Crafting
The most common use for materials is crafting, almost every material has at least one crafting recipe associated with it, and if it doesn't, then it's probably junk.
Crafting Methods
In Hand
By holding a piece (or stack) of material in your hand, a menu will appear showing you a variety of things you can craft using that item. Optionally, if the item can be stacked, multiples will be shown as well.
There are few advantages to crafting by hand, but it's still important to know how, here's why:
- Some items can only be crafted in hand and not by any other method
- Fabricators are not always readily accessible and hand crafting can be done anywhere as long as you are standing.
Fabrication
Instead of crafting items in your hand like a heathen, you can opt to place that material into an Autolathe and interact with it to show a crafting interface.
Crafting using a fabricator has several advantages:
- Wider variety of recipes available to craft
- Can craft items using more than one material
- Can craft multiples of any item even if they don't stack
Ore Silo
The Ore Silo acts as a critical component of the ship's economy. At the beginning of the round, all Protolathes and Autolathes, among several other devices, are linked to the Ore Silo located inside the station's vault. Linked devices are able to draw from this resource pool, draining it and adding to it when resources are inserted via an appropriate machine.