far better than 70% my guy.

Also, catalyst is just for double their already very impressive work speed and isn't really needed imo, but if you want to compare their tier 2 resource costs...

1 tile of maple and 1 tile of sunflower per golem isn't that bad for folktails.
For iron tooth beavers on their other hand, their little tower requires 3 research to power it. So you're looking at either 9 research huts OR 1 of the calculator buildings, along with the accompanying 250 power requirement, to maintain 3 of these towers. And how many buildings can you really cover with a single tower?

The tier 2 might be marginally more efficient with iron beaverbots if you build your base in advance planning around where you're going to put those towers and the production buildings laid out in such a way to maximize each tower... But not all maps have open enough floor plans to allow for such things. Sometimes you gotta make due with the land you got and being able to place catalyst farms literally anywhere is much better than trying to squeeze maximum efficiency out of those boost towers.

[Yinan]

Originally posted by Shas'o O'Kais:

92% is far better than 70% my guy.

Also, catalyst is just for double their already very impressive work speed and isn't really needed imo, but if you want to compare their tier 2 resource costs...
[snip]

I think you missed the sarkasm in Helianthemums post.

[Kalisa]

its 4.8 wood a day to run an engine 24 hours, 18 maple trees to power 8 charging stations, enough to maintain around 50-55 golems pretty easily, thats not too bad, i agree the charging time does take alittle long but they are extreamly effecient overall, I usually switch my entire economy over to robot beavers for iron teeth as soon as i can. and a single tower can easily cover your entire manufacturing area quite easily. Not sure how much space it takes to keep 50-55 folktale golems powered though.
As for charge times, seems to take 3 hours, thats 12.5% downtime if you have your charging stations right outside the workspace.

Edit: the one huge advantage i think the folktales have tho is the portability of their biofuel, i never use my ironteeth robots in small outposts due to power requirements, tho any medium outpost its easy enough to set up, i kinda wish we had a much smaller engine for iron teeth as well, like 100 power 2x2 engine that eats like 1.2 wood a day, that would be easy enough to run for small outposts then.
Though its not hard to transport 5 wood a day to power an engine at an outpost, just the cost of building an engine and the charging stations is allot bigger of an undertaking then just sending biofuel.

[citablekettle]

Most golem expenses are on producing them to maintain their population, not on fueling them to maintain their productivity.

[citablekettle]

Originally posted by Shas'o O'Kais:

First of all, they take a long time to recharge, almost as long as it takes an organic beaver to sleep through the night, so you aren't really saving any time/getting extra work done unless you increase the overall size of your workforce to accommodate for a third of them being inactive at all times.

This is incorrect. It takes 2.5 hours for a Coghead to recharge, and the charge lasts for 1.5 days. Also, the work speed bonus from Control Tower makes them much more productive than beavers while at a reasonable level of colony development.

[guyod]

I dont feel that way. my only challange is managing beaver and coghead population now