Conveyor belts and similar logistics

[Eliminioa]

I'm actually surprised I couldn't find this suggestion on the forums, but a conveyor belt system with item insertion/removal from manufacture and storage building inventories would be really cool. I'm thinking Factorio-style logistics, though obviously not as complex. Coming from Factorio and similar games, the constant need to be manufacturing even the lowest-level ingredients (ingots, rope, rubber, etc.) is kinda frustrating, and it'd be nice if you could eventually reach a point where those things can be mostly automated. It could be difficult to balance this system with higher-level items, so maybe some kind of complexity cap would be needed, but making some mechanical components occasionally wouldn't be too bad. In the same vein, having a sorter with conveyors would make it easier to keep your storage organized and just have a dump crate that gets sorted automatically.

I would suggest liquid logistics here too, but I saw that on the Trello, so hopefully that'll come at some point. Thanks!

[ai_enabled]

Hello!

There are two problems with the Factorio-style automation approach. The game balance and the server optimization. I will not elaborate regarding the game design point of view (@Lurler, the game designer, can if he gets extra time). Regarding the second, we need to ensure the game server can run 100% smoothly on average server hardware while hosting several hundreds of online playersΓÇöwith many more in offline and over a thousand of land claims with dozens of active structures each. Factorio-style automation increases the server load even while players are offline, making it tough to optimize. That's just the technical challenge that we need to keep in mind when designing the game.
It's a great idea for the mod though (useful for a small server/single-player).

Regards!