I'm questioning whether belts should still be less power-hungry than logistic bots (and still more power-hungry than trains).
According to the wiki (https://wiki.factorio.com/Tutorial:Transport_use_cases) a bot moves at 4.2 tiles/sec with 4 objects. Therefore, 1 bot has a throughput of 16.8 objects per second.
A basic belt has a throughput of 15 objects per secpmd and express 45 per second. Therefore we can say one bot is equivalent to approximately one basic belt, two bots to one fast belt, and three bots to one express belt.
At full usage, a bot consumes 5 kJ/m. That's 25 kw.
Currently, this mod makes belts cost 5, 10, and I suspect 15 (haven't unlocked express in my game).
However, then we have to multiply that cost by the length of the belt. So taking the fast (middle tier) belt for example, which is equivalent in throughput to two bots (50kw), we can have 5*10kw belts before we cost more than the bots. Only 5 tiles of belt!
In the vanilla game, each transport method had its pros and cons. Trains are fast, powerful, but complicated and bad for small spaces. Bots are best for small spaces and extremely flexible, but somewhat costly. Belts are messy but dirt cheap.
Now, this mod is a great concept and necessary in my opinion, but it does through a wrench in the works balance-wise. I'm noticing that there's now little incentive to use belts at all and basically it's best to just use bots for nearly everything except for long-distance transport.
My suggestion actually might be to keep belts the cost they are in the mod, but to greatly increase the energy cost of bots. Maybe even 20-50 times as expensive? That would make bots truly a luxury, as they should be.
Anyone else have thoughts?
