Mini Mega Factory
About
This is a new iteration on the "shrinker" mechanic used in Assembly Planter. It's an attempt to fix the biggest issues the "shrinker" has.
There isn't that much content in this version as it is just a prototype. There is currently no progression system at all, the current goal is just to get as many resources as possible and have fun exploring the new miniaturization mechanic.
HOW TO PLAY
The building menu on the right allows you to place buildings. When you hover over a building it will show you how much it costs, what type of floors it can be built on and it's outputs / required inputs per second.
The top left of your screen shows you what resources you currently have.
1. place a wood cutter on a free dirt or grass field. You will notice a purple rectangle appearing around the machine. Any items transported outside this rectangle will be output into your inventory. The purple rectangle will always strech out around all the buildings.
2. Place more dirt diggers and wood cutters in a way that they can all move their outputs outside the purple square. If you made a mistake while building drag your mouse around buildings to select them. then rightclick them and press the delete button. This will remove the buildings and refund their cost.
You can also use belts to move items from the outputs of the machines to the edge of the purple square.
3. You will quickly run out of space to build. this is where miniaturization comes in. select a bunch of machines that you want to miniaturize, right click and press miniaturize. This will turn the whole setup of machines into a single machine that has the functionality of the whole setup it contains.
This is incredibly powerful and can save a lot of space. However custom machines like that can only run at a maximum of 50%. So everytime you miniaturize a machine you trade space for cost efficiency.
More instances of the newly created machine can now be built through the building menu like any other machine.
4. In the building menu custom machines also have an edit button. Pressing this will allow you to enter the previously built machine and edit it. This works quite similar to building in the top level with a few differences:
- All costs are multiplied by the number of instances of the machine that you are editing, that are currently placed in the world.
- Changes will immediately affect all instances of this machie in the world.
- Buildings can take inputs from outside the current machine. Any building that has a non output side next to the purple square will take all of it's required resources that it can't get anywhere else from the outside. These inputs are added to the inputs of the machine you're editing.
Currently there is no visualization for these input connections. If the inputs and outputs of your machine aren't what you'd expect them to be it's likely because a machine has an input connection you're not seeing. Any non output side that is right next to the side of the purple square will function as such an input connection.
Press escape or space to return to the top level.
I hope this information gets you started. The rest you'll have to figure out by yourself. Or you can ask on the Discord
One of the main goals of this prototype was to make the miniaturization more intuitive than it was in Assembly Planter. Let me know if I succeeded.