I'll be honest, I'm not sure about this,
Bench . I'll be the voice of doubt, the dude with the other perspective.
Mining and processing the mined goods is already a tedious business, especially with the bigger sector sizes each server's taking (to make space spacious and avoid multi-sector structures)
I definitely think this system should ONLY be implemented strictly ALONG with the cargo transfer ability between entities. If I run around a system for 3 hours to find and scoop up some mineable rocks, the LAST damn thing I want to do is spend another 1 hour going back and forth between my ship and the processing station's storage with the limited stack sizes.
It's weird to see how the modding community of such a small scale game as Minecraft went to simplify and automate mining and storage (almost every single major mod has some sort of automated mining and improved, compact storage) while Starmade, being on an almost incomparably larger scale, is going the opposite route.
This concept, if implemented, will make the steep learning curve even steeper. A factory setup will be exponentially more complicated (and bigger) with cargo storages having to be added to every single damn factory block (and ESPECIALLY to the capsule refinery every other factory block pulls the resources from) in order to make it possible to produce the quantities of hulls, thrusters, power blocks and other such massively needed blocks to build a proper ship.
I am aware of the direction you guys have been trying to limit ship and station sizes in multiple ways: the softcap on power reactors, the diminishing returns on thrusters, the damage modifier on system HP, the scarcity of blue asteroids desperately needed for shield blocks, the "buy blueprints with blocks" thing...