Manufacture until X

[von_Hupfburg]

I love the recent quality of life update's changes to production queues.

 

My suggestion would be a third option beyond Manufacture X times and Keep manufacturing forever which would be Manufacture until X is reached.

For example, by setting your Metal Refinery to Manufacture until 2000 kg Steel would have Duplicants stop manufacturing when you have 2000 kg or more.

However, if you construct two Steel Doors (500 kg Steel each), your Duplicants would resume work and manufacture another 10 batches of Steel to get you back to 2000 kg.

 

I think this would be great for large bases, where you sometimes lose track of what you set on Forever and wouldn't result in high unused stockpiles of manufactured materials that I seem to be sometimes running into.

 

This is especially a big problem with Medicine. I sometimes get huge stockpiles of it before I realize that I left it on Forever.

It would also save a lot of manpower 'wasted' on manufacturing something that you have a large stock of already and redirect Duplcants to more useful or urgent tasks.

 

EDIT: I know you could automate this. I'm saying this would be better as a base feature.

[snoozer]

IMO smart storage container are already doing that. Just set the desired amount and connect it to a metal refinery.

[SharraShimada]

How does the refinery know how much you have in storage? 

And, as snoozer stated, thats what smart compactors are for. Build one, set it to the desired amount of material, build a not gate, input tot the compactor, output to the refinery (or any other machine) and set it ti infinite. The machine will shut down, when the compactor gives the signal.

[Sasza22]

Well we can use smart compactors to turn off the machine. But we can`t use them to trun off one recipie. Imagine you want 5t of steel available and when reached switch to refining gold. It`s not doable unless we build 2 smelters.

[Elwyndir]

Yeah, and we need to be able to prioritize. I want my duplicants cook liceloaf before Mush bar but they just swap between this two recipes.

[DesktopMan]

The game already knows how much you have available of everything, so a "manufacture until x is available" would absolutely be possible. That way you wouldn't have to use multiple refineries etc.

[LeftyRighty]

On 12/16/2018 at 8:01 PM, DesktopMan said:

The game already knows how much you have available of everything, so a "manufacture until x is available" would absolutely be possible. That way you wouldn't have to use multiple refineries etc.

The point isn't that the game doesn't know, but more that if you could just access that information in the production machines you're sidestepping a whole layer (the automation between the producer and the storage)... ONI being a game about layers of systems that the player needs to implement as they see fit. By having the producers access the global inventory numbers you've also limiting what the nutjobs veteran batsheeet builders er... special ONI players can do with it