Doctor Archive

Ok, after more testing I believe I know the answer as to the problem in using crated goods in factories.

NOTE THAT THIS IS DERIVED FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE WITH A FACTORY. I AM TRYING TO HELP PEOPLE SO PLEASE DON'T FLAME IF YOUR EXPERIENCE IS DIFFERENT. LET'S TRY TO FIND A SOLUTION THAT WILL WORK FOR EVERYONE UNTIL THE DEVS CAN FIX THE PROBLEM. PLEASE LIMIT RESPONSES TO SPECIFIC QUESTIONS OR PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WITH AS MUCH DETAIL AS POSSIBLE. PLEASE TEST MY THEORY. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WORKS!

My first run of Stim B's worked fine and I got some crates of stims. Later attempts to reuse the same schematic failed to work. One stim pack's worth of resources/crates would be used in the attempt but some of the crates would not have any resources pulled from them. I removed these and created a new schematic using these specific crates and the new schematic worked and were able to produce items from crated ingredients. When I tried to run the new schematic a second time, it did not work. I was sometimes able to get them to work by manually removing the items from their crates, but that did not work consistently so I keep experiementing to find a way to consistently make the factory work. The following is what I have discovered.

It seems that somehow a "date stamp" gets placed on crates generated from a factory run. This "stamp" is in no way detectable by the crafter but it does get embedded in schematics that are made using factory created parts and the factory CAN SEE IT and LOOKS FOR IT. It also seems that this "date stamp" gets reset everytime you remove and reinsert a schematic into a factory. If the "date stamp" is different on a crate in the ingredient hopper, then even though the crated items have the same serial number, the factory sees them as different components and refuses to use them!

This seems to be the reason people report that factories cannot pull from crates. It's not that the factory can't pull from crates in the ingredient hopper. It's that it sees that crate as an incorrect component and so it doesn't even try to pull an ingredient from that crate.

So if you have a schematic that can make 1000 Biological Effect Controller's (BEC's) and you only use it to run 200. Then you remove the schematic and reinsert it later to make more BEC's, the new batch of BEC's WILL NOT BE IDENTICAL to the first batch of BEC's, EVEN THOUGH THEY SHARE THE SAME SERIAL NUMBER! And since the crated items have the same name (derived from their schematic) and serial numbers, there is NO WAY TO TELL WHICH CRATES WERE CREATED IN THE FIRST AND SECOND RUNS! Any schematic made using the first batch of BEC's will not work with this second run of BEC's! Again, this gives the illusion that the factory is broken and unable to pull from crates. It doesn't pull from the crates because it doesn't see the crated items from the second run as being valid components!

To avoid this problem, USE SCHEMATICS FOR SUBCOMPONENTS ONLY ONCE! If you have left over uses on the schematic, remove and destroy it or load more materials into the ingredient hopper to finish the run. If you pull the schematic out BE SURE TO DESTROY IT. Also, BE SURE TO CHANGE THE NAME OF THE ITEM so that you can easily differentiate between different crates (for example: I use BEC.A for my first schematic of BEC's and BEC.B for my second etc etc.) Now you are certain that your subcomponents are identical and you can differentiate them by their unique names. Use these to make the final schematic.

for example, to create Stim B's:

-Create a schematic for 205 BEC's and name it BEC.A

-Use the schematic in the factory and put in 1230 organics and 1230 inorganics to create 205 BEC.A in 5 crates

-Pull the BEC's from the output hopper and stash them away

-Create a schematic for 205 LS's and name it LS.A

-Use the schematic in the factory and put in 1230 organics and 1230 inorganics to create 205 LS.A in 5 crates

-Pull the LS's from the output hopper and stash them away

-Create a schematic for 205 CRDM's and name it CRDM.A

-Use the schematic in the factory and put in 1640 organics and 1640 chems to create 205 CRDM.A in 5 crates

-Pull the CRDM's from the output hopper and stash them away

-Take the three crates of 5 (BEC.A's, LS.A's and CRDM.A's). Remove them from the crate one at a time and use them to create a stim B schematic. Five experimentations should result in at least one schematic-worthy stim B. ( Name the schematic uniquely. I use a naming convention, L.StimB.Uxxx.Hyyy.Mzzz, where xxx is the number of uses, yyy if the healing rating and zzz is the minimum medicice use skill requierd. Describing it in this manner makes it easier to sell on the bazaar)

-Take the new schematic and put it in the factory

-Place all of the BEC.A's, LS.A's and CRDM.A's and the necessary organics and inorganics to completely use up this stim B schematic and run it.

Left overs from previous runs should be segregated and used for crafting at a crafting station and never used for creating factory schematics. It's best to plan your factory runs so that you create just enough subcomponents for one run of the finalproduct to avoid confusion and inventory clutter.