Suit crafitable Trivial Factory insteadof Basic Factory

[nightwalker_007]

This basically gimps the suit-craftable factory, while also enabling the ability in the future for a true survival game mode where the player is abandoned in space or on a planet with no gear at all. Basically, the suit-craftable factory would be a "survival" type factory--producing just enough to get you to the next production tier and make a very basic ship.

The "Trivial Factory" would only be able to craft power, ship cores, thrusters, and basic factories. Unlike other factories, it doesn't use power but instead uses crystal and metal to power it's self and produces scrap crystal and metal as a byproduct. This factory would not be able to link to factory enhancers and would also operate about 10x slower than the other factory types. Basic, Standard, and Advanced factories would keep their current crafting recipes however.

Also, the suit crafting slot for factories should limit to amount of materials that can be dumped into those slots-- just enough to make one factory unit at a time.

This makes the suit-craftable factory only useful very early in the game, and also removes the need of a power beam gun when playing in a (hopefully future) survival-type game mode (eg, abandoned on an asteroid or on a planet with no gear at all).

 

[Valck]

How about instead basic factories either require no power, or generate just enough to sustain themselves. It wouldn't make much of a difference on the larger scale, as you'd still need just about the same amount of power generation/storage once you add factory enhancers.
However it would ensure you are much less likely to become stranded in the event of being marooned on a planet without any tools beside your suit and your bare hands (I wonder whether it will ever become a possibility to be stranded without even a suit... and what then?)

Ups: No additional block with very limited uses is needed.
Downs: A single-block factory doesn't require as much dedication as it does now. Multi-block factories may get a tiny buff of one less power block required.

 

[nightwalker_007]

The plus side is that it would be trivial to implement for the game devs. Just another factory with a different crafting recipes, except it doesn't use power and can't be linked to factory enhancers. This is mainly a tweak for early game and makes a true survival server possible (spawn with no gear and no cash), and removes the threat of being stranded, unless you happen to wake up on a stripped planet.

 

[Valck]

The plus side is that it would be trivial to implement for the game devs.

I doubt simply removing power consumption from any block would be much more complicated than setting some internal check to false or a variable to zero.
Even exposing the factory power consumption values to blockBehaviourConfig or some other appropriate config file doesn't necessarily have to be much more involved.

 

[cyberus111]

Another option might be to expand the suit build function to include reactors, capacitors, ship cores and thrusters ... at the aforementioned reduced production rate.

Might be easier than a new block.

 

[nightwalker_007]

Another option might be to expand the suit build function to include reactors, capacitors, ship cores and thrusters ... at the aforementioned reduced production rate.

Might be easier than a new block.

Not really, it would require UI changes. All the code is in place for factories and recipies, so most of it would be copy-paste with a few tweaks. It's easy to do in code... The only thing that would be time consuming would be creating the new block graphics, and that's done by the artists, not the coders-- but artists have plenty of free time, right? :p

Another neat side effect of having this self-powered factory block is that we can totally eliminate the power beam. It would no longer be required--which is good, because that blasted thing can be lost, takes up a valuable inventory slot, and it's only really useful very early game anyway (or if you find yourself stranded in space with no power blocks, in which case you probably don't have that power beam anyway-- so you're screwed).

 

[Lecic]

This sounds like a pointless annoyance. Just integrate the power supply (and healing) gun into the suit.

 

[cyberus111]

This sounds like a pointless annoyance. Just integrate the power supply (and healing) gun into the suit.

That works for me

 

[nightwalker_007]

This sounds like a pointless annoyance. Just integrate the power supply (and healing) gun into the suit.

I have suggested that before, but that thread never got any attention. So here's another alternative that requires minimal effort on the part of the developers to implement.