Maybe we could have machines that make sculptures and clothing? It would be nice, I could make a clothing factory

Auto smelters and auto brick cutters?

More importantly, how about an auto component crafter? I'm getting tired of the fact the component crafting machine priority seems last for priority 1 crafters, and waiting weeks for them to get round to making the 4 measly componets I need for whatever building I'm after and them wasting time making 1000 bricks instead...

With both the meat grinder and veggie machine, could you set it up so that they would stop working at a set total hours of use. I.E. - after 24 hours of actually running/producing goods, the machine would auto shut down and need to be serviced. (basicly replace the "random breakdowns we currently have, but on an actuall timed basis) Then, after your pawn services the machine, it generates some "industrial food sludge" which would either have to be desposed of (incinerator) or can be fed to pigs/animals.

First off, this mod is amazing. Keep on keepin' on! And as long as you're ASKING.... :)

+1 on the automated production tables. Might need to put a high research and materials cost to offer a tiny bit of balance, but it would be a great late-stage option. Smelting and brick would be particularly clutch.

Another suggestion would be a puller-like item we could use on storage structures instead of zones and\or enhance the pullers to support them. I'm interested in auto-pushing meals to the mod-added refrigerators, which may not be possible given that they're not vanilla, but even the ability to feed shells directly from the rollers into an equipment rack would be super useful. A bonus would be the ability to fill multiple storage structures from a single pusher as long as they're contiguous (i.e. 5 storage racks touching would count as a single "zone" for filling purposes).

I'd love to be able to copy-paste the item settings from a zone to a roller puller\pusher. I have lots of intake\zone pairings, and having to make sure the puller matches the zone manually is annoying.

Finally, I'd love if there were a way to identify a special "drop-off" zone for a given radius (or more ideally, an allowed area) which would override the normal zone priorities. I've got a vault colony, inside of which is a comprehensive roller system. I would love to be able to tell my pawns "when you're outside, drop your items here instead of hoofing it to the ass-end of the base to the appropriate storage room", and while I feel like I should be able to do this using a combination of puller and zone priorities I can't seem to figure out how to do it. Either they ignore the lower-priority outside-zone, or they spend their days trying fruitlessly to fill it and having the dropped off items sucked back inside.

Why not add a universal work machine that goes in the interaction spot of most workbenches which can have its input and output ports configured or through stockpiles near the machine? Upgrades to the machine can be used to "simulate" increased skill.

I would love to see more automation options.

Balance is obviously tricky, but I think that can be sorted out in time.

storage shelving that allows more than one stack per square; but doesn't interact with storage zones forcing you to design the delivery system with rollers where before the items just teleported.
Also, Puller>Pusher without a roller in between or a pull-pusher that can fill stuff directly in without wasted space.

Wall-o-text Incoming!

Meat Grinder-Oh yeah, I like it. Minced meat ftw. That's especially nice when your source of meat is from hunting. I understand having different kinds of meat adds some flavor to the game but without nutritional differences it feels especially cosmetic. Was it always this way where all units of meat/veg were nutritionally the same? I suppose it does simplify matters coding wise. You can just adjust the yields to simulate that nutritional difference. The problem lies in the fact everything stacks to the same quantity. It would be better if things considered more nutritional have a higher default stack size. I.e. Soybeans stacking to 150 vs Corn at 75. Of course if a change like this was made in vanilla then the usefulness of the meat grinder would be questionable unless it's stack was at least as high as the best raw food. I wonder if foods that are better nutritionally are lighter? So that your pawns can carry more in one trip? Perhaps stack size should be related to a food's weight? As in it takes less of something to get an equal amount of nutrition and therefore can be stacked in a greater number of those units. But I digress.

Veggie Mix-Hmmm.. Not as useful since you can just plant one foodstuff crop, but I suppose there is the blight.. but doesn't that effect all crops anyways? Assuming I'm right it seems somewhat silly to grow all the crops for the sake of flavor but then grind them up so you can have one kind for storage purposes. You've probably thought of this but you should probably not allow the grinding of animal veg into veggie mix. Everyone would just grow hay for everyone.

Industrial oven- My initial thought was nowai. But let me think aloud. Rollers themselves perform work that your pawns/animals usually do. The difference here is that it's skilled labor. As a minimum I think a pawn with the cooking worktype should have to periodically set the recipe/clean/maintain it. And this work should have minimum skill level. Lol. It occurs to me that this sounds a bit like me complaining "They'll take our jobs!!". But I'm just looking at it from the standpoint that pawns and their survival is one of the main focuses of this game. To make their skills irrelevent upsets the balance a little too much, imo.

Fueler - Hmmm.. How many things actually need fuel? The stove obviously but there's the electric version and you're going to have a grid if you can power this thing. There's torches, ditto. Fueled generators would be where this shined. Add in sawbots and you have renewal power 24x7 so long as your trees aren't blighted :P That would beat out Geothermal in every way save space. Not to mention that a fuel generator toggled on and off is basically an everlasting battery if it has enough wood.
While you're at it add a toggle machine... thing. The idea being you hit a master switch and any toggle machine linked to it will toggle the power on things next to it... Now *that* is hella useful. I realize there's mods that add special switches but splitting your grid up and getting everything connected to the right segment is annoying at times. Add in a timer or better yet a motion sensor and then you have a power grid that optimizes itself to only power what your pawns are using. Dooooit. ;)
Ahem, anyways... There's chemfuel of course. Fueler, sounds good.

@Lord Chaos-Machines making sculptures would just be knock off reproductions unless you had it connected to a self aware AI :P Clothing might work except for the caveat I talked about above. Really any work type could be done, but care would have to be taken to make pawns relavent.

@AlexisRogers-Smelters and Bricks? Why not? Perhaps simply having one Univeral Auto-crafter that requires reconfiguration into the job you want by a pawn with that worktype+skill? The problem here is that xp decay at 10+ skill. You either have to make the xp boost for each task at one of these machines huge or have to make the interaction frequent, which sorta defeats the purpose. Hmmm. Could take the linking idea further. X number of crafting machines are linked to a master controller that is manned by a pawn. There is a max number of machines a controller can link to and while the pawn is "working" at the controller they get xp? More efficient work that still requires a pawn with the skill and their skills don't deteriate.

@BunBun-Hmmm.. well a chance to break down/need maintance isn't bad, but this isn't replacing something your pawns already do so I'm thinking a regular interval is probably to much. What it's doing is giving you more storage at the cost of time and power. Certainly more balanced then a mod that just alters stacks sizes. Personally, I think this is a problem that should be dealt with in vanilla but until then I don't see a problem with reducing "type bloat".

@TheNobleDuke-Oh, yeah. Equipment racks can hold shells huh? But they have the same density as just sitting them down in a stockpile? The advantage I suppose is that you don't need a roof over them and they are somewhat protected. Do enemy pawns attack equipment racks? If they do (even by accident via aoe effects) what happens to the contents of the rack? Do they take damage or just drop to the ground? I suppose this could be usefull if you both put shells in and take them out. As I don't think mortars will feed directly from racks?

Copy/Paste on pusher/puller would be very nice.

Hmmm.. the drop off thing is more of an AI issue. If you keep all your priorities the same level in theory your pawns will just favor whatever the closest one is, right? I tend to use normal priority for everything but my lure stockpile in the center of my killbox which is low. It acts as my overflow/general storage for everything that doesn't have a specialized stockpile. I have just started using this mod but if you have a catchall stockpile around a bench (for when a pawn dumps a finished good on the ground) and a puller that sends anything in that stockpile to your main storage, as long as the catchall and remote storage share the same priority your pawns aren't going to favor one over the other. The only problem you might have is in the scenario where you don't have rollers pulling ingredients to the bench. You can't have a combined ingredient+finished good stockpile filling the room if the two need to be at different priorities. Which can be solved easily enough with multiple stockpiles. At least that's my thinking. I haven't put it all into practice yet.

@Acrumen-Ohhh.. That's even better than my idea of having to reconfigure it into different types. Coupled with my idea of having a controller that can link to multiple universal machines what we're basically taking about is UIM's (Unmaned Industrial Machines). Aka robot arms that perform work at a bench at the direction/supervision of a human at a controller. You get a solution that in theory will work with any bench, maybe even ones from other mods. You get the efficiency gain of 1 pawn to many UIM's. The XP might be tricky though. If you give the remote pawn the full xp they'd normally get for working at the bench in person they'll get power leveled. So perhaps the controller would have to give a fraction of the xp... if that's possible. I think that's a rather elegant solution if it can be done. It would take some tuning to keep from being completely OP. i.e. the number of UIM's linked to one controller. Perhaps this could be a setting to be changed? Some might prefer to just use it 1 to 1 to reduce travel times while others might not care about breaking balance and have 12+ to one controller.

*edit* I just realized this also sidesteps the battle between space efficiency vs colonist mood. You could create an absolute sweat box of a workshop and then have nice fully furnished controller room for the pawn to sit in while controlling N+1 benches. Not to mention the blood/dirt that gathers around benches. This is either a godsend or truly OP depending on your perspective. I'm leaning towards the former. But maybe using the controller should reduce joy over time because it's so boring? Otherwise you could create a utopia where your crafters literally sit in a lavish dining/joy/work room, while rollers deliver beer, and only have to move to eat or sleep.

@Koala Fritz-A Storage increase that requires the use of rollers? Instead of shelving perhaps crates/skids/space container? Your pawns have to pack/unpack them to get access but pusher/pullers can deposit the contents at it's destination and send the container back? Assuming you have a return roller. Basically the goods would drop like normal and the empty container would drop out the back. If a return exists it will be carried away back from where it came. It might be tricky. Dunno.

While I agree the space thing would be nice there might be some problems. Namely you can't put a permanent structure down inside a stockpile block without removing said stockpile. And you need the permanent structure so that you can configure the puller/pusher. Otherwise, where are you going to click to set it up? The roller? The stockpile? I suppose you could have special rollers with builtin puller/pushers but then you have to worry about the direction of the roller and the direction of the integrated puller/pusher? Well I suppose it's always going to be at a 90 degree angle from the direction of the roller... maybe. But it's going to increase the number of variant build items unless I'm missing an obvious solution?

@Locuust

I was actually thinking about needing an AI when I wrote my comment, but then I thought: "Seriously? An AI for a machine that just makes sculptures?"
Maybe the machine could make the sculptures incredibly quickly, as a compensation for putting an ENTIRE (robo)BRAIN in a machine just to make ART. :P

Ninja Edit: Or the machine could be more efficent, materials-wise.

I mean somthing that I can't belive wasn't though of before, armoured in-wall rollers, if you place a in wall roller in a defence you make a weak point (The hit points of the roller is less than WOOD!)

"Underground" rollers.

Basically, rollers that can run under other objects, like conduits.

Underground Rollers or crossing rollers maybe ?? :D

Hello all, S.A.L.: Auto-Crafters has taken over automation. check out the mod and send him suggestions!
Can't wait to see what the two mods can make together!

add sensors to enable and desable conveyors and programing blocks to make a more automated factory