Crafting
As a crewmember running about the station, it won't take long to notice that many people are constantly talking about devices such as the "lathe" or needing "more glass." These aren't the delusions of a madman, but rather productive people (or lollygagging goons) trying to maintain and upgrade the sorry hunk of metal you're residing in.
Though there may be a lack of glass, by the time you're done reading this introduction, there will hopefully be some in the Ore Silo for you to play with.
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
Autolathe
The Autolathe is a frequently encountered machine capable of performing a large amount of crafting tasks, click on the link to read more.
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.
Iron |
Glass |
Silver |
Gold |
Diamond |
Plasma |
Uranium |
Bananium |
Titanium |
Bluespace Crystals |
Plastic |
Only ores can be deposited into the ore silo directly, already processed materials like sheets or crystals must be inserted into an appropriate machine to be added back into the system.