Stow / Retrieve

[ShadowIncarnate]

Is it intentional that bots can't retrieve from backpack (even if they have enough space in their hands), until their hands are completely empty?

[ShadowIncarnate]

I'm guessing it could be intentional? Since it could be faster to execute the code to only try to retrieve when hands are empty already, but personally it seems like a bug. Idk.

I think It should retrieve if the bot has space for it. Seems counter-intuitive for it to not work as described.

[Pesky]

Hands can hold only one kind of thing at a time. Suppose a robot has four spaces in its hands. If it holds a berry it cannot retrieve an apple from its backpack, because it cannot hold a berry and an apple at the same time.

[ShadowIncarnate]

Originally posted by PeskyTheTroll:

Hands can hold only one kind of thing at a time. Suppose a robot has four spaces in its hands. If it holds a berry it cannot retrieve an apple from its backpack, because it cannot hold a berry and an apple at the same time.

I appreciate your response, I should have clarified in my question, I'm quite aware that you can't mix and match different items in your hand, and I tested this using only one type of item.

In this case, I had a Mk3 Bot with 12 wool blankets in hand, 4 in the backpack. I wanted the bot to retrieve another wool blanket from their backpack after delivering one to a toy station, but when it gets to the retrieve command, it doesn't do anything unless their hands are completely empty.

[DsnowMan]

The player has the same behaviour, noticed it last night. So... Not a bug?

[Pesky]

I was wary about the use of a blanket, because a blanket is big and heavy. So I tested it with mushrooms, which are one of the smallest lightest item in the game. A bot has to have empty hands for 'Retrieve' to work. If the hands aren't empty, 'Retrieve' does nothing.

I don't know whether this is intentional on the part of the developers. But it does simplify programming.

[ShadowIncarnate]

Hello, thank you both for your replies.

Originally posted by DsnowMan:

The player has the same behaviour, noticed it last night. So... Not a bug?

I'd never noticed this on the player before, because I usually only use my player backpack to store tools (which I know you can only have one of in your hands at a time, regardless of size.) But now that you mention it, that would explain why I had difficulty retrieving more than one of a stacked item from a bot who had many in their hands. This results in a very tedious trade / place down process for bots with stacks of items. I don't *think* it used to work this way before. I seem to recall being able to grab stacks (one item at a time) from bots without issue. Though, I've just been picking up the game again recently after many months of a break, so maybe something has been changed.

Originally posted by PeskyTheTroll:

I was wary about the use of a blanket, because a blanket is big and heavy. So I tested it with mushrooms, which are one of the smallest lightest item in the game. A bot has to have empty hands for 'Retrieve' to work. If the hands aren't empty, 'Retrieve' does nothing.

I don't know whether this is intentional on the part of the developers. But it does simplify programming.

I appreciate you double checking with mushrooms, and I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who can replicate this issue. After my second post, I also tested with berries, and got the same result (For reference, wool blankets are a carry weight of 1, like mushrooms and berries.) In a sense, it does simplify programming, as you can just skip retrieving unless your hand are empty already. I suppose it's a feature? (If you look at it that way.)

Personal Conclusion:
----------------------
-Repeatable by 3 or more users
-Potential upside of skipping retrieve if hands are not empty (just don't include the "retrieve" in a "until hands empty" loop)
-Potential downside of not retrieving from backpack when the bot is otherwise not busy. Examples: storage is full, no bots/colonists/resources found, blueprint is awaiting resources from another bot... This forces the retrieve until much later, even if the bot is sitting around doing nothing, and potentially slows down the total processing time later.
-Unclear if intentional, but, confirmed repeatable

Overall Conclusion:
---------------------
... I guess, Developers? Official answer? Is it *supposed* to work this way?

[hungrybutterfly]

Originally posted by ShadowIncarnate:

Is it intentional that bots can't retrieve from backpack (even if they have enough space in their hands), until their hands are completely empty?

This is indeed a bug. However... after much debating and thinking I've decided not to fix it. For now at least. The reason is a number of people's existing scripts will stop working properly because they rely on this behaviour. Normally I would fix such a thing because it's just wrong but in this case there's not been people asking for this to work correctly so it's better to just leave it.

Sorry for the unsatisfying answer and thanks for the deep analysis of the problem :)

[ShadowIncarnate]

Originally posted by hungrybutterfly:

Originally posted by ShadowIncarnate:

Is it intentional that bots can't retrieve from backpack (even if they have enough space in their hands), until their hands are completely empty?

This is indeed a bug. However... after much debating and thinking I've decided not to fix it. For now at least. The reason is a number of people's existing scripts will stop working properly because they rely on this behaviour. Normally I would fix such a thing because it's just wrong but in this case there's not been people asking for this to work correctly so it's better to just leave it.

Sorry for the unsatisfying answer and thanks for the deep analysis of the problem :)

I appreciate the confirmation it's a bug. Just an idea, you could fix the bug and put an option in settings that reverts the functionality for anyone affected?

Anyways, thanks for looking into it!