As far as I can tell, with the Mass Craft skill, I can queue up 20 stacks of crafting 50 refined rocks, or 1000 blocks. But the refinery wears out after only 3 stacks are processed. That means attending to it every 1.5 or so.
From a numbers perspective, it would seem like a machine at 0% wear shouldn’t get to 100% and stop until it has fully processed on maxed queue. Not doing so reduces the value of the mass craft skill significantly. Yes,you still get to save materials, but you can’t, say, queue up a full refinery to run overnight.
Frankly, I don’t understand why the machines have to have wear at all, but maybe that’s more of a question? I have to go pick up a spanner and hit it once. Weird.
As far as I know refinery wears out after 10 stacks, there might be some change since I last mass produced refined stones. I get what you mean that machine should be able to handle what’s possible to queue up, but there’s no reason not to. I think it adds playabitlity to the game making it more interesting.
Also keep in mind that each recipe has its own damage value and that almost all recipes are loose place holders due for a balance pass… it makes since however that some things are more damaging to craft (expensive) to craft than others…
As far as devaluing the masscraft skill… that is one view I guess… I see it more as increasing the value of refineries as you could simply build more to get around this problem xD and why I have 3-6 ish of every crafting machine ^^
If you can’t speed production of a single line… just open more production lines =P
Perform the rite of percussive maintenance with the anointed spanner often when tasking the machine spirit with its holy duties, and it’s spirit will remain strong and never tire! Do this while chanting the Benediction of the Oort for best results.
I would like to see wear expanded upon further into a sort of mini game with bonuses and penalties for maintaining your machines. The gist of it is, maintaining low wear increases production speeds, where as high wear incurs production time penalties and high maintenance costs. Repairing with the spanner can be incremental like it used to be, where better quality spanners repair more wear per use.
Additionally, wear should have several maintenance thresholds where additional repair measures are required in order to bring the machine back to peak performance. Purely placeholder values follow:
25% wear: lubricate the machine with oils made from fossil extract, tallow, or other lubrications dark blood, perhaps? Beyond 25% wear, machine operates 25% slower.
75% wear: spare parts needed. Repair with new cogs, ingots, and/or sticks. Due to imperfections in the crafting process, bulk and mass craft batches started at this point yield slightly less bonus product. Additionally, machine operates 10% slower.
100% wear: machine will not start. Processor is burned out and requires replacement. New Ancient Tech Fragment (s) or component (s) needed. Spark cord to rewire burned out wires
To compensate for this sort of system, over all machine lifespan should be dramatically increased. You should be able to craft a full que of refined stone at least once before incurring the 75% wear penalty, for example. I think this would simultaneously generate demand for under utilized reagents such as cogs and, grant benefits for better quality spanners, and reward diligent players for upkeep of their machine shops.
I like this though I am not sure it could be done.
What about adding an internal storage to the machines for lubricate like burning in the furnace.
No lubricant - Runs hot, additional wear (20%?), slower speed (20%?)
Tallow - Runs normal
Dark Blood - Runs better, reduction in wear (10%?), faster (10%)
Some craftible Lubricant - Best, reduction/speed +25%/25%
It could easily be done. The game already recognizes when you click on a machine with a spanner. Just add this interaction to any other items that interact with machines to “use” them. A prompt in the GUI could tell the player what material is needed for repair. These devs have made some pretty wicked cool mechanics for boundless already, I doubt that this would be beyond them.
I think it wouldn’t benefit to take away interactivity from game.