Carts Vs Transfer Bots

[SixHod]

Edit: TLDR at the end of the post.

I switched a lot of my supply lines to using Carts thinking that the capacity they could hold would outpace just using bots to 'take from' then 'add to' over a distance. With this in mind I made three types of bots for the process; Bots that would drive the cart, bots that would load the cart, and bots that would unload the cart. As with most of the jobs I have bots do in this game it seems to be much more efficient to break work down into single tasks per bot like refactoring in code.

Over time though the carts have begun to bug me. For one, the fact that the carts can only be interacted with by my loaders and unloaders via the 'Find cart' function is incredibly slow. Even with the sensor upgrade my bots take significantly longer with the carts than the almost instant interaction with static containers. Not to mention that the bots feel like they're bugging out constantly with the 'Find cart' for both unloading and loading. I'll sometimes see them leaving the cart without filling their hands completely or vice versa for emptying their hands into the cart. This is due to having the 'fail' checkbox checked but that is only supposed to fail out of the loop if there is nothing to unload/load it should never occur while the cart is still there. Sometimes they won't even see the cart and I'll have stops in production because multiple bots will be standing next to the resources not noticing the empty cart to be loaded (or vice versa again for unloading).

I even set up a test using two teams of five bots each. One team was the classic 'take from' 'add to' transfer team. The other team was one a driver, two loaders, and two unloaders. They had to carry the same amount of the same items from one storage to another storage at the other end of my factory (about half the maps height away). The transfer team had level 2 Speed and level 2 Power, the cart team had level 2 Speed and level 2 Sensor (sensors have always been significantly faster at doing 'find' tasks than using power). The transfer bots beat them by almost double the speed.

I thought about doing the test again with double the bots to see if maybe the number of carts increased the speed of transfer at a faster-than-linear growth, but that seemed unnecessary because if I was going to use the same added number of cart drivers as transfer bots I realized the transfer team would have completely emptied and beat the carts before the first cart had even reached the end. Add onto all of that that the transfer bots are just so much easier to work with. No matter where you move your storage they will always work, they never need to rely on a search function and they will always empty and transfer contents completely. The carts can get stuck on being half-loaded and not filling up the other storage container unless you set up some complicated logic to let them move on.

Even with heavy items that take 4 slots the bots are still better off just taking those by hand because they don't get a speed penalty (at least not one that was significant enough for me to notice). Carts need to be faster, less buggy, and not use a search function if they want to be useful. I just can't find a way to justify all the time and effort it takes to set up the cart infrastructure when I can just tell more bots to take from one box and run to another.

The reason I'm posting this is because I actually want to know if anyone else has found a way to make them work. What conditions do you use them in? Have you found a use for them that's actually better than just using transfer bots? This feels like it's supposed to be a significant research and transportation upgrade in the game but it's just such a downgrade at the moment.

EDIT TLDR: Carts are significantly slower than just having the same amount of bots run from one box to another. I tested this. 'Find cart' is buggy. This feels like a useless research and technology. Is it?

[Wat]

Originally posted by Sixinthehood:

I'll sometimes see them leaving the cart without filling their hands completely or vice versa for emptying their hands into the cart. This is due to having the 'fail' checkbox checked but that is only supposed to fail out of the loop if there is nothing to unload/load it should never occur while the cart is still there. Sometimes they won't even see the cart and I'll have stops in production because multiple bots will be standing next to the resources not noticing the empty cart to be loaded (or vice versa again for unloading).

Command failures happen for a lot a reasons, the most common being multiple bots trying to interact with the same target at the same time. If you assign 2 loaders and 2 unloaders to the same cart, they will block each other actions.

Originally posted by Sixinthehood:

Have you found a use for them that's actually better than just using transfer bots?

Near late-game, some items like tier 7 food have a weight of 16. Mk3 bots with Super Power Upgrade have 12 hand slots. Carrying anything with a weight above the number of hand slots incur a speed penalty. So, a mk3 bot can carry a single tier 7 food with speed penalty.
A crude cart has a max load of 32. It can carry 2 tier 7 foods without any speed penalty.

[Geothermal1159]

So increasing an MK II carrying capacity from 8 to 20 isn't a good enough reason to use carts for you?
Also why are you using 3 bots for a 1 bot job?
Example script for wheelbarrow bot.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2232757354

[Geothermal1159]

Just to note since the bot will always drop the cart off in the exact spot you specify that means that you can reduce the cart search radius to 1X1.

Since the search radius is only for a single tile that means you can have 10 carts with different cart drivers all next to each other loading and unloading their respective carts without ever getting in each others way ever as long as you have them park their carts on different tiles and only search their specific tile for their cart.