Okay, lets just start by my saying that I understand the reason why we currently don't allow factories and refineries on ships. They want you to make a base or a station, they don't want you flying around in one ship with all your stuff on it.
But now that we've had the mass pass and blocks have different masses now, perhaps its time to reconsider that limitation.
What if we were to allow factories, refineries, and enhancers on ships, but give them a very large mass to make it simply impractical to make large scale floating factories? Say a factory/refinery/enhancer block had a mass of 10 or 100 each?
Bases/Stations would still be the preferred method since you quickly end up with hundreds or thousands of enhancers per factory fairly quickly which would be far too many for any ship to carry, but still allow the creation of dedicated mining ships with on-board refining capability. Or allow large ships to still carry one of each factory in order to machine specific replacement blocks, while preventing them from mass producing things on the go.
But now that we've had the mass pass and blocks have different masses now, perhaps its time to reconsider that limitation.
What if we were to allow factories, refineries, and enhancers on ships, but give them a very large mass to make it simply impractical to make large scale floating factories? Say a factory/refinery/enhancer block had a mass of 10 or 100 each?
Bases/Stations would still be the preferred method since you quickly end up with hundreds or thousands of enhancers per factory fairly quickly which would be far too many for any ship to carry, but still allow the creation of dedicated mining ships with on-board refining capability. Or allow large ships to still carry one of each factory in order to machine specific replacement blocks, while preventing them from mass producing things on the go.