Logistics messed up my factory

[-RickZ-]

Not exactly sure what I did wrong (and I know I did something wrong), but when I made the big switch over to logistics based factory, I ran out of EVERYTHING. Most of my assemblers are idle, and those that work cannot get enough resources. I'm sourcing copper and iron ores from 3-4 mines simultaneously, and have dozens of smelters going at once. Everything is equipped with a Production Module 1. I've laid out roboports to create various weaved pathways throughout the factory. 600/700 bots are at work, so I stopped production. My power is green on all machines from 2 nuclear reactors, yet I find my stores of the most basic necessities constantly running short (copper wires, steel plates etc). I've set my blue chests to only request 10-20 of every item, yet I just cannot make them fast enough. Do I just need to connect even more smelters and mines from miles away?

[Fel]

There can be many things causing this so your first steps should be looking at the production charts to identify where it starts breaking down as well as hunting down what the robots are actually doing.

Logistics robots are great for short distance but there are tasks they are not great at.
If the distance is so great that they need to recharge at least once they fall in efficiency pretty quickly.
They also can only carry a few items per trip, meaning that you usually need quite a few if you want to get rid of belts for everything.
Roboports can only recharge 4 at the same time and they always go to the closest one (in he same network) so it can easily become a bottleneck around busy areas.

[Owl]

are you using purple chests?

[-RickZ-]

Originally posted by Fel:

There can be many things causing this so your first steps should be looking at the production charts to identify where it starts breaking down as well as hunting down what the robots are actually doing.

Logistics robots are great for short distance but there are tasks they are not great at.
If the distance is so great that they need to recharge at least once they fall in efficiency pretty quickly.
They also can only carry a few items per trip, meaning that you usually need quite a few if you want to get rid of belts for everything.
Roboports can only recharge 4 at the same time and they always go to the closest one (in he same network) so it can easily become a bottleneck around busy areas.

Wasn't even aware of the production charts, will get them a look!

[-RickZ-]

Originally posted by Owl:

are you using purple chests?

Not at all. My red chests get scooped clean almost instantly.

[THE kilroy]

Originally posted by -RickZ-:

I've laid out roboports to create various weaved pathways throughout the factory.

Im thinking (without a screenshot) you have a large network. It CAN work , but it sounds like your bots are running out of charge and taking forever to recharge.

Robots will go straight paths, so for example they will fly over an ocean, and run out of charge and then stop and head(very slowly) towards nearest roboport. If you dont put plenty of recharge points along the most traveled paths it will impead speed alot. Sometimes without this, all 600 bots have to share 1 roboport.

[knighttemplar1960]

Over a distance of about 35 tiles (depending on your level of robot tech) logistic robots can transport 200 items per second. That's a steep upgrade from blue belts that carry 45 items per second. With that in mind a single roboport is only capable of serving the power needs of about 50 robots so you may need to add more roboports. A tip is to add the roboports perpendicular to the travel path the robots will take.

If you add the roboports in the direction that the robots travel they will all be waiting at the port where their battery charge depletes even if there are ports directly adjacent in the direction of travel.

So either you don't have enough roboports, the roboports you do have are not positioned optimally, or the least likely, the robots have moved all the goods so fast that your input is too low.

[Purpleganja]

From what you said:
- lack of basic supplies
- red chests scooped fast
- not all bots at work

I would bet on not enough mining and or smelting or a huge charging bot lineup nearby.

[fractalgem]

I'm guessing the other part of what's happening is that some of your high-tier products are being dumped into unrestricted chests, e.g. speed module 3's are being made endlessly thus eating up ALL the circuits and processors, which means there's none available to make, say, electric furnaces.

[Boothy]

Originally posted by -RickZ-:

Originally posted by Owl:

are you using purple chests?

Not at all. My red chests get scooped clean almost instantly.

To me that would indicate you can't fulfil request orders, as you're running out of stock. I'd typically expect some items to be in the red chests at all times, but..

But that also depends on how many chests you have providing the same item type, as bots will take from the closest first, so the close ones might be empty, whereas ones farther away may have more stock.

If you hover the mouse over the requestor chests, you can see whats's requested and what's on route, if what's on route is < what is requested, you don't have enough items being produced.

If the items on route match what's requested, but the requestor chest is still most empty, then you need to request more items (and increase production if needed to match).

A note on distance, other people have mentioned the drop in throughput due to the need to charge, so keeping distances short for bots is optimal.

This can be done by having separated smaller robo networks, rather than one large one spanning the entire base. You can then 'join' the separate networks by having a one tile wide logistics gap between the networks, with a requestor chest in one network, a passive provider in the adjacent network, a stack insterter to move items between. This moves items from one network to the next one.

This basically acts like a daisy chain, passing items from one network to the next, with chests acting as a buffer to keep things flowing, and making sure all bots can do their job without needing to stop to recharge.

One other note about distance, if you still need to have bots going a long way, and want decent throughput, is quite often you might need to have quite a large request number. For example if you request 50 items, and the first few bots pick 50 up and start heading off, no more bots will pick anything else up, and so the next bots to collect may not even set off till the first ones deliver the items and they start getting used up faster than the next batch of bots can deliver the next set of items. Ideally if the items are being constantly used, you should have a constant stream of bots picking up, flying and dropping off.

[brian_va]

" I've set my blue chests to only request 10-20"

I've found that for the assemblers making a base component, gears for example, you'll need to set a fairly high number to keep a good supply of the components needed, plates in this example. Of course each scenario is different, but maybe trying setting a couple to requesting 300-500 and see if things get better. Obviously you'll want to do it on machines using alot of base components, plates for gears or copper for wire, and not for something making something you'll only need a slow trickle of.

Edit: you might need to make more bots. If a roboports shows 0 or close to it as available, you could use a few more.

[astrosha]

Copy/Paste a machine onto a Requestor Chest will set it to request enough materials for about 1 minute's production. I think its a minute, might be less.

IMO a few logistics bots and construction bots are good for your main factory, but they really become in use when you start to make outpost factories. Start to outpost production of, say, Green Circuits, or Iron Plate, and bot-driven large single-purpose moduled/beaconed factories become very productive.

[KatherineOfSky]

One of the important things to note as a difference between bot-based and belt-based factories is that you can't control the priorities of bots in an easy-to manage way. Therefore, with a main bus, I always recommend belts because you can set belt priorities, split off as much (or little) as you want.

IMO, bots are best for:
1. deliveries of "inconvenient" items: such as radars for a satellite, etc.
2. in TINY, discrete areas of single products, think loading a train with copper plates, or filling a moduled assembly of green circuits.

Bots need a LOT of power and a lot of recharging stations. They can't travel far without an energy top up. Roboports only charge 4 at a time.

[KatherineOfSky]

Originally posted by astrosha:

Copy/Paste a machine onto a Requestor Chest will set it to request enough materials for about 1 minute's production. I think its a minute, might be less.
.

It's 30 seconds :-)

[-RickZ-]

seems like I may have jumped the gun on transitioning completely to logistic! Now that I see how it works I may have preferred a 50/50 logistics/old school setup. adding tons of new ore and smelters helped, but I have to segment products so I can manually insert them where necessary for now. Thanks for you answers! Lots to learn.