Brainstorm This Recycler/Block Digester

[TheKingOfSpace]

Takes blocks, and has a chance to give a small, random, fraction of the capsules that are used to craft it back.

Useful to turn all the junk you find floating around into something you need.

 

[Ithirahad]

A Block Digester sounds like a Species 8472 thing that eats blocks and scraps out metal all over the floor for reprocessing... Let's just go with Recycler. (Yes, I do want this, though, even if it just converts all the stuff into scrap.)

 

[Valck]

Takes blocks, and has a chance to give a small, random, fraction of the capsules that are used to craft it back.

Useful to turn all the junk you find floating around into something you need.

I think for some blocks, there should be a simple conversion without (or with only minimal) losses; like ores/crystals<m:n>ingots, or ice<1:1>water; that would make them viable options for more efficient storage, or just cosmetics in the case of water.
For the more complex, manufactured blocks I agree they should incur loss of materials if broken up.
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A Block Digester sounds like a Species 8472 thing that eats blocks and scraps out metal all over the floor for reprocessing... Let's just go with Recycler. (Yes, I do want this, though, even if it just converts all the stuff into scrap.)

Yeah, Digester... nope : )
Also, the refinery could be modified for this purpose.

 

[nightwalker_007]

Honestly, I though this is what the micro assembler should do when I first started playing... but it would be better to have a dedicated block that performs this function.

 

[ltmauve]

Yes, something like this. I tried modding the game, but I couldn't add additional factories.

The idea I came up with is this - have scrap for each of the resource types - not just mesh and circuits. So weapon modules give 50 <type> ore scrap and 50 crystal circuit scrap (or whatever the numbers for making them are)
Then to recycle anything else, there's something called trace scrap - each junk block gives 1 trace scrap. Then 500 trace scrap turn into one of each capsule.

 

[DeltaEpsilon7787]

Bump for this idea. It is incredibly needed feature taking in mind pirates drop random loot which is often useless but takes a lot of your time to clear your inventory from.

 

[cyberus111]

I *really* like the concept of adding this ability to the micro-assembler, its use is so limited now I seriously don't even have one beyond the first days when converting scrap has a purpose.

But to make life easy on the devs a simply returning the recipe minus a % loss would work IMO.

 

[decurr]

There is a plexrecycler block in-game, I picked up a bunch of them in a loot cloud. As I recall it was deactivated though.

 

[Sgtwisky]

Have been supporting the idea of "recycling" or "reclaiming" or whatever people decide to call it for a while now. Even had my own thread that touched on it I think... Honestly can't remember.

But YES I want this kind of thing in game. What else am I to do with all that <Insert hull color you don't use here>. It just sits around in my storage. Never used, never looked at. Now if I could scrap it and get some useful stuff out of it...

 

[DeltaEpsilon7787]

So here's the math I propose here.

There are 5 factories in the game: capsule refinery, micro assembler, basic factory, standard factory and advanced factory.

There should be 3 kinds of recyclers as making unified block will lead to certain problems which are really hard to deal with.
Grinder as counterpart for capsule refinery
Micro disassembler as counterpart for micro assembler
Deconstructor as counterpart for factories

Capsule refinery and micro assembler are the most basic form of transformation. Ore -> Capsule | Alloyed Metal Mesh/Crystal Composite and Scrap -> Basic. Each respective recycler should reverse that process with 100% efficiency. Yes. If you ever need to reverse capsules into crystals - just do it without any losses. There is no meaning in making losses here.

Next we are going for factories.
First I need to set this: anything that is crafted [in factories] using only one reagent should be fully reversible with 100% efficiency and it doesn't matter where it was done, be it basic factory or advanced factory. Everything else is not. Capsule refinery is an exception despite it producing two products.

The reason for 100% efficiency for 1 reagent recipes is because most (if not of all) of such recipes are logically simple: alloyed mesh -> alloyed mesh, armor -> hepta/tetra/corner/wedge, mineral capsule -> paint.

The efficiency of reversing for 2+ reagent recipes should be determined as follows:
X^(R-1)
X - basic efficacy. Determined by used factory to produce item in question. R - amount of reagents used.

Let's say basic factory has 80% efficiency. Then X will be equal to .8.
1 reagent: 0.8^0 = 1 = 100%
2 reagents: 0.8^1 = 0.8 = 80%
3 reagents: 0.8^2 = 0.64 = 64%
4 reagents: 0.8^3 = 0.512 = 51.2%

Currently there is only one recipe that requires 3 reagents but that's definitely a subject to change.

Proposed efficiencies:
Basic factory: 80%
Standard factory: 60%
Advanced factory: 40%


Hope I covered everything. Ask your questions.

 

[alterintel]

A simple solution might be two things:

1) allow the Capsule Refinery to accept all items.

• when used to recycle blocks it only outputs capsules
• no metal mesh or crystal composite from recycled blocks
• only get 50% of your capsules back

2) allow the Micro Assembler to accept all items.

• When used to recycle blocks it only outputs metal mesh or crystal composites
• No capsules from recycled blocks
• only get 50% of your metal mesh or crystal composites back.

 

[mindlord0013]

I like the idea of a recycler that consumes alloy metal mesh and crystal composite in order to turn blocks into the appropriate corresponding ore and/or shards. That way, your net metal mesh/crystal composite is 0, but you get all the materials that matter. I think this method would be fairly balanced.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Long ago, where a lot of block names started with Plex, there was a PlexRecycler. We never really knew what it did, because it was never fully implemented. But ever since, I was wishing for something that could essentially be a reverse factory. Something you could throw salvaged blocks in and it would
- Break manufactured blocks down to their components (maybe with a 20-50% loss if a full conversion would be too broken)
- Turn terrain blocks into a random ore each tick, 1 raw material for 100 processed blocks. (so we could streamline cargo spaces and make use of the millions and millions of soil, red dirt, rock and lava usually lying around everyone's base on survival servers.)

 

[Ithirahad]

Didn't the PlexRecycler just take stuff and turn it into ship cores? That's what it said in the description; I didn't use factories at all back when it was around.

 

[Matt_Bradock]

Didn't the PlexRecycler just take stuff and turn it into ship cores? That's what it said in the description; I didn't use factories at all back when it was around.

By the time I learned about factories it was already an inactive block, so I don't really know.