(update: found them) lost multiple personal construction robots; ideas on how to find?

[N'fol]

I noticed that I somehow lost about 40 personal construction robots (I usually carry 200). Are there any ideas on how to find them or how they might have vanished? (I'm post-multiple-rocket-launches, so the resource cost of these lost bots is trivial. At this point, this is just trying to solve a mystery.)

update 2018 November 11: "I've found them. Repeat, I've found them." (see my post later in this thread for details)

Things I've thought about or tried:

• I'm playing biter-less; nothing could have attacked them.
  
• The kill statistics have no bot loss.
  
• My sole roboport network has the exact multiple-of-1000-construction bots I've had for hours.
  
• I've tried looking at a save state before the bot loss and some time after to see if it was a "local" problem. Unfortunately, that is when I was building out my train network and I was all over the map between those two saves.
  
• The only bots in the logistics network (as resources) are the ones in the bot-assemblers output into passive storage chests. Changing those chests to plain steel chests shows my construction bot count in the network is zero.
  
• My personal logistics network popup window shows only the count of bots on my person.
  
• I checked all trains' cars for any construction robots.
  
• I used the console to cheat an extremely high value for the bot speed.

  /c game.player.force.worker_robots_speed_modifier = 1000000

  (And I confirmed that it worked by building something nearby; the bots I didn't lose effectively teleported to the build location and back to myself to charge for a while.) (What I don't know is how the bot speed works when their battery is drained. Is the speed a fixed low amount, or a small multiplier of the above value?)
  
• I tried the Visible Bots mod[mods.factorio.com] to make bots visible on the map. The mod worked (I saw my logistics robots), but I didn't see anything heading towards my position.
  
• Finally, I posted this list. (Hopefully this will remind me about a stupidly-obvious thing to check, and then I'll find them. )

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by N'fol:

(What I don't know is how the bot speed works when their battery is drained. Is the speed a fixed low amount, or a small multiplier of the above value?)

The data file (Factorio\data\base\prototypes\entity\entities.lua, line 6457) say

speed_multiplier_when_out_of_energy = 0.2

so I assume it is a multiplier (barring a small chance of changing-mechanics-without-changing-names).

Is there a chance you accidentaly stuck them in a box somewhere?

[N'fol]

So it looks like low-battery is just a the multiplier. So my crazy-high-speed should make that not matter. (And, after thinking about it more, since the person logistics network dialog has members of only the bots on my person, it probably means that the bots are vanished completely or in a container somewhere.)

I don't have many steel-only chests. I tried using the upgrade planner[mods.factorio.com] mod to replace steel chests with passive provider chests, but (1) it was insane to attempt to select the entire base and surrounding areas, and (2) I needed the replacements in my local inventory. I'm now thinking my next step might be to attempt to mod the mod to do a global search-and-replace for free. (But that is a project for another day.)
update: If cheat mode is on (

/c game.player.cheat_mode=true

), that mod automatically gives free replacements. I tried a large selection from each quadrant from my position to replace steel chests with passive providers, and no bots.

[Killcreek2]

~ Is it possible you had donated those 40 conbots to a friend or other visitor to your world?

~ Or launched them into Spess? (ikr? But you seem to have though of pretty much everything else already.)

~ If you had ever accidentally removed your armour & caused a item explosion, those missing conbots might be lurking at the end of belts somewhere in your production lines.

~ IDK if you use many mods, but there are some that add conbots as recipe ingredients.


... aaand, I'm out of ideas.

Oh, does the "visible bots" mod show them even through the Fog of War, or only if they are inside live radar sight range? (Though your silly-speed command ought have ruled that possibilty out already.)

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

My guess:
If bots are out doing a job, limping back in low battery state, and you remove your personal roboport, they fall to the ground and turn into items.

I don't know if there's a super easy way to find all items on the ground in a whole map or not.

I know a more complicated way to find all the items on the ground for sure though:

Load the creative mode mod.
Place a few super radars around the map to reveal everything.
Use the deconstruction planner with the filter set to whitelist "Item on Ground".
Drag it over the whole map.

[Killcreek2]

Originally posted by Colonel Sanders Lite:

My guess:
If bots are out doing a job, limping back in low battery state, and you remove your personal roboport, they fall to the ground and turn into items.

In vanilla they do not fall to the ground as items, but fly to nearest available roboport instead of the player. If no other (powered) roboports exist, they just hover in place until one does exist (or the player knocks them out of the sky with a pickaxe handle).

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

No, they do. I'm not sure what the specific conditions are, but I have had it happen.

[The Undead Watcher]

@Op did this happen once or multiple times. Do you have a replay of this world, maby watch that.

Otherwise as you said that the Bot Cost would be trivial, just build new ones. I would imagine that this "bug" would be a nightmare to fix, unless we find out when they vanished and what happened

[AlexMBrennan]

Otherwise as you said that the Bot Cost would be trivial, just build new ones.

That's not gonna work - "lost" robots count as deployed, so you can't launch any additional robots until they get back (or you foce them to go to a roboport if that's possible - I never tried)

[The Undead Watcher]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Otherwise as you said that the Bot Cost would be trivial, just build new ones.

That's not gonna work - "lost" robots count as deployed, so you can't launch any additional robots until they get back (or you foce them to go to a roboport if that's possible - I never tried)

So how does he know that he is missing those 40?

[pat]

He outfitted them with matching sweaters.

[AlexMBrennan]

So how does he know that he is missing those 40?

If you usually carry 200 robots, and are currently carrying 160 then basic maths should tell you that 40 robots are currently active. If you can't see those 40 bots then one might classify them as them "missing".

[PunCrathod]

The robots could have become items on the ground if the logistic network they were part of is lost(unequipping the personal roboports for example) and they are not in range of another one. Also I don't think they are deployd as they would have run out of energy long ago and setting the speed to 1mil would have instantly brought them back.

[Hammer Of Evil]

i usually have three sets of exoskeleton legs for speed around my factory sections, and sometimes deploy my personal bots on a blueprint and then neglect to wait for them to return to me, as my movespeed on concrete+mobility modules is very fast.

so then when riding a transport train 100's of screens away from where i deployed them, it sometimes takes hours for them to slowly float back to me, especially if i'm going back and forth, and don't notice they are missing or tasked out.

[N'fol]

So many nice ideas! I haven't found the lost bots, but I haven't tried everything yet.

Originally posted by Killcreek2:

Is it possible you had donated those 40 conbots to a friend or other visitor to your world?

No; this has only been single player.

Originally posted by Killcreek2:

Or launched them into Spess?

No; rocket silo products finished count equals the satellite launch count.

Originally posted by Killcreek2:

If you had ever accidentally removed your armour & caused a item explosion, those missing conbots might be lurking at the end of belts somewhere in your production lines.

Originally posted by Colonel Sanders Lite:

If bots are out doing a job, limping back in low battery state, and you remove your personal roboport, they fall to the ground and turn into items.

When I was constructing a ton, I did temporarily switch out some personal roboports a few times for an extra portable nuclear. So bots on the belts or on the ground is a definite possibility. This will take some time to investigate.

Originally posted by Colonel Sanders Lite:

Load the creative mode mod. Place a few super radars around the map to reveal everything. Use the deconstruction planner with the filter set to whitelist "Item on Ground".

I haven't used Creative Mode (Fix for 0.16)[mods.factorio.com] before. That makes it a lot easier to completely cover the everything and surrounding areas with radar coverage. The deconstruction planner didn't find anything else, though. (That mod has some cool features; that will make it easier and faster to do future experiments.)

Originally posted by Killcreek2:

mods, but there are some that add conbots as recipe ingredients.

Not many mods. And I used What is it really used for?[mods.factorio.com] to confirm that no recipe uses them.

Originally posted by Killcreek2:

does the "visible bots" mod show them even through the Fog of War, or only if they are inside live radar sight range?

I'm pretty sure that was line-of-sight (or live radar) only. But since my total count is off (by looking at the logistics members, it means that there aren't any more bots that I'm not carrying.

Originally posted by The Undead Watcher:

did this happen once or multiple times. Do you have a replay of this world, maby watch that.

Just once. One save has all 200, and one about an hour later has 161. (And it was many hours after that save I noticed them missing, so the autosaves don't go back far enough. And no replay; maybe that would be a good idea for the future.)

Originally posted by The Undead Watcher:

the Bot Cost would be trivial, just build new ones.

When you lose a pen, do you start a state-wide search for it, or heartlessly buy a new one? (There are tens of lost, scared bots out there, just waiting to be found. )

Originally posted by The Undead Watcher:

I would imagine that this "bug" would be a nightmare to fix

I really doubt it is a bug; it is much more likely I did something dumb at some point. I'm just wondering what that "something" was.


Side note: I can confirm that I definitely don't have the missing bots assigned to me. Bringing up the logistics networks screen (L by default?) and selecting network #1 shows the "personal" network (i.e. what I'm carrying). Going to the "Members" tab shows 1 Player and 161 of Construction robot.


Thank you all for the extra ideas. I probably won't be able to investigate this more for a while, but I'll post a response if I find anything or try something else (even if it doesn't work).

[N'fol]

I found them! The construction bots were hiding on half a side of belts, stopping gold science from reaching my last few research labs. (Those bots kind of blend in with gold science, so even when I knew roughly where they were, I still didn't see them right away.)

While perusing the recent mods list, I found ItemFinder by Reika[mods.factorio.com] . After installing it (then tweaking it a little so it would work), the command /findItem (the second "i" must be a capital "I") followed by the name to find, construction-robot) allowed me to find them.

The mod dumps the type and location of all the items, and briefly has arrows pointing to them. Fortunately, the text dump in the chat area shows the items on the ground very last (I placed a bot there for testing), and items on the belt second-last (which is where my missing bots were hiding). Using the in-game F5 debugging option shows the cursor coordinates in the upper-left corner, which let me find right area.