Using Fabricators at Outposts is Sisyphean torture

[prime bone]

Look, I like the idea of no fabricators on subs like the Dugong and Barsuk, I really do like the constraint of limited resources you have to work with and plan around.

What I don't like is dumping 10+ minutes worth of crafting that would've happened during the round all on the outpost, where everyone twiddles their thumbs waiting for people to finish crafting while running absurd distances back and forth every time. Clunk clunk clunk up the ladder I go, whoops forgot one of the materials, clunk clunk clunk back to the ship I go. No more. I'm so sick of it.

Fabricating at stations should be so much less of a hassle than it is right now. Here's some spitball ideas:

• Much faster crafting
• More slots in the fabricator and deconstructor
• The ability to pull resources from the ship without manually bringing them there (including ammo boxes on the ground in the sub!)
• Automatically sending all the (non-stolen) contents of the fabricator/deconstructor to the ship's cargo bay when starting a new round (I cannot count how many times resources have been lost to this.)

This should affect fabricators, deconstructors, and medical fabricators on the station. Ideally, station deconstructors shouldn't have this resource-pulling ability for obvious reasons.

[raw anvil]

• outposts should have maxed out deconstructor and fubricators
• more slots should be a checkbox in a sub editor, so that subs will not have 500 slots but stations will/or be not an option because of other two options. There is 500 slots or access to sub's inventory
• unified sub inventory should've been done long ago, but it should be something of a check box on a container like "use as sub's inventory" so that you wouldn't axidentaly find what you don't need in the UI

[urban flare]

Ideally, station deconstructors shouldn't have this resource-pulling ability for obvious reasons.
Maybe do give the docking module a deconstructor and a fabricator then. Because one of the most tedious deconstructor-related activities is dragging empty ammo boxes to it.

[molten furnace]

Not in the state to write a explanation, but here:

The fabricator engineer trader.

[urban flare]

That's vague.

[hushed rover]

Putting the two in/very close to the docking module is a decent bandaid fix to this

has anyone actually modded it in yet?

[urban flare]

Not sure, but it should only take a few hours of work to implement, if your goal is also to make the new fabricator positions look pretty.

[unique sigil]

What about an outpost trolley to transport things but its only available in outpost?

Or would that be wierd and not that useful

[urban flare]

Doesn't feel vanilla.

[prime bone]

this shouldn't really be much of a problem since fabricators can recycle any ammo box into any other ammo type.

and in this suggestion, at least fabricators can pull at range.

[urban flare]

They can, but just because you spent a bunch of ammo doesn't mean you're ready to recycle it. It's mostly early game we're talking about, after all.

[prime bone]

of course. though there's no harm in leaving those boxes in your sub. aluminum has very few uses throughout most of the entire game.

especially now that titalum is used less than ever.

[urban flare]

Leaving empty boxes on the floor is actually pretty bad, because we haven't dealt with the problem of full ammo boxes being stored on the floor yet.

Meaning a lot of the time you'll have empty boxes mixing with the full ones into one big pile.

That's a topic for another thread, but in short, storing ammo as raw resources should be the strategy the game encourages, so that the floors can remain clean instead of being littered with physical objects. And having players be used to deconstructing empty boxes is part of it.

[prime bone]

true. that'll have to be addressed in yet another thread though 😄

the logistics/maintenance side of the game could use a lot of polish.

[urban flare]

Yeah. It's just that a lot of these topics end up being interlinked. Fabrication rules affect player behavior, talents affect fabrication, and so on.

Time to make a ten page document of bad balance suggestions that takes a bunch of this stuff into account and explains the connections between these mechanics.

I'm sure Hex will love it.

[small pendant]

I think making crafting and deconstructing in outposts faster would be a good idea

[unique sigil]

Very simple change too

[urban flare]

Not necessarily simple, aside from purely increasing the fabrication/deconstruction rate. But even that would be a considerable improvement.

[jade dune]

I think I get it. like you quickly sell item materials and get items and the same for deconstructing from an npc. select item and materials get taken from submarine to craft or to sub for deconstruct. maybe it would have cost, a couple % of the item's market value

idk how it would work with skill requirements tho. mb higher skill items just unlock depending on outpost difficulty

[sick matrix]

Agreed: please remove fabricators from stations, they are not used anyway. The first rounds on starter ships are always about acquiring enough money to buy the cheapest sub that has a fabricator.

[unique sigil]

...

There is no reason to remove them

It just makes some subs completely unplayable if you remove them from stations

[sick matrix]

It makes people think they should use them, when they should instead focus on getting rid of the starter sub.

[unique sigil]

which is not a good change

There are talents specifically to make those starter subs work

There is also workshop subs

There is no reason to remove fabricators from stations

That does not solve the issue

[sick matrix]

I see people upset about the fact they have to use the station fabs. It's just the simplest workaround: we do not need them.

It's just misleading. The station fabricators serve to delay progress.

[unique sigil]

Imma be real chief

bad take

Station fabricators make sense for both gameplay and a bit of world building reasoning

There are many (granted not as popular as op subs) submarines on the workshop that don't have fabricators

And there are several subs without medical fabricators (3 out of 13 in vanilla not including starter subs)

[sick matrix]

Custom starter subs, that's fine, still the focus is to get rid of them ASAP

[unique sigil]

I agree that you should get off the starter sub asap, that does not mean I think you should remove fabricators from stations

I rarely ever use fabs on stations apart from first few rounds too

But I understand there are subs specifically without fabricators

we gain nothing from having them not exist on stations, but those who use subs without fabs lose a lot

[prime bone]

strong disagree

i like the idea of limited facilities as a game mechanic

but the game should not then expect you to suffer to keep playing just to restock.

by this logic you could also force every single sub to have a medical fabricator, too.

i don't think every sub should be able to do everything.

there is value in feeling that noose of finite resources.

[small pendant]

yeah but even some t3 ships don't have fabricators

you are completely missing the point

[small pendant]

balancing your game around workshop use isn't a very smart idea

[prime bone]

i just want playing on the dugong/barsuk to be viable without the torture part, is all.

and any custom sub that follows the same idea.

[unique sigil]

At the very least I dont see any harm in increasing speed for station fabricators

Would make sense that these more permanent ones on stations are better

[prime bone]

that's only a small part of the problem, of course.

no matter how fast fabrication is, you still have to haul resources back and forth across huge distances.

in singleplayer especially this becomes untennable.

[sick matrix]

On those subs you toss trash overboard, and use money to buy items. Nobody is making you go onto the outpost to build stuff, in fact nobody does that except for a few people who don't value their own free time very much.

[prime bone]

which is the whole point of this

i'd like it to not be a massive waste of time

that's not what i'm getting those subs for.

[sick matrix]

Nothing needs to be changed since nothing makes you do the thing that you don't like to do.

[prime bone]

except for the fact everyone starts with barsuk/dugong

so they all go through this shit.

[sick matrix]

You use money to buy things. It's not a hard concept: money is used to buy goods.

[prime bone]

and again-- the game shouldn't be torture to play during your downtime.

they offer you these outpost fabricators but they're nearly impossible to use because of the above mentioned problems.

i'm pointing out that it shouldn't be a miserable experience to use it.

during the downtime in-between round period.

[sick matrix]

The fabricators only delay progress, just don't use them. Use money.

[prime bone]

you are completely avoiding the whole point here

by going "yeah well it's a noob trap haha"

this isn't an interesting type of suffering like the barsuk or subs with flaws

the interesting bit is when you are limited by resources during the missions and have to make do.

i'm talking entirely between rounds where nothing is going on -- where downtime is massively increased due to on-station fabricators being awful to use.

that's not interesting gameplay it's just bad.

[sick matrix]

It's not interesting gameplay? It is not gameplay. Nobody does it.

[prime bone]

because it sucks

i am asking for it to not suck.

that's the whole point of this thread. that's what my spitball ideas are about.

i don't think the solution to a gameplay mechanic being awful and not seeing use is "just continue to not do anything about it and not fix it"

[sick matrix]

I don't even think it should be called a gameplay mechanic. Time spent at the station is time not spent making money, completing missions. So after refitting using money you venture onwards without delay.
This whole issue is made up.

[prime bone]

so, ideally, it should be quick

as to minimize this downtime

[sick matrix]

But there is no downtime, since nobody uses the station fabs.

[prime bone]

such that it's no greater than the time spent buying stuff

[prime bone]

holy shit man

please leave the thread you are being anti-helpful here

[unique sigil]

Stations should be more interactive

Events are at least something

[sick matrix]

Perhaps some way to progress, while in the station, would be conductive to a better story?

[unique sigil]

Having a good fabrication system adds a bit more to do there

[unique sigil]

Probably yes

[prime bone]

kind of unrelated to this thread though

this is just focusing on the fact that the whole fabricator mechanic of the stations is borderline unusable in its current state

[unique sigil]

If you could fabricate in the station with less pain it could be an option for longer time consuming things

[sick matrix]

(which is great! unusable is perfect)

[prime bone]

why?

why even have it in the game then

and no, the solution isn't just "take it out of the game"

flashlights used to suck and NO ONE used them

and then it became possible to attach them to guns and THAT ALONE made them super useful

revolver rounds were nearly unusable because of how expensive they were and suddenly this update they're totally viable

the solution was not to just remove the revolver, just remove the flashlight

come on man.

[unique sigil]

Remove the clowns

[prime bone]

removing content that isn't already super viable is ridiculous.

it is possible to tweak things so that you basically get new content out of it by virtue of it being usable.

the revolver borderline wasn't a gun before this point

now people use them and it's basically like getting a new gun

station fabricators being usable would suddenly be a new mechanic at outposts

'cause right now it might as well not exist.

[unique sigil]

I wonder, can fabricators be modded to have multiple output slots or is it hard baked to all go into one slot

Suppose it wouldn't be too useful unless you can queue multiple items

As you could put on a bunch of things

Go shopping

Pick up your stuff

Then leave

[prime bone]

not even need to pick up your stuff

since in my spitball ideas it'd all be sent to the ship anyway

[unique sigil]

Delivery boy

[prime bone]

in case a trigger happy captain suddenly leaves without warning, you don't suddenly lose all your stuff

which can happen.

[unique sigil]

Yeah

[hushed rover]

maybe there could be multiple fabricators on stations so there's even more sense in using them (though that maybe be overkill if the crafting speed is actually reduced to 1 for everything)

Also, station deconstructors should be sped up too
maybe have more slots?

More deconstructor slots could be a sub upgrade

[prime bone]

more fabricators doesn't solve the problem

the problem is the back and forth nightmare

and it wouldn't do anything for solo play, either.

since you can't use more than one at a time, anyway.

[urban flare]

I don't know why you spent all this time arguing with Decafbad. Talking to him is useless. Nobody does that, it shouldn't be a mechanic in the first place.

[jade dune]

it should probably be that everything in the level without the mark "stolen" gets transferred to your cargo in the sub automatically after you leave (exception is stuff thrown overboard specifically. some way to check for items located too far below sub and exclude them). at least removing this part of hassle
and then at mission start, alongside the "shopped items delivered" would be message for crafted/deconstructed stuff delivered, maybe with a gear icon instead of shop cart icon over them. maybe sth like this wouldnt be that hard to code in

[urban flare]

Yep, definitely not a nightmare which would create an endless stream of situations where the game doesn't behave how players expect it to.

Please do transfer crates full of trash I left in the docking module back to my submarine.

[jade dune]

i mean if its not exception of id cards that cant be deconstructed, idk if i normally leave stuff i dont need like that

[raw anvil]

everything without "stolen" and outside hulls should be enought

[urban flare]

You guys just want to fuck me over. 😔

[raw anvil]

I'm mean, if you insist...😘

[jade dune]

dumping stuff into airlock is mildly entertaining way to clean up
i remember doing it in the very few rp servers i played

[urban flare]

I don't know what's so wrong about wanting to get rid of trash quickly while at the station, without having to wear a damn suit.

I grab the crate, I carry it to the docking module, drop it there, and keep going about my business.

I don't want the crate to magically get zapped back to my submarine because someone else wants to drop shit all over the station and get it back at the start of the round.

[jade dune]

hmm. okay then if you normally use crates for that, mb add a ui tick field on them "trash?" to not deliver it, visible on stations only

[urban flare]

Would you like 3 other features with that, as a side dish?

[jade dune]

say it if you have sth to say. cant tell if its sarcastic

[urban flare]

I said what I wanted to say. You're overcomplicating a simple interaction for no reason.
The initial suggestion was simple. Grab everything from the fabricators and deconstructors and send it to the sub, because that's where people leave stuff accidentally most often.
You're trying to stretch the system to the whole station, which gets way more complicated. And once you see those complications, you add more features on top, which the players and the developers need to keep track of.

[jade dune]

fine. tbh i forgot the op already had this suggestion but just for fabricators, i probably misread it the first time

i now have a different idea for the outpost fabricators and deconstructors, and it's an industrial crate that would be in last slot; it'd have slots for big items like suits, as well as normal and if anything got put into it it's brought into cargo next round, with exception of stolen items and materials which give rep penalty cos you get found out. crate would maybe have a time limit like the duffel bag once it was transported into cargo

[thorny wave]

Why don’t they just put the fabricator and deconstructor in the empty room that is often to the side of the sub selection terminal?

It’s not as far to go essentially one more room in a sub and would not require anything extensive

Obviously more would be nice such as the cargo hold storage container in your sub being linked to the outposts fabricator and have the output be dropped off in your sub as crates.

Link ammo box shelves so we can recycle without moving them

[prime bone]

one of the outpost layouts has this, the other does not.

and it's no good for cities either.

(besides, it's visually kind of ugly)

using the actual fabricator/deconstructors on the station itself shouldn't suck.

[errant garden]

Bro is so goofy

People were asking for fabs at stations for ages

And now this mofo wants them removed