Construction Robots - how to use

[Tanafen]

Hello. So I've been playing Factorio for some time now, and I have a question about construction robots and wonder if im using them wrong.
I got the MK 2 Power armor, 4 fusion reactors and 8 personal roboports with 200 robots total. WHenever I build something, the robots will fly out beautifully, and then they just stop, they hover around me, and then they just fly out, one at a time, instead of 200 at a time. Is this normal? Am I doing it wrong. How can I get all 200 to continue construction constantly.
I find that if I right click them manually, I can force them to fly on, but this gets tedious very quickly.

[KatherineOfSky]

They are recharging while they are hovering around you. Add more fusion reactors to your suit (and batteries too) to recharge them more efficiently

[Warlord]

And if they are flying out of you one at a time, are you perhaps placing a blueprint with thousands of different entities?

[AlexMBrennan]

Add more fusion reactors

Could you provide a screenshot of a MK2 power armour with more than 4 fusion reactors OP is already using? Does the Banach–Tarski paradox apply to power armour frames?

Actual answer: You can't. Personal roboports are for short-term tasks and require a massive amount of power so you need batteries, and even then they will rapidly drain your batteries (you can't install enough fusion reactors unless you get modded OP gear) so you should leave larger tasks to grid-powered roboports.

I find that if I right click them manually, I can force them to fly on, but this gets tedious very quickly.

Picking up robots resets the charge, which gets around the above mentioned energy issues.

[KatherineOfSky]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Add more fusion reactors

Could you provide a screenshot of a MK2 power armour with more than 4 fusion reactors OP is already using? Does the Banach–Tarski paradox apply to power armour frames?

Always so snippy and rude Alex. Not sure why that is. I did miss the line where OP said he had 4 fusion reactors.

Nevertheless, the robots are still likely charging.

[wop52]

I could be wrong, but it might be worth trading a roboport out for a battery or 2. That way there is enough stored charge for the robots to work with

Question: when you say " and then they just fly out, one at a time," Do you mean that they hover around you and give up, so they fly out away from you? Probably because they are searching for a normal roboport to charge from because you don't have batteries in your armor.

Fusion ractor's do not store power. They generate power, like a supercharged solarpanel. Robots need to charge off of batteries.

[Jeffreyac]

Huh. My setup is two fusion reactors, a roboport Mk 2, a couple of mk 2 batteries, and the rest shields and legs. I carry 25 construction robots in my inventory for the roboport mk. 2.

When I deconstruct or set a blueprint, they all run out and it's a flurry of activity. Occasionally they'll have to come back and hover nearby to recharge, but then they're right back out. So not sure what I'm doing that you're not.

A few questions... are your blueprints in the green area, where your robots can get to them? (there's a little green square that shows around you when you're setting blueprints or deconstructing - it's the range of your robots. They can't go to anything outside...)

Are your blueprints huge? Mine are typically pretty small - a couple dozen items, not counting belts - so it's nothing huge.

...maybe you've got lazy robots? :)

[Warlord]

Originally posted by wop52:

I could be wrong, but it might be worth trading a roboport out for a battery or 2. That way there is enough stored charge for the robots to work with

Question: when you say " and then they just fly out, one at a time," Do you mean that they hover around you and give up, so they fly out away from you? Probably because they are searching for a normal roboport to charge from because you don't have batteries in your armor.

Fusion ractor's do not store power. They generate power, like a supercharged solarpanel. Robots need to charge off of batteries.

Not quite true. Roboports do not "need" batteries to run. They have their own internal power storage, and it is much bigger than any one battery. Additionally, they will charge their power storage from any source, which could be another battery, but most likely will be a generator like a fusion generator. I've actually been considering getting rid of my 2 mk2 batteries as they only seem to serve as a tiny buffer, and are drained instantly when using robots to place even something as small as a 50 item blueprint.

[Name Lips]

Your personal robots get confused if their work area overlaps with a regular roboport. They'll assume the blueprint is the responsibility of the robots in the regular roboport, and won't help them build it.

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by Name Lips:

Your personal robots get confused if their work area overlaps with a regular roboport. They'll assume the blueprint is the responsibility of the robots in the regular roboport, and won't help them build it.

Nope. Personal robos won't try to build only those construction orders that have already been assigned.

[Eternal]

200 robots requires 8 roboports, use only 100 things will be better

[Balloon Dog]

I use the mk2 with a couple of fusion reactors and a couple of batteries it work totally fine for me they rush out do the job and park them selves back in my inventory pretty darn quick. I wondered about them charing from other sources and i have never seen a robot that came from my inventory charge at a regular roboport or other source. They allways come back to me to charge even if that is very slowly after i ran away and they ran out of batteries chasing me. Also they never use materials outside of my inventory they will help build things when in range of a robo port too. I think when the blueprint is placed it assigns the robots a single job and will use however many robots there is jobs to do, when a robot completes a job it returns and if another unassigned job is avaible it books it.

[Yugatha]

Not to mention that each roboport only charges 4 bots at a time, so if heaps need to charge they need to wait in queue