Autocraft

[ssilk]

Suggest a new kind of "autocraft"-feature:

We're in the inventory-window. You have (after researching it, should long before the new requester-chest-feature of the player) 10 "autocraft-slots". The slots work like the requester-chest but without slider. The autocraft works only, if nothing is in the crafting-queue for about 1-10 seconds.
When you select an item for a slot, this means: When this is lower than 10 in my inventory, then autocraft it, so that it's 10 again.
So if you set for example inserters twice, logically 2 slots are used and it is autobuilt for 20 items. The order of the slots are the priority the items are built. So when you place one inserter at the top and the other at the bottom, then first are 10 inserters built and after doing all other autocrafting the other 10 are built.
10 slots and 10 items is just a number. 5 and 5 is also nice. Perhaps the autocraft feature can be improved by researching.

I think this feature can exist in parallel to the requester-chest-feature of the player, because they have a very different habit and they complement each other.

[Narnach]

Interesting idea.

Research could actually be like the logistics bot cargo size upgrades: start at 1, then add 1 for every additional level researched.
It could start out costing only 10 tech 1 research, and then ramps up over time. After you have 3 or 5 slots, add tech 2 research, etc.

Similar to logistics bots, you could also research how many items are auto-created for each slot. You could start lower and increase it with more research, which increases in cost similar to the number of slots.

[azoundria]

I really like this idea. It would save me a lot of time and frustration getting to a build site to find I'm short of some key item like conveyer belts. It would be ideal to say 'make sure I have 256 conveyer belts at all times'. If I have less than 256 conveyer belts in my inventory, it would attempt to queue more. This also has a pleasant side-effect. For example, I know I'm low on fast inserters but I have enough inserters. So I build fast inserters and head to the build site. Only, I forgot that fast inserters require regular inserters, and now I don't have enough inserters anymore to finish that part of the factory. It takes away from having to double check all the basic supplies before heading to build sites.

[ssilk]

Not that I want the last word, I want to add here, that I see this feature in conjunction with https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=6&t=1341
Otherwise it doesn't make so much sense.
To be exact: first a low prio queue should be researched and after that it can be extended with autocrafting.