Shared R&D Materials Pool

[ProperPants]

 

This is probably too nit-picky for anyone to actually do anything, but maybe I'll convince someone. R&D has three machines (protolathe, autolathe, circuit imprinter) that can use fractions of materials. It nags at me to see that I need some gold or silver to imprint one circuit, and then end up stuck with 0.5 of that material stuck in the imprinter forever. I propose to make it so that if the three machines have Bluespace Matter Bins, they'll have a shared materials pool. Doesn't that fit the magic of Bluespace? There'd be no worry about which machine uses what, ever. I don't know anything about coding, but it could be something along the lines of "if two or more machines have only Bluespace Matter Bins and are within X tiles of each other, then they share materials". This could also allow Robotics to share materials with R&D if the range is far enough - the days of arguing over division of materials would be gone. I can see this being a processing nightmare if someone decides to upgrade all the Hydroponics trays to Bluespace. Maybe it could be hard coded that Hydroponics trays can't share materials. I don't know if anyone cares as much as I do about the fractional materials, but the sharing between R&D and Robotics could be nice. Let me know if this seems feasible, and feel free to modify the idea in any way you see fit if you think that'll make it more likely to happen.

 

Edited some grammar

 

[Holyass]

I like this, so the wars of the materials will be over in research department, and i think we can edit research a small bit too to house a small room by it self that holds all the meterials that links up to R&D and Roboticist and "maybe" Xenobiologist.

[davidchan]

 

I've always wondered why there isn't a 'public' Science division disposal bin/outlet in the main hallway that would allow Cargo to deliver items directly to science and allow them to sort/fight over materials as needed. Bonus points if the chute could recognize the materials being sent and ping the science consoles accordingly.

 

Also, why the hell would xenobio's need materials? Chem lab prints plasma.