Automation!
Wodenifferous
Join Date: 2017-03-01 Member: 228458Members
Join Date: 2017-03-01 Member: 228458Members
Let's start off with some appropriate background music.
Personally, my favorite part of the survival-crafting genre is machines and systems. I like creating mechanisms to handle repetitive tasks more easily. I enjoy the conceptual challenge of climbing a learning curve.
So, I keep coming back to the idea that I'd love to see a Factory module available in the hab builder. At its most basic, the Factory would be a room in which the player could install the various production machines into aesthetically-pleasing niches (think of the Vehicle Modification Station in the Moon Pool). No automation, no complexity, just a neat and tidy place to put all your machines.
But the player can add complexity to it if they wish.
Build a Warehouse room onto your base to hold all your stuff. Build lockers into it and they take up neat-and-tidy spots in the walls. Convenient and aesthetically-pleasing storage. Now, build that Warehouse next to the Factory (maybe on top of it or below it, even?) and they interact. The Factory machines can access the items held in the Warehouse (perhaps this would require drones or conveyor belts or the like to be built as well), dramatically increasing the utility of both rooms.
Build costly extra devices into the Factory (and the Warehouse?) and it gains new abilities beyond crafting. A metallurgical production line made up of several machines results in doubling your ores. A power-hungry seawater refinery lets the Factory slowly and randomly produce resources. An upgrade to the fabricator AI allows for automatic crafting of sub-recipes like computer chips or lubricant.
Other base modules could be expanded upon to tie into this system. Harvester drones for growbeds or alien containments could grab flora and fauna for you automatically and put it into the Warehouse system. "AI upgrade" devices could allow you to specify the behavior of those drones, so that for instance they grab all the eggs of one species but grab the creatures of another species, but only if there are more than two in the containment. Drones (or conveyor belts or pneumatic tubes or whatever) could link your power plants to the Warehouse so that your bioreactor stays topped up with critters and your nuke plant doesn't run out of rods.
Is any of this necessary to make the game work as intended? No, of course not. But I'm suggesting it because I want there to be more stuff to DO in the game, and fiddling with complex base systems is a really engaging thing that I enjoy spending my time on in a game of this genre.
Personally, my favorite part of the survival-crafting genre is machines and systems. I like creating mechanisms to handle repetitive tasks more easily. I enjoy the conceptual challenge of climbing a learning curve.
So, I keep coming back to the idea that I'd love to see a Factory module available in the hab builder. At its most basic, the Factory would be a room in which the player could install the various production machines into aesthetically-pleasing niches (think of the Vehicle Modification Station in the Moon Pool). No automation, no complexity, just a neat and tidy place to put all your machines.
But the player can add complexity to it if they wish.
Build a Warehouse room onto your base to hold all your stuff. Build lockers into it and they take up neat-and-tidy spots in the walls. Convenient and aesthetically-pleasing storage. Now, build that Warehouse next to the Factory (maybe on top of it or below it, even?) and they interact. The Factory machines can access the items held in the Warehouse (perhaps this would require drones or conveyor belts or the like to be built as well), dramatically increasing the utility of both rooms.
Build costly extra devices into the Factory (and the Warehouse?) and it gains new abilities beyond crafting. A metallurgical production line made up of several machines results in doubling your ores. A power-hungry seawater refinery lets the Factory slowly and randomly produce resources. An upgrade to the fabricator AI allows for automatic crafting of sub-recipes like computer chips or lubricant.
Other base modules could be expanded upon to tie into this system. Harvester drones for growbeds or alien containments could grab flora and fauna for you automatically and put it into the Warehouse system. "AI upgrade" devices could allow you to specify the behavior of those drones, so that for instance they grab all the eggs of one species but grab the creatures of another species, but only if there are more than two in the containment. Drones (or conveyor belts or pneumatic tubes or whatever) could link your power plants to the Warehouse so that your bioreactor stays topped up with critters and your nuke plant doesn't run out of rods.
Is any of this necessary to make the game work as intended? No, of course not. But I'm suggesting it because I want there to be more stuff to DO in the game, and fiddling with complex base systems is a really engaging thing that I enjoy spending my time on in a game of this genre.
Comments
Not the harvester part - that takes away too much core gameplay - but the integrated-positioning storage and machines, the idea of a hopper-fed raw material system, the advanced manufacturing possibilities (even without adding new items to the game), the ability to hopper-load your powerplants...I'd like all of that very much.
I made a suggestion a while ago to implement specialised rooms like a storage room with those niches that each take a special locker module or something to make storage a bit easier.
I hope something like this will come someday.
Gonna have to agree there, I don't like the harvester part either
I could see the warehouse room as an upgrade to the fabricator. Create a fabrication console within the room with access to all of the resources stored therein and get the option to build multiple items in succession as long as you have the available resources. Need 10 plasteel ingots for a new Cyclops? Just type in the command to the fabrication console and step back!
How about a maintenance room with two repair/construction drone? Again, think end game. You have opted to stay on the planet so now survival includes upkeep of your base. Sure the base was fine for a short period but now the structure is slowly being corroded and seals need fixing as the seawater fights to fill the void created by your living space. You would be required to choose a drone, and a maintenance task but once the commands are entered the drone goes to work which you can watch via an on board camera or just go back to what you were doing. These would be very expensive to build and power but they would allow you to handle upkeep. You could even add a construction terminal that allowed you to design a holographic model of your base and then have the drone build it for you.
Especially the idea of set locations for appliances, and appliances fed by warehouse. i hate running back and forth to my lockers for the materials for each new creation (ingots, advanced wiring kits), and going out diving for certain special-use items (quartz, acid mushrooms, table coral) .... with a warehouse that would feed my fabricator and modification station, i would easily have no issues stocking up on those items, since using them when needed would be easy.
and the aesthetics.... you have no idea how much time i spend trying to get my high dpi mouse to move tiny little bits, to place my stuff in perfect locations... and how annoying it is that some "landmarks" are offset. (go to the cyclops, the room right behind the bridge, and try to set a plant pot in each corner. you cannot place at same relative position to the lines on the floor, because the side closer to the bridge/cockpit forces you further from the wall) .... a room with set, symmetrical, spaced, predetermined places for my appliances and lockers would be a godsend.
Also, drones to collect for you, would be quite beneficial... perhaps something similar to the scanner room, or an addon to the scanner room, wherein a drone could go out and slowly gather a specific item for you. specific fish/egg/ore/salvage/etc.