Remove electronics components from bots

Following on from changes made in #180

Making bot brains feels tedious. It's almost the same as making circuits. It feels like you've done this before, why do you need to do it again?!

Instead of electronics components, change bots to use circuits directly. Also add solder and module cases.

Construction robot brains
Logistics robot brains
Mech brain
Player brains
Personal roboport robot controls
Vehicle roboport robot controls

Additional changes

Merge construction and logistics brains. Keep combat robot brains separate so they can be cheaper.
Merge construction and logistics robot tools.
Rebalance the recipes so bots are a similar cost to before

Current bot cost

Bob's

Current

New

Bob's Angel's

Current

New

Sea Block (mainly Circuit Processing)

Current

New

I strongly dislike this change. I don't see specialized electronics being similar to the regular kinds as a problem, quite the opposite. Regular boards are large-scale production chains, since you need a lot of them. But the other kinds are different - even one per second is generally far more than you need. This lets you design their production chain in a different way, far more lean and compact, if that's how you like to play. Or, with proper design consideration, you can build your regular board production chain with a bit of excess to siphon off for whatever else you're making. Either works.

Electronics are meant to be a bit of a pain. That's very much true to life. There's even an entire set of buildings for making them. Without having to put some effort in to set up these specialized chains, each with slightly different proportions, gaining access to extremely useful things like logistic bots and walking robots would just be too easy. Essentially, with this change you would just pop in a few ready-made electronics boards, just like everything else.

As for merging logistic and construction brains and tools, the two kinds of robots do fairly different things. Designing them so that they give the impression of being distinct is part of the fun. If the parts, particularly the tools, are too similar, then the solution is not to merge them, but to diverge them more where you can. The brains, probably not much that can be done there. But having to/being able to add up the ingredients of the two kinds to make both at a steady pace is at least a small twist on the formula.

I dislike how it was previously! It felt like you either had to rebuild your circuit production all over again, to make brains. Not satisfying to do the same build all over again - but just subtly different enough to make copy pasting not feel right. Or you had to tack you brain production on to your circuit production. Neither felt good!

The brains, probably not much that can be done there. Having two items, used for conceptually the same thing, made in the same way, from the same materials just feels like pointless clutter! It's not challenging to balance or provide any other interesting problem.

Regarding the tools, do you suggestions of how to make them distinct in an interesting way that makes sense for each tier? I don't think it should be the same recipe except with a slightly different metal (for example). I left the combat robot tools separate as they include weapons in their recipe. It feels like it wouldn't be difficult to tweak these to make them even more distinct. I couldn't come up with any good option for the construction and logistics tools. So I merged them.

I dislike how it was previously! It felt like you either had to rebuild your circuit production all over again, to make brains. Not satisfying to do the same build all over again - but just subtly different enough to make copy pasting not feel right. Or you had to tack you brain production on to your circuit production. Neither felt good!

I don't see why the latter would be a problem. The ratios of machines producing boards vs solder or transistors or whatever naturally do not match up as whole numbers. That makes siphoning a little off easy to do.

I know you don't like adding too many settings, but I feel like this situation, brains with components vs brains with circuit boards, definitely warrants one.

Having two items, used for conceptually the same thing, made in the same way, from the same materials just feels like pointless clutter! It's not challenging to balance or provide any other interesting problem.

I would disagree. If you're making both at the same time, it's slightly less automatic to run the numbers on two things than one, if you're calculating things out. Particularly because you actually do need a lot more of one kind than the other. To me, this kind of specialization is why I enjoy Bob's. I like that sense of purposefulness. And I like the way you have two kinds of brains for two lanes on a conveyor belt. That doesn't feel like too much clutter to me. It feels like just the right amount.

Regarding the tools, do you suggestions of how to make them distinct in an interesting way that makes sense for each tier? I don't think it should be the same recipe except with a slightly different metal (for example). I left the combat robot tools separate as they include weapons in their recipe. It feels like it wouldn't be difficult to tweak these to make them even more distinct. I couldn't come up with any good option for the construction and logistics tools. So I merged them.

It goes back to purposefulness again. The way I see it, in simple terms, a logistic robot's tool is used to quickly grab and internally store multiple items for storage-to-storage delivery. A construction robot's tool needs to be able to carry only a single item (or a stack of a couple tiles' worth of material) and place it on the ground. The former needs to be quick and precise, the latter needs to be strong, since the thing it's carrying is often going to be much heavier. (I know logistic bots can carry an entire stack of buildings, and crates can contain thousands of objects much larger than themselves, but... I'm thinking in terms of flavor here)

It's always made sense to me to have logistic bots and roboports etc. built together. The various roboport components also generally require a variety of materials, so having tools do the same isn't a significant problem. Rather, it makes the production line design about snaking the various materials through to all the different places they need to be, which I always find enjoyable.

Incidentally, in my own mod (I don't like bringing this up too often, but oh well) I distinguish the two types of tools by adding magnets to construction tools for added support, since I imagine them carrying large things underneath them instead of in internal storage. I really don't want to throw that out, but I guess if it would be alright for me to borrow the graphics for the tools and include them in my mod, that would be good enough. Or I could make my own.

But for baseline Bob's, I suppose one thing that could be done is switching magnets with electromagnets. In other words, coils of wire. Wire is already required to make roboport antennas, so it would be a sensible way to go.

I feel like we never got around to coming to a conclusion on this, so here's my specific proposal for robot tools to make them more distinct from each other, based on the idea of giving construction tools electromagnets for holding large objects.

Logistic tool 1: -1x Steel -1x Steel gear -1x Steel bearing

Construction tool 1: -1x Steel -2x Steel gear -6x Copper wire

Logistic tool 2: -1x Aluminium -1x Brass gear -1x Cobalt steel bearing

Construction tool 2: -1x Aluminium -2x Brass gear -6x Tinned copper wire

Logistic tool 3: -1x Titanium -1x Titanium gear -1x Ceramic bearing

Construction tool 3: -1x Titanium -2x Titanium gear -6x Insulated wire

Logistic tool 4: -1x Nitinol -1x Nitinol gear -1x Nitinol bearing

Construction tool 4: -1x Nitinol -2x Nitinol gear -6x Gilded wire

And on a related note, I would still like to implement a setting in bobelectronics for "Complex brain recipes" which if enabled would have them use electronic components as they do in the current version. With permission, of course.

modded-factorio / bobsmods