Manufacturing Schematic

In order to manufacture items in bulk using a factory, a crafter must first craft an item that will be used as the base to manufacture the other items. This is a Manufacturing Schematic. You must use a crafting station to get the option to make a schematic. Assemble the item like normal, experiment if needed, and then click on Manufacturing Schematic. This will take you to a page that asks for how many items to produce. This number can be from 1-1000. Once that number of items have been made, the factory will stop and the schematic will be destroyed. Click okay, and you will have a schematic in your datapad. Note it is in the "Data" tab, not in the schematics tab.

Each ingredient used in the manufacturing schmeatic must be the same for the factory run, meaning the exact resource name (spawn) must be the same, and any components must have the same serial number. Put these identical ingredients into the Input Hopper, insert the schematic, and activate the factory. All of these options are available in "4)Other" from the factory's radial menu.

Factories require power and maintenance in order to function, just like harvesters. While they will not use credits when not manufacturing items, they will need hourly maintenance like any other structure. If a factory runs out of power or credits, it will stop manufacturing items.

If any of the ingredients runs out, the factory will stop and will email you to let you know it ran out of ingredients. If the schematic runs out, the factory will stop and will email you as well. The only time the factory doesn't email you is if it runs out of power or credits. Like other structures, however, you will get an email to say that maintenance was auto-paid if the factory goes unmaintained long enough. This will not start the factory again.

While a factory is running, you may see its progress simply by examining it. You will see how many seconds it takes for each item, and how many have been crafted since the factory was started. To examine the output hopper, simply click on "Options." You can even pick up items that have been finished without having to stop production.

Both the input hopper and output hopper have a capacity of 100 items. Be sure that you have room in your output hopper for your production line, though, or the factory will stop once it reaches capacity. Some players use factories for a fast and easily-placed storage structure. While it has the same maintance as a large house, each factory takes up only 1 lot.