there should be programmer robots

[piggy2]

so the idea behind programmers is that they are robots that can change what things are doing. examples:you have a chemical plant making sulfur but you want to change it to making plastic,you want to stop using a resource,etc,etc

[n9103]

Seems like it could get way too complicated fast, but interesting idea.

[FishSandwich]

Can't you do that already by changing the recipe yourself? How does telling a robot to change the recipe help?

[Neoxx]

Seems like it could get way too complicated fast, but interesting idea.

I thought that was the point. Automate yourself out of the equation, so you only ever worry about expansion and designing future factories!

[Neoxx]

Can't you do that already by changing the recipe yourself? How does telling a robot to change the recipe help?

It could be tied to the red/green network, so when you reach a certain volume of one item, the bot kicks in and changes the recipe, which then outputs to a different chest.

Example: in my "hard mode" game, I didn't spawn with any accessible coal, so I had to rely on oil based fuels. So, I don't want to over produce fuel so it can be used for plastics, and I also have very little space because of the surrounding aliens. It makes sense for it to only produce so much fuel, then switch to converting to light oil or petroleum until more fuel is needed.

I think this idea would have much more merit if buildings that had an active recipe used up more energy when sitting idle.