Let us cram metal sheets, glass, and wires into manufacturers again

[APARTHEID]

Material code is a nightmare because of all this tooing and froing between what seems to work and what definitely doesn't. While on paper 1:1 seems like a good solution it WILL create duplicates. Here's an example:

Process 1 tile = 1 bar. Process 1 bar = 1 sheet. Process 1 sheet for (I believe it’s 4?) tiles. Use one of those tiles to start again. Suddenly you have 26 bars from processing a single tile. Not good.

OR it could create the opposite effect, example:

Process 1 tile = 1 bar. Process 1 bar = 1 sheet. Process 1 sheet for 1 tile. Infer that 1 bar = 1 metal tile. That's utterly wasteful and would require like 36 metal bars for 36 metal tiles.


Honestly I'm just tired of the material system. The X naming system of creating unique alloys is, at best, gimmicky and far too open ended. Creating alloys, which takes averages of all the material, instead of adding intrinsic bonuses ACTIVELY DISCOURAGES users to create unique alloys and instead forces people to stick to making elemental. Why bother spending time making an Uqill Bohrum Cerenkite Alloy when Uqill alone is superior?
Hell why bother doing anything AT ALL when you can rob armor from security which will take all of 5 minutes, while making Uqill/Nanocarbon alloy will take 10 minutes, you'll be hacked to shit in the process and the armor that you make is not only ugly, it's worse than the one in security. This annoyance applies to almost everything in material system. You know there’s a huge problem when plasma shard as an item is stronger than anything you can make out of the forge. A fucking plasma shard.
It also doesn’t help that the stuff you can make is woefully BORING. The bow and arrow was legit the only interesting thing and afaik that’s broken now?

Sorry had to get it out of my system. But seriously now. It’s really time to scrap this system. It's been like this for what, 2 years? 3 years? How many times has it been revised? 4 times?

If we revert back, we could instead use a close ended system where combined elements would make specific unique alloys instead of this averaging system. That would simplify everything code-wise and would allow people to submit patches to have new tools/weapons without wanting to spoon out their eyes in the process. The fun experimentation end of things would be in constructing the tools with robust stats to make things like unique spears, such as having a heavy uqill spear that’s blunt but causes significant stamina damage when thrown but doesn’t go very far, or a crystal spear that causes high laceration damage but next to no stamina damage but can be thrown very far.
Doesn’t that sound so much more fulfilling?? Am I wrong here?

Eh. A man can surely dream.

I made a thread specifically about the complete lack of sheets you get out of making a custom alloy because I can't use the bones of the dead to turn Security into a BASTILLE OF DREAD