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

[Cyfarfod]

...what if we made a formula for putting this stuff through the nano-processor to cook it back to bars, at least? Just spitballing.

[Sundance]

To actually properly ratio it out, all things need to be increased by multiple of 4, if we actually work backwards logically.

Why? The smallest unit that one processor could possibly take is 1 floor tile. One sheet = 4 floor tiles.
By changing it so that 1 floor tile = 1 metal bar, therefore it would take 4 metal bars to make 1 sheet.
Similarly 1 rod = 2 metal bars, and scrap/misc items can be worth whatever amount. This makes should make everything run smoothly with no confusion.

Almost. This now would mean to produce an item in the manufacturer, what would normally cost 1 bar now costs 4. To combat this, as previously stated, quantities within stuff like manufacturers would need to be increased by 4.

Also what frank touched regarding quality could factor in what amount ore would produce.

[Berrik]

Sundance Feely's idea is a good one. The only fun things that have ever come out of the material system are ants-infused bullets, erebite armor that is also immune to explosions, and soulsteel furniture.

Also that one time someone made an outfit infused with triple meth.

[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

[Dr Zoidcrab]

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

If you're putting two bars/blocks in you should get two out, losing half of the material you use to make custom alloys isn't something i'm a fan of.

[Paineframe]

Just make floortiles not be processable? I don't remember them being processable before.

Besides, is it really that bad if people can increase the amount of basic metal sheets by a bit? Metal is pretty plentiful on the station as things are. In general, it seems like a lot of troublesome and unintuitive behavior is being put in just to prevent people from duplicating common basic materials.

[Dr Zoidcrab]

I'm not going to go into details about the exploits involved but...

"is it really that bad"

Yes. Yes it is.

[Berrik]

How so?

[Superlagg]

Maybe just have a way to turn 4 floortiles back into a sheet. Or make the processors keep count of how many fractions of a unit of garbage alloy in it. Treat it like chems; assign a unit value to everything with a material and allow processors to output hunks of material with an arbitrary non-full-unit value. Like credits, but much more convoluted.

[awfulworldkid]

Is it theoretically possible to make an alloy of soulsteel and erebite that's immune to explosions by alloying other things with it? I want to see exploding, ghost-possessed spears.

[UmbraDrake]

I miss being able to do this in Robotics, it was always case of "Make more borgs" or "Reinforce the borgs I have". You had to make a conscious decision to what would be better.

Now I have to use it to just reinforce and that's boring. I have to steal bars from other sectors to make more borgs and shells, which then annoys them.

[Sundance]

I'm not going to go into details about the exploits involved but...

"is it really that bad"

Yes. Yes it is.

There's more things wrong with the current system than there is right, which is an achievement.

[poland spring]

At least let us order steel and glass or something when mining isn't around

[UmbraDrake]

At least let us order steel and glass or something when mining isn't around

Or even this. Just let us have some way of doing it if mining is asleep, dead or just non existent.

[Nnystyxx]

Materials has the same issue as TG research: if the miners are asleep/dead/not on, you're fucked and an entire gameplay element is arbitrarily locked to you and good luck ever getting any yourself. Just let us buy some materials at a premium or with a bit of randomness from traders.