Crafting Is A Bit Too Granular

[Guest IMPLeroyJenkins]

Crafting is a bit too granular and disjointed.
If I want to make another storage crate using a production line,  I'd need:
Input crate -> Refinery -> crate -> metalwork ->   crate  ->  intermediary -> crate ->  assembler -> crate
                                                      |

                                                      -> smelter      ->        ^

Anything more complicated than something like this, that only has 3 components requiring only tier 1 minerals, becomes increasingly tedious. You'd need to have so many interconnecting input ant output lines that you'd need a spreadsheet to track your flow. Without Lua, you also have to micromanage each machine to make sure it has the correct input components, correct number of runs, everything's connected to the right machines in the right direction, and switch out recipes on the metalworker and smelter at a couple point where you need to switch components. And the fact that the Assembler can't make intermediary components is frankly quite annoying.


I have three problems with this.
1. It gets way too cluttered, way too fast. Your web of I/O lines in build mode will look like a internet traffic map of Manhattan. It is unreasonably convoluted.
2. You need too many concurrent loops of machinery to facilitate even moderately complex tasks to the point that you're better off crafting 90% of the components on your person and only having the facilities around to perform the final step.
3. The lack of inherent automation makes it far too disjointed to use effectively without extensive Lua experience, which causes one of two things: a long, drawn-out process of searching for a working Lua script to do exactly what you want that hopefully works on the scale you need it to and doesn't require any modification on your part, or a refund request because the player can't do what they want to without having to do a lot of extra work out of game.

While the extent to which Lua is usable in Dual Universe is exciting and frankly kinda cool, it shouldn't be the only avenue by which players can automate gameplay. If we can't set up production lines in a similar fashion to SatisFactory or similar games, then industrialists will be a nearly nonexistent demographic. There needs to be some baseline level of automation besides "how many times do you want this recipe to run?". Having a bit of built-in storage on production facilities similar to Space Engineers would also be preferable to having seventy billion storage crates occupying every inch of space that isn't a production facility within your factory. The Assembler should be able to build intermediary components as well as combine them into the finished product, and the refinery should take care of combining pure metals into alloys as well. Splitting hairs like that just makes the experience far more tedious than it should be. Ideally, a production loop would look like:
Input crate -> refinery -> assembler -> output crate

This is not to suggest that specialized facilities for exotic materials/components shouldn't be a thing, but having the baseline facilities be so disjointed and distributed amongst so many different structures convolutes both the learning process and gameplay down the road.

Honestly, I'm liking this game so far. I just wish that this process weren't so granular and disjointed. Gonna grab a basic ship or two off the market in the next couple days here and start flying around to see what else we've got going on here.

[vertex]

I kinda like the industry. It can be used for simple and specialized stuff on a small scale, or built into a megafactory that spits out everything you'd like it to. I think if they would casualize this the game would lose a big chunk of its depth.

 

But I agree, at first it overwhelmed me too and I thought this is just too much. Tho when you play some more and gather experience, you'll learn that the whole picture is rather simple, with but a few more difficult things to do. At this point one might realize that there's just a hand full of components to automate production in order to build almost every common element used in ship construction - at least that's my chosen field of industry so far, while I set up the more complex things on the side.

 

3 hours ago, Guest IMPLeroyJenkins said:

There needs to be some baseline level of automation besides "how many times do you want this recipe to run?"

This sounds as if you didn't discover the "maintain" field yet? You can set the industry to always maintain a certain stock and you can use transfer units to cycle part of that back into the input container for a paralleled industry that might require the output of the same kind of industry as input.

 

Over time you'll figure out layouts which work great to keep things organized. In my opinion the industry in DU is one of the best "easy to learn, hard to master" concepts currently available.

 

As example, I like to create voxel-framed towers with 4 sides, where I put one metalwork for each size of a part around it and have transfer units pull stuff into a unified input container in the middle bottom of this tower, while the output goes to the middle top end. This reduces the necessary links 4-fold and solves the spaghetti bolognese that you can see on so many screenshots.

 

Of course you need some space for that - but while building the industry to make a large static core on a smaller one, you already gather experience, which you can apply to the next factory.

 

I've started like... I don't know... many factories from scratch, each time improving based on my previous experience. If you get into it, it's really fun and you can enjoy all those units starting and stopping fully automatic, while you only operate the assembler to pull stuff out, or drop fresh ore into the input

 

However, if you find yourself in a position where you decide that industry isn't for you: let someone else do it. If you're not an industrialist, you can buy the stuff from the market or team up with someone like me, who likes this task and is happy if someone decides to help out gathering the resources and appreciates me producing everything he needs in return

 

But I recommend to tinker around a bit more. As long as the units don't lock up (there seem to be some sand or bugs in the gears) industry, once it's set up properly, can make your life a breeze  

 

/ps

You don't need LUA for a fully automated industry.

[Megaddd]

A year ago I was in the same boat you are right now. My thought process was "All I do is just look at the spreadsheet and plop the required industries to spit out the part I want, this is very convoluted and time-consuming, blah!"

But then markets, industry and player progression and thousands of players came along. I think it's a great feature now and it was fun setting up my first chain to start spitting out industry units to haul with great effort to the nearest market to sell (they're heavy!)

All that was missing was the right context.

[IMPLeroyJenkins]

Granted, I did probably miss a few features here and there. I didn't wade through the tutorials. This was just my impressions after 6-8 hours of tooling around.

To clarify what I mean my a "baseline level of automation", having to manually establish input, output, transfer, and generally micromanaging the logistics should be the part that's automated. As with Space Engineers, you simply make sure the ports are connected and click a toggle to link the inventories of related industrial equipment. When an assembler in SE needs a specific component, it can reach out through connected inventories and pull what it needs without the player having to do anything more than ensure the ports are connected correctly at installation. I could deal with the fact that the assembler isn't a one-stop shop if you didn't have to set up the logistics chain by hand to make everything work in concert. SatisFactory is actually fairly close to DU in scope, but for some reason the production chains seemed more straightforward there. You didn't have to spend more than an hour or so at most making things by hand to get your supply chain going.

 

[Megaddd]

The current mechanics aim to increase value in specialisation. Do you want a factory that can do one thing very efficiently, or a factory that can be easily re-tooled to make any part at the press of a button (on a script)? There is an opportunity cost involved, and I think it's good for the game economy and in general.

[MitoGaterau]

I really get where you're coming from, as I'm more or less also at that stage.

I'm playing solo at the moment which means I have to do anything by myself and it really is complicated, complex and convuluted at times.

But at the same time I think for any organisation or indiviual making money solely by being specialized in this specific sector in the future it kinda needs to be more complex.

 

What I struggle with more is the non visualized way it is implemented at the moment, with the links between machines and containers.

Coming from factorio and satisfactory I like their way using belts more since I can better see the workings of what I build.

[Arinada]

The only feature I wish would be added, is setting more than one recipe on maintain.  So could have a refiner set to refine all 4 ores of tier maintaining 1000L of each ingot in the output. Crafts one til reaches goal then goes to second, third, and forth, then loops back to first.  Gives you same automation without having to have 4 refineries for every tier of ore.  Having more would just increase productivity.

[CoyoteNZ]

On 9/9/2020 at 1:27 AM, MitoGaterau said:

.

 

What I struggle with more is the non visualized way it is implemented at the moment, with the links between machines and containers.

Coming from factorio and satisfactory I like their way using belts more since I can better see the workings of what I build.

Sorry at work, but aren’t there decorative pipes? If so, you could always lay these as a visual reminder. Or even use different coloured tiles on the floor to draw flow patterns.

[CoyoteNZ]

I love the complexity.there are a few things I’d request though...

1 when connecting items, instead of having every single connection line visible, have it so you can select between 

 a every line

 b only lines of something you have selected

 

therefore it would be so much easier to find where things are in the blur of the other 200 plus multi connected items

 

2 have machines able to feed other machines. So instead of having to go into a container then to the next machine, it can go directly to the next machine. Of course if it requires 200, and you stop the receiving machine when it is only half way loaded, any  items in the pipe line are thrown on the floor and disguarded like they are if you stop a process early. Would hardly ever use that feature, but would be useful.

 

3 allow machines to have more than one output. Lots transfer units fix the problem,but add a lot of bulk to my factor..

 

4 let Lua view the contents of containers so I can make a big screen stock controller!

[Tenryuta]

needing basics to make uncommons to advanced to rares to exotics is the worst part of the game