Major Crafting System Update#1562

After playing Factorio and MC with Create Mod I can’t unsee Volcanoids’ crafting system as rather basic for the mobile factory base that is the Drillship
I’m not saying give players stationary bases or make the crafting system super duper overcomplicated only the absolute gigabrains of humanity can use, just an update

So, here’s my suggestions:

An obvious thing is adding varying times for each item, not just fast and slow for most stuff and upgrades respectively
Simpler items take short while more advanced ones take longer, something long enough that incentivizes players to stock up on the item but short enough to not be a chore or inconvenience

Next, nerf Scrap metals, these should be some extra materials for lower energy cost, not direct upgrade to raw ore refinement and ingot storage

Stations and hubs’ requests now go into a “global crafting queue”, which can be set to round-robbin’ mode, specific order or priority, if you want to be extra fancy you can assign hubs/stations to groups and set a different queue mode for each group

Now the Production modules
This is bit of a weird idea but now you set instructions for it to produce stuff in a graph akin to Blender’s Nodes
Obviously a bit of visual aid is required by showing what will be the outcome of each node in the system
You got all sorts of nodes, input, filter, cut, mold, compress etc.
You can either assign each module it’s own node system or assign one to multiple

Refinery modules get modular, literally
Don’t worry you don’t have to install 20k different modules as they are compacted as submodules into the main module and just switch between each other for differrent steps
Each resource type has different steps that require different submodules and requires different amount of time for each step
All of the submodules work in parralel too so you can have refinement of multiple materials on a single module, this encourages expansion as the submodules then have to switch out less
You can also either manually set the submodules type, assign a material to each submodule, so for example make one submodule refine only crystals, make another one refine all ores etc., or set them to automatic mode where they switch out based on what the next request is
Obviously with this some new refinery materials are required to make it worthwhile
As some visual flavour these submodules fold, then a cylinder with different submodule icons spins to the one that’s needed and it unfolds it

Upgrade the storage
Namely make Tier III profitable and add filtering
The filter can be set to either one or both of 2 types: Filter when displaying the storage for better readibility and Filter organize materials, so you no longer have to manually check through 20 storage modules just to free up a slot
If you want to get bit more advanced you can make the drawers of the visual model actuall interface, so 3 layers of filtering are possible

Research is technically crafting, so here’s an improvement:
Schematics are no longer “unlock all [TECH] craft”, instead they act like “folders” of tech that you unlock by research, for further readability they may also have groups of research inside them
And a new schematic cuz current system doesn’t make sense right now: Components Schematic, name describes it all
With this (almost) every item now has to be researched individually with each latter depending on a former, like the usuall tech trees in games
Each item also has “Research requirement”, as in you need to feed it different other components and/or intel to research them
You can authorize the module to use any storage in the Drillship or use only the specific ones you set as “Research Storage”
Researching new modules now requires you to bring the destroyed ones to the Drillship and research them, ~4 per module, as well as some other tech, this obviously requires the destroyed module have a chance of dropping instead of 100% the time
Intel is still gained by taking COG stuff and converting it, however now you have to decide between converting it to intel or keeping it for research
You can still set up a queue and the station rules still apply

With these changes you get a new type of display panel, you can set it to one of these modes: Current Production Node, Current Remaining Path of Production Tree, Current Ref. Submodule in Slot, All Ref. Submodules’ Status, Current Queue/s to Ref. Module/Submodules, Current Research, Current Research Queue, and assign them to a module

Obviously this ain’t perfect and there needs to be an ease-in for new players, but the crafting system needs an update, currently it is bit of disrespect for a machine like the Drillship and I want to suggest something more unique