A 3D printer survives the crash, can print anything, slowly

[mrvn]

For many repeat players starting a new game tedious. All that initial setup for a starter factory to build what you actually wanted. All that research needed to even start designing your base. No bots, for those that love them. No more.

The ship came with the full tech base stored in memory and fully equipped with 3D printers to setup the colony base for the following colonists. Luckily a single 3D printer survived the crash and can print anything you like. Unfortunately the printer was damaged in the crash so it works really slow now. You don't have the tools to read out it's tech base and it can't print another printer. But other than that anything.

The 3D printer should be able to print any recipe either for free or only using raw materials (wood, stone, coal, ore, water?). But it should be rather useless for producing transport belts or inserters. To make it not be the ultimate machine there could be two options:

1) It's slow. Say everything takes 100-1000 times longer than the original recipe.

You can just print a rocket silo and the parts to launch a rocket. But it will take days for that to finish. And what will you do meanwhile? Sit around and wait? While possibly that should be boring enough so people don't do it. Reserve the printer for essential parts to improve the QOL.

The recipe times could (probably should) also be based on the cummulative time to produce something from raw materials or based on the tech level required for the item. Factor 100 for red science items, 200 for green science, 400 for blue science, and so on. Could use both.

2) It requires special (nuclear?) fuel and only a small amount was salvaged from the ship.

Again you could print the rocket silo. Maybe some of the parts to launch the rocket. But it should be set to not be enough. You can print a nuclear reactor and use the remaining nuclear fuel (if the printer uses that) to get some electricity. Or print roboports and bots. But quickly you run out of fuel. So choose wisely what to print.

Using nuclear fuel for the printer would mean that after some research it could be resupplied. But when you have a base to do all that research you are probably past the point of needing the printer.


The idea is that the printer is for one off items and not for mass production. I like the idea of it being fuel limited. A newbie will print assembler and power poles or the rocket silo and then run out of fuel. A repeat player will pick a goal like a nuclear reactor or bots and invest all the fuel only in things he can't reasonably build at the start.

[Imperio]

Mmh. Could be neat, but I think a far simpler option would be some sort of "Game Setup" window before the game starts, in which you could set specific research goals as finished and give yourself a desired loadout of items.

This would allow palyers a flexible yet immediate way to set up a new game after struggling through the first few hours for the umpteenth time.

[mrvn]

Having the tech doesn't mean you have the items though. Even with the tech building a nuclear reactor takes a long time.