Crafting Stations w/ Thrall -- Autocraft Options

[Crysis]

So this thought came to me. Expand the crafting stations that employ a thrall, to automatically craft, when possible.

This can already partially be done by setting up a queue with materials on hand.

But I’m thinking more the ability to designate a chest next to the station, to hold materials, that the thrall will utilize to craft certain things.

It’s mainly for stuff you use a huge amount of. Such as steel bars.

You drop a steel bar into the auto-craft slot of the station.
The thrall will begin auto-crafting steel bars so long as at least one of the following conditions are met:

1. Fuel is available in the station inventory or storage inventory.
2. Steel Bar materials are available in the station inventory or storage inventory.

In this case, you could add a chest called Smelter Inventory, for the station to draw from.

I’m not sure whether this crafting would still work if you were a long distance from the station itself. But even if it only worked while you were in a certain area around your base, to have it work while you were around would cut down on some of the micromanagement.

Essentially there would be one auto-craft slot per station. And a bit of immersion because it makes it seem as if the thralls are doing stuff on their own.

As a safeguard, if one of the two conditions is not met, the autocraft shuts off until you restart it. So it would not constantly run a check on the engine, if the materials ran out.

[Strider5599]

Nice suggestion for those of us that mass produce mats

[Crysis]

Yep, it’s definitely a QoL addition to the game.

But the roleplayers can look at it as an immersion thing. You command your thralls you craft steel bars. And all you have to do is dump off the raw materials every now and then.

Even better if the byproducts of a station could funnel into a nearby chest. Then you could fix on Smelter to do Iron Bars, they go to a chest, and automatically feed into the second Smelter doing Steel Bars.

If nothing else, it sort of gives the Thralls a semblance of thinking on their own. Without having to manually queue up certain things.

[Wolfrider4594]

Imo, it should be only possible with lvl 3 or named thralls.

[Crysis]

That works as well. Whatever you can do to get some automation going is fine, really.

Edit: It’d be fine even to just lock it behind T4 thralls, since most of the endgame players are going to target those for their perks anyways.

[Dragon_Huntress]

yes agreed.