Architect Archive

I've decided it's time to bring up and issue of mine ever week. I figure with all the Architects here we can get some creative critisisms as well as some feelings on them and maybe the devs can get a look at them (yeah right).

So this week my inaugural issue is Factories.

I have several irritants were factories are concerned and I'm sure you do too.

#1) I can't stand not knowing where in the process my factory is. Having no meter telling me how many units have been made since I started it is maddening.

#2) Factories are brutally slow. Iam almost willing to stop using it altogether except for items that have to be built there because I can make stuff by hand nearly3x's as fast as the factory does. Sure there is no crits in a factory but common I'm willing to take the odd hit in the making of structral modules if it will make them pop out a bit faster. 5 hours for 300 structure modules is just insane.

#3) I'm getting brutally tired of decrating those aforementioned structural modules90 at a time to make 9 walls. They need to fixthis crating issue very badly.

#4) 2 lots ? 2 lots ?!? For what reason are we penalized a lot for a factory where every othe profession is not ? We all know lots are fubar as they are right now but they can start by either making all factories 2 or ours 1. At least level the field will ya.

That's all I can think of that bothers me off the top of my head but you all are certainly welcome to add some peeves of your own to the list.

1. If you click on Options while the factory is running it opens the output hopper. Not "stop factory" just the options button itself. This lets you see where you are in the process, take out already made crates etc.

2. Agreed.

3. I wish factorys would pull from structure modules crates too. Small workaround is to leave the input hopper window open while the factory is going and babysit the factory, adding modules as the factory uses them. What I do is load the factory with enough to make one wall, start the factory, add modules till it's full (it's made 2-3 walls by the time I've finished this) then sit there and add 10 at a time till I'm out of bricks.

4. Agreed.

I wasn't aware you could open the output hopper while it's in operation ... that's definately a good thing... Yeah I know you can baby sit the input hopper but seriously when I go to make walls it's in 30 to 50 wall sets. Who wants to sit in front of a factory dropping modules in for like 2 and half hours?