Build from any suitable material

[lostminds]

In short: Allow new selectable building material "any", like "any ore", "any refined metal" etc. That lets dupes use any matching material to build the thing instead of a specific one.

When building new things you also have to pick what material to build the thing with, for example what type of metal ore, metal or type of stone. The game then (I think) suggests the material you have the most of as the default, which means you don't need to understand or think about the choice of building material. This made the whole system a little confusing for me initially as I didn't understand you could/should pick materials as you usually only have one material to start out with.

I only realized this when I ran into a problem I'm sure many other have as well. You run out of your main material (say copper ore) but have some other suitable material (say iron ore). You start building some pipes or wires and the game therefore defaults to building these with iron ore (without you noticing). After a while you wonder why the wire isn't being built and realize it's still waiting for iron ore even though you now have tons of copper ore. So you have to cancel the construction and build it again.

In some cases you might want to pick a specific material, but usually not, and especially not to begin with. So I'd suggest adding a new default building material option that lets the dupes build the thing with any matching material. For example any ore, any stone etc etc depending on what materials can be used for the particular building.

[Sasza22]

I could use it a lot. Especially later in the game when you forget to switch out of sandstone ladders and dupes keep running back to base instead of using the bajilion tons of igneous laying around.

[Soul-Burn]

At the very least, a cool option would be to have the storage showing the top item stored, and "..." if there's more. Or just "..." if it's a mix of many things. Would make it easier to see and remember what's where.

Another way, which might be confusing, would be to augment the look of the container according to what you choose to put in it.