Idea : Production controller

[sgallaty]

The production controller is a block which has two functions - it provides ghost inventory as a proxy cargo which passes on demand for items to factories and allows players to create specific quantities of items.

It's intended to be placed between cargo storage and blocks which draw items from storage. It would interact with the cargo pull function on factories and shops to queue items on demand to factories.

FUNCTIONALITY

• When slaved to shops, can set production on idle factories whose output returns to those shops
• When slaved to items which require production input, will trigger on-demand production of items.
• Player can ask for arbitrary items to be produced, in a queue.
• Any manual activity of a factory will cause the production controller to avoid using the factory for a time.

USES

• Maintain a minimum stock level of items. This is accomplished by slaving the controller to a store. The controller will queue items in associated factories until demand is satisfied.
• Drives on-demand production. If the production controller is slaved to a factory, requests for items will be either drawn from inventory if available or will be queued for production, so long as the queuing factory deposits into accessible inventory.
• Player can request the creation of a specific number of a given item, and it will oversee the creation of that many items (it will try to run item productions in factories that will not overproduce)

 

[GaeasSon]

I LIKE this idea... I had it myself and would have posted it if I hadn't seen your post, so let me add on.

• You wouldn't even need a new block Use a BobbyAI which would take on different functionality when placed on a station.
  
• The only inventory inventory you'd need to maintain would be the 24 elemental capsules + CC and AMM. Heck, even those could be refined on the fly from raw elements.

So... let me play devils'advocate.
The very things that make this awesome are also the things that are a problem. For some folk, running logistical supply chains through all the iterations, ensuring inventory, and selling surplus IS the game.
This would eliminate scarcity for everything but ore. If you added the option for a recycler as suggested elsewhere, you'd kill much of the demand for ore as well. Gather enough stuff and you might as well be playing in creative mode.

So... there'd have to be some sort of balancing cost for the convenience... maybe it only works on un-enhanced factories. Maybe you can only have one per station. Not sure.