Craft items incrementally.

[BenSeidel]

One of the long-time issues that has been bugging me has already been raised in the thread "Assemblers return cancelled items" viewtopic.php?f=16&t=24359. To summarise: you lose the input items if you pick the factory up before it is has finished crafting as they are consumed immediately at the start of the production.

To solve the issue, why not use a consumption bar like science does? This way if a product is canceled at 50% through you only get 50% of the finished product and 50% of the inputs. This would not work as a single change though.

Issues:

• What does it mean to have "half an assembler" or "half an inserter"? It could mean an inserter at half health that operates at half speed. The speed of the buildings is already calculated based on the power, so I don't think that it would be adding too much to the CPU.
• I am not sure how exploitable this would be, do you think it would be allowable to have someone have "half heath" factories because they only need half the throughput? It could really add another dimension to the game for the extreme min/maxers (could be a benefit).
• Would basically require the removal of repair packs as mentioned in "Repair through merging & stacking items" viewtopic.php?f=6&t=35425

Benefits:

• It would also solve the issue of damaged items (such as belts) jamming up your assemblers as it would only count as X% of a belt.
• It could also allow for more interesting recipes that only consume 1/3 of an item or 4.25 etc.
• Productivity modules could be changed to decrease the speed of the consumption of the input items as opposed to the current bar system.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Sounds like a complex change but the biggest difference anyone would notice is that repair packs no longer exist. I don't like this idea because it would make it difficult to keep your defences healthy, as it is large waves can easily destroy a few towers in even very sturdy setups.

Personally if I need to remove an assembler that is working, I rotate the input inserter and wait until the assembler stops. No wasted items.

[bobucles]

A half assembled machine is nothing but a pile of rubbish. There's no need to encourage such a weird mechanic when it doesn't add anything deliberately good to the game.

[Rseding91]

One of the long-time issues that has been bugging me has already been raised in the thread "Assemblers return cancelled items" viewtopic.php?f=16&t=24359. To summarise: you lose the input items if you pick the factory up before it is has finished crafting as they are consumed immediately at the start of the production.

This was changed in 0.13.0 several months ago. When you mine an assembling machine that's in progress of a recipe it gives you the ingredients back.

It even pushes the fluid back into connected pipes if it can.

The same thing happens when switching recipes in the assembling machine/fast replacing.

[BenSeidel]

This was changed in 0.13.0 several months ago.

Cool, I must have missed it in the patch notes. It must be really causing issues with the implementation of controlling assembly machines with the circuit network, although having the need for inserters that empty those machines of the incorrect materials would be cool and add additional complexity to such builds.

Hmmm, would that also mean that the production bonuses from production modules could be set up to be always exploitable if you can get your network to change recipes just after you get the "bonus" item?