So true. I wonder how many people would create/stock their shop stands more often if there was some type of thing like this in place? A lot of people tell me it’s a hassle to keep up with it all. I like having a lot of things to do, but I do see their point.
I want one that feeds oort from my extractor to my portals 
This! You could also link a ‘pipe’ from a request basket to your portal directly!v
I would say having a drone butler/pet to move a small amount of items to a specific location/machine/stand would be awesome, but I’m not sure if that fits in with Boundless.
I’d like to be able to use one to send gifts/items to players too.
Eh, distance restrictions always bothered me. It can be circumvented by building redundancies, and prevents networks from serving more than a single region.
I want to see HEAT used as a restricting factor. Heat can act as a time sync, a load restriction, and a density inhibitor. You can make people spread out their “heat generating machines” much like the restriction on rendered items per chunk, or you could restrict machines from lagging the server running full time by adding a cool-down based on heat generated. Lastly, you could control volume by having larger crafts generating more heat, and needing to cool down affer.
I think something as simple (not saying it would be simple to code in, just simple - as in thought) as having interactive water/liquids and maybe wind/air would be pretty cool.
Allow machines to output into a stream and have a hopper that can collect it downstream. Streams could move players along - perhaps rough rapids on more volatile planets would move players/things much quicker. Maybe you if you held a roadrunner feather in a dust storm, it would carry you off like a hang-glider.
I would be satisfied (for a while) with just some simple automation.
I’d start with being able to configure a machine to have a recipe trigger on conditions. For example, configure an Extractor to automatically do a Mass Craft of Oort Shards when there is enough Rough Oortstone and Spark available in its inputs. It’s good enough if a machine can only have a single trigger. I can build more machines if I need more triggers. All I’d have to do once configured is drop in some raw or intermediate materials and come back later to pick up the result. No tiresome mass clicking.
The next thing I’d want is some sort of Inserter Machine. A stationary Machine that takes an output from one Machine it sits next to and loads it into another. Again, you’d have to configure which items (there can be more than one item, but only one machine source and one sink) and you can have only one configuration active at a time. Inserters might possibly take from or put into a storage container of some sort; I’d have no quarrel with that.
The end result is that you can set up production chains in which you only have to drop in the raw materials as you acquire them and pick up the finished goods as they are produced. This would not only remove some of the repetitive clicky click tedium from those who want to do other things but it would also give the opportunity for those who like to design systems to figure out how to place Machines, Chests, Inserters, and Coils to give optimum production. Maybe even just another reason to build things.
Inserters can have their own Coils to boost speed or quantity.
From a technical point of view I can’t imagine this being too loadsome on a server. I can’t see why it would be any more load than the existing recipe-queueing system and the animations no more taxing than the existing machine animations. No AI involved, no extra chunks loaded.
If you have automation that takes items from storage, routes it to crafting machines, crafts the products and then stores the products, other than selecting what to craft and how many, where is the player Interaction? If there is none, then should you get xp for crafting? You already got xp if you gathered or mined the materials. You got xp for building the workshop, including the automation. If there is little to no player interaction, would this type of change mean an elimination or at least a massive cut to xp from crafting? You end up turning crafting into the only activity that if playing by the rules (no bottling), you can get massive amounts of xp for very little effort. You can’t build, mine, hunt or gather without being an active player. But now you can set up automation to turn rock into brick and do so merely by loading items into storage. And get xp for each step of the process. Seems like a balance problem to me if they do not adjust xp.
Perhaps having a cut to xp will be the trade off for having such efficiency, sounds like the simple way to balance it if needed.
But in terms of player interaction I’d argue there is nothing interesting, let alone satisfying, by having to click ‘craft’ 30 times or by moving your compact iron into your refinery, then moving your refined iron into your workbench. So I guess we’re not getting rewarded with xp for ‘doing boring actions’ (the player interaction bit), but we’re getting rewarded for creating stuff with the resources we’ve spent time gather/buying.
Long craft times is one of the things people who review Boundless (videos, forums etc) count as a negative, but we understand why they’re needed. So this would reduce crafting times from Raw -> End Product without actually reducing the craft times.
Edit: Now I think about it, isn’t that the way Minecraft do it? If you manually take stuff out of your furnace you get the xp, but if a hopper does it, you lose the xp?
I could not agree more. Loading and then clicking on a crafting machine 30 times is boring. About as boring as hitting a gleam ball over and over. But you are currently forced to load click and empty each crafting machine now. And if the automation was added as some have suggested, then you could set up chains that take all the raw resources and in the end turned out product that went through numerous steps, merely by filling storage and telling each crafting machine (once) what to do. To be clear, I am all for automation. I do not enjoy clicking a series of machines 30 times, but when it becomes simpler than farming and less time consuming, I am not sure that some pretty large adjustments need to be made to the xp you get. Otherwise, I think you mess with the balance too much.
I would argue you are already rewarded for doing your own gathering with xp.
I actually do not know how Minecraft rewards crafting xp.
Yeh your right there, I’d 100% be happy with making it 0 xp if you automate it in this way. “Do you want efficient crafts or do you want xp?” You could also argue that crafting for craftings sake should be because you want the product, not the xp gained from making said product.
So yeh, 0 xp sounds like a bloody good trade off without the potential to benefit the botters and scripters
So much this
This is random and I might be the only person who would want it… All coding specifics aside, I’d love if we could set a location and automatically walk there. Basically only for the sake of doing afk things for 2 minutes and not having to stand there idle. If I’m in my workshop and about to head to a current build across town then my washing machine finishes, I want to set the location and walk or even creep there while I put the clothes in the drier 
. Idk, no really good reason for this other than it would make my character feel more alive in a way.
When I pick my controller up I’m locked in and sometimes I’ll realize I’ve been dying of thirst for an hour and a half and wish Dutch was doing something other than just standing there when I go for a glass of water. Ugh I’m a weirdo 
As long as the detect and queue bits require even more plots of machine! 
No, at least not when I last played. MC awards XP when you pull a finished product from the furnace, input is not considered. I used to build XP generators using this method by having cactus farms create dye by burning renewable fuel (kelp) infinitely so that I only had to remove the dye manually once a day for free XP. The hopper could remove the finished product, but STORED the cumulative XP until you removed even a single item. You could “bank” several full chests worth of XP using this method, then turn off the hopper and remove a single item to make a withdrawal. This was in Bedrock edition, so idk if it is still how they do it.
But, to your point, I agree about 0xp as trade off to automation.
Ahh yes I remember that, but I believe that was introduced in a patch and then later removed, but I’ve only played Java
I just remember my tekkit mining rig with sorting output
Also my baller roller coasters jumping through lava waterfalls and such
Wow surprised a profanity filter didn’t skewer the word “automation” . In this game mindless drudgery is Boundless.
pistons and automated factories seem viable. i like to make simple MC redstone creations (like a working vending machine in vanilla or a home defense system and secret mountain carving. i sometimes even challenge myself to recreating a redstone machine with my own twist! oh and @BabyCookie i made a machine that if you put an emerald in, you get a cookie!)
I think the issue with adding straight up pistons is that they can cause a lot of lag to the server very easily. If they were added, I’m guessing they had to me limited? Because I can tell you now, I’d make some biiiig stuff for sure