Fabricator accessing lockers

ghostmachine · December 2016

It's kind of a pain to run from storage locker to storage locker to pick up different materials and juggling your inventory space. It would be very helpful for there to be a function of fabricators being able to access all of the storage in an area vs just your inventory. I'm not sure if that mechanic exists later on or I'm just not far enough into the game but I feel like it is desperately needed when crafting complex objects

stuckthunder · December 2016

I thought about that to

smellslikebleach · December 2016

I don't get you Problem. If you organize you wall lockers with the right names its fun and part of the game to search and assemble things for crafting.

ghostmachine · December 2016

I mean you're right, its just a hassle to walk back and forth across the room several times

smellslikebleach · January 2017

I found it is fun and part of the game...so players are different

Tukaro · March 2017

I also find it annoying having to run back and forth between lockers if I'm looking to craft something. I envision alleviating this in two stages:

A fabricator that is part of a building will know the contents of all connected storage (such as lockers, or docked vehicles, but not duffel bags or floating chests) and highlight the option to indicate such (e.g. a blue background means you can craft it, perhaps yellow for "you have the materials but not on you")
A new device, or perhaps just a general base upgrade, adds a robot arm on a set of rails that will retrieve items from lockers to fabricate whatever you ordered.

With the robot arm the fabricator could also be set up to "queue" constructions (within limits), so you can take care of other chores (putting away unneeded materials, for instance) while they are crafted.

EvilSmoo · March 2017

Other things to consider:

New models required.
Programming.
Search-time for going through lockers.

Searching through lockers in a room or two shouldn't be too bad. There's a finite number of lockers you can shove in a room, and it will be much less for most people, because most people try and make it look mostly neat.

Programming and modeling as well. Teleporting things around is easier than hooking robot arm animations to everything, especially if things are coming out of random locations. But it all still requires work.

My favorite option is a resource dump. Dump all the copies of blocks of resource into a holding tank in the center of the MFR-pillar. Have fabricators access it. The MFR only needs to store a single array of numbers to track the resources inside. Teleport them around from the storage unit to any nearby fabricators. No lockers, just a storage unit. Even better, they could be one per base, and tie to a lesser unit on a Cyclops!
A central-pillar MFR unit. If a fabricator is used in a room with one, the game simply checks the lockers for items. The more lockers, the more checks, so lag is more likely in this scenario. Then it shows blue beams from the lockers, to the central pillar, to the fabricator, and you get your crafted item. Maybe not a good idea for an online game but that's not a problem. Also, only check the MFR, to put in that limit on checks, in case someone builds a giant map-spanning base.

Both of these require modeling, but it could be a non-animated job, which should help. They're probably going to do neither, but it's a nice thought.

Casual_Player · March 2017

So, it would be something like the Workshop on Fallout 4? All crafting equipment would access an unified resource repository?

Dracobomba · March 2017

I definitely think that constantly needing to switch between storage and fabrication is annoying. Inventory is a core mechanic of the game, though, so I wouldn't know how to fix it...and connecting nearby storage to the fabricator seems a bit too powerful.

EvilSmoo · March 2017

Casual_Player wrote: »

So, it would be something like the Workshop on Fallout 4? All crafting equipment would access an unified resource repository?

It's a good way to do it. Each settlement has that single array, and crafting can just look at the one container. A bad way would be if each craft action had to query a variable number of containers. A worse way would be if each craft action had to scour the ground for resources.

Not sure how FO4 ties together settlement inventories, but it's better than fast-traveling all over just because you need a couple extra chunks of resource for a generator and radio beacon, to get the first guy who you instantly make a provisioner.

Imagine if FO4 didn't do that, though. Players would just stop bothering, they would probably just grab everything and just move 90% of available junk to a single settlement. Leave the rest to rot. Set Preston to non-essential and kill him so he stops pestering you, go with another faction, and call it a day.

Brent7s · March 2017

Why not have a central room Fab station with storage medium kinda like a bioreactor but you just add the mats and they get stored up to a max point like 200 boxes of mats so you still have lockers to hold things outside you just have a big power hungry fab/store that could also have only certain blueprints only it can make due to the more advanced nature of the fab station.

BlackMagicianJD · March 2017

A fabrication Room would be ideal! Dump all resources into a "hopper" and then some kind of laser 3D printer type machine just starts using up the available resources previously placed into the hopper.

Add to that maybe somekind of piping system like in Space Engineers and you could storage silos piping resources to fabricators all across the base!

Fabricator accessing lockers

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