The biggest thing I want from the Crafting is for it to mend the economy. I would like to see players mine for resources and smelt/craft them into the parts they want for their ships, rather then running to a station, selling half of it and building a ship with the money/parts collected.
Me too. Specifically, I want it to observe "conservation of mass". Basically; matter can not be created or destroyed (only changed from one form to another).
I want about 16 different "elements" (water, iron, carbon, ...). Each block should have a defined mixture of elements - e.g. a hull might be 64 iron elements; a thruster might be 20 iron elements, 2 carbon elements, and a 12 crystal elements; etc
There should be "element storage" blocks, where each one is capable of storing about 300 elements. These would be combined to get the total storage (e.g. 123 storage blocks would let you store a total of 36900 elements). The game would keep track of the number of each type of element currently stored in the station's elemental storage.
There should be 2 types of factories:
- one that breaks a block up into its elements (e.g. you put a thruster in and get 20 iron elements, 2 carbon elements, and a 12 crystal elements) and places the elements into "element storage". This doesn't need any recipe.
- one that takes elements out of "element storage" and combines them (e.g. it takes 20 iron elements, 2 carbon elements and 12 crystal elements from storage and produces a thruster).Mostly I'm thinking of something like a 3D printer. This needs a way to tell the factory what it's producing, which could just be a menu or something (it doesn't have to be an actual item like a recipe).
Each element should have a value. For example, an iron element may be worth 5 credits, a carbon element could be worth 2 credit and a crystal element could be worth 12 credits. The value of any block should be calculated from this - e.g. a hull (64 iron) would be 64*5 = 320 credits, a thruster would be 20*5+2*2+12*12 = 248 credits.
Of course shops and people never actually buy or sell for what something is worth - e.g. shops would but blocks at a price that's lower than the block's value and sell for a price higher than the block's value.