A Factory Ship Concept

[Thexare]

Right, this was suggested ages ago and it was rejected then. However, the popularity of POBs makes me think it could work now. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, this would help a lot with an RP plan of mine, but I think it could help many other factions too.

Basically, the idea's a Factory/Refinery module slot for specific ship classes. Prison Liner, Salvager, Hegemon, etc. Large ships that logically could be refitted with the necessary life support expansions and heavy machinery needed. Maybe several distinct factories, for different commodities and items, maybe rely on commands, ID checks (no Vengeance-building factory for Rogues), and material lists to choose what you make. I don't know which would be better/easier to impliment.

Basically it'd work the same as a POB factory, but rather than producing cloaks, jumpdrives, and docking bays, it would make fighter/bomber equipment, ammunition, and commodities.

(Incidentally, I'd love to see a commodity factory added to POBs if/when they return. Gun factories! Medicinal research facilities!)

So you feed the factory a bunch of Ship Hull Panels and metals, and eventually it gets transformed into Heavy Armor 2. . Or a Junker reprocessing plant that takes scrap from an ongoing salvage operation to make more guns, shields, and ammo (somewhat randomly, I would imagine)

Or what about on-the-spot ore and fuel refining? Instead of taking your ore to its very few (but valuable) sell points, you can refine it in your ship (for balance reasons, getting more units of refined metal than raw ore) and export it in your own ship or a convoy. Probably less profitable than selling the raw ore under the current system, but often more logical in-RP and a good way to let people go somewhere else for a change of pace.

I don't believe an extra cargo capacity penalty would be needed for this, because the cargo needed to produce the items is already cutting into your trade capacity. It would have to be set to not run planetside, which could be easily justified in-RP by saying that the equipment and techniques require low- or zero-gravity environments for proper use.

Since the materials needed would usually come from several different places, this would also encourage would-be factory owners to hire freelancers and other traders to deliver things so they don't have ot constantly run all over Sirius for the items they're after, much like the current(ly-disabled) POB system does.

Because a lot of the items would result in using more cargo after production than before (again, for price balance reasons and to make this potentially viable for income), a system akin to the Mining Mod's "fill selected target" would probably also be very useful. I guess you'd just put production on hold when the hold is full.

I'm sure I'm missing something that makes this a terrible idea, but eh. Someone will point it out.


And while I'm thinking of controversial ideas, lemme just throw this out there... Codename production.

Right now, codename guns have no basis in RP. Why not use them to create some? Let these factory modules produce them - don't make it cheap, maybe it needs two full Prison Liner holds for one (if you can't do gradual consumption, then have each load build a component part, then combine the two) That gives weapon dealers that are interested in more RP a chance to properly do it and have it supported by the game mechanics.