A few fun ideas for more automation

[Ethical Lune]

Heyo, love the game and I enjoy the automation aspect but personally I'd like to see more of that stuff so I figured I'd drop a few ideas for some fun simple automation stuff here;


Item Receptacle
A block which takes any item that gets dropped on it and adds it to its inventory which can be accessed like a chest by the player.

Item Packer
A block which will siphon items from an adjacent Item Receptacle and whenever it has 10 of any same resource it sends it out in a wooden resource box on any adjacent conveyor belts.

Automated Resource Cart
A non-drivable cart moving at a reduced speed which only accepts resource boxes, once filled up to whichever maximum number of boxes it will automatically go from its starting station towards the end station where it will remain until emptied, once emptied it will return to the starting station.

Starting and End Stations
Two separate blocks which are placed at the end of regular railroad tracks to indicate where the resource cart stays to receive goods and where it goes to await unloading.

Box Loader Crane
A special crane similar to the regular crane which only moves resource boxes and only does so when adjacent to both a resource box and a parked resource cart, meaning it will only load the cart up when it's actually there instead of just dropping the boxes on the ground, it is also the only crane which can unload filled resource carts when it's rotated to face the cart.

Farmer's Little Helper
A small advanced later-game bot which roams a large area and slowly harvests grown plants one at a time and then re-plants the seed the harvested plant drops in the same spot, once no more harvestable plants are detected it will return to its station and deposit all of the plants into the station container which can be accessed like a chest by the player, the station can also push out the harvested plants behind it if a conveyor belt is placed in the adjacent spot(or perhaps the bot could instead choose to deposit into a nearby Item Receptacle instead of the bot station having its own container).

Additionally ore deposits would ideally have infinite resources but take much longer to drill ores out of, this would balance everything out nicely and at the same time allow the player to set up permanent factories.

[Thrawn]

I like the farmer bot idea but it seems too powerful. Maybe it can only have one slot and if you put a watering can in it, it will water. If you put a stack of seeds in it, it will plant. And if you put a hoe in it, it will harvest crops. (Or maybe you put the tools/seeds into a station slot.) And of course nothing prevents you from having more than one farming bot but they shouldn't be cheap.

I would like a simpler quality of life improvement: increase the range from which things can pull. Right now a box has to be right next to the workbench/anvil (and diagonals don't count). We have a large resource box but only a few things have access to it. I'd love for tables to pick up from a few more tiles away.

[Carambar]

Originally posted by Thrawn:

I like the farmer bot idea but it seems too powerful.

I don't quite understand the use of "powerful" in your answer.

This bot would be *as said by the OP* an advanced late-game machine, which furthermore wudnt hold any combat value. If anything, what OP described is just an idea of how the game could and SHOULD actually let us progress towards automation!

Edit: Forgot to point out that I found those ideas very interesting.

Also agree with Thrawn that the range at which chests currently work towards crafting stations. Need much MUCH more range.....

[Necrosian]

In my opinion this game needs more early game automation. Automation starts far too late to me at the moment.

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by Carambar:

Originally posted by Thrawn:

I like the farmer bot idea but it seems too powerful.

I don't quite understand the use of "powerful" in your answer

Simply that the bot would take over gardening entirely. Despite some helper items, this game ISN'T about automation, thankfully. It's like having a bot that does all the fishing for you. Can they do it? Sure. Should they? No.

[Carambar]

Originally posted by Thrawn:

Simply that the bot would take over gardening entirely. Despite some helper items, this game ISN'T about automation, thankfully. It's like having a bot that does all the fishing for you. Can they do it? Sure. Should they? No.

Why would one need a bot for fishing when a simple fishing net made of wood / planks and some fiber would do as much? It's only about what the devs are willing to spend their time on and their vision on the game as a whole.

Would it be too much to have a gardener bot as OP described as a highly late game reward for going deep into the game's content, saving me the recurence of planting hundreads of seeds after I have alrdy planted thousands and thousands? I wudn't think so.

But I also understand and respect your reasoning.

Will the devs think it is a good idea is another story and for them to judge :-)

I also liked the Mine Carts upgrades that OP suggested. It would make a great QoL and favor immersion with setting up stations and such; lots of creativity involved!

PS: Automated farms alrdy exist in the current state of the game, it just kind of look anti climatic with the drills and all that machinery; imo.

[Thrawn]

Originally posted by Carambar:

Would it be too much to have a gardener bot as OP described as a highly late game reward for going deep into the game's content, saving me the recurence of planting hundreads of seeds after I have alrdy planted thousands? I don't think so.

Honestly, I already thought it would be nice to have a planter of some sort that lets you put down a 3x3 grid of seeds in one click, like how some hoes picks up in 3x3. We disagree on the bot but to each their own.

[Carambar]

Originally posted by Thrawn:

Honestly, I already thought it would be nice to have a planter of some sort that lets you put down a 3x3 grid of seeds in one click, like how some hoes picks up in 3x3. We disagree on the bot but to each their own.

Oh that would be neat too! We fixated so much on the bot itself, when the idea would only be a QoL towards gardening as a whole. It could be a seed pouch, a gardening bot, an upgraded sprinkler with gardening tools implemented; and so forth... Plenty of possibilities in this aspect!

[Carambar]

I was super excited when I reached Scarlet Age and discovered the Automation. Sadly nothing yet has brougth back this feeling of excitement; the Galaxite was super underwhelming and had nothing exciting. Apart from the karts that while awesome on paper, ended up being awful in practice...

Hope we get some better stuff to fill in the gaps cos the updates seem kind of incomplete crafting wise; something else than better gear with better stats. We've had vehicules to navigate the new areas but nothing to bring back home with us. (Portals excluded; Portals are amazing.)

Most of OPs suggestion are cool ideas that could help with the lack of crafting options upon reaching Galaxite.