Hi all!
This week I'll show off the new Refinery and Generator enhancement upgrades, to allow autoloading, autofilling, and overclocking, as well as the changes I have made to the research system.
Refinery and Generator Enhancements
I have added research items to unlock more advanced refinery and generator functionalities. Both the basic and alloy refineries can have autoload activated on them, which will automatically load the currently selected resources when they are available and refine them, rather than having to tell each refinery to start manually. These refineries can also have overclock activated, which will reduce how much time they need to refine, but will also increase how much power they require.
Similar to autoload, the generators have been given the autofill enhancement, allowing them to automatically fill up on the fuel they use when activated.
These enhancement functionalities can be toggled on and off globally using the machine command terminal, ensuring that it still has a use once they are unlocked.
Research Overhaul
I was never too happy with how the research system worked, using abstract research points that you gain from scanning things. It wasn't too clear where the research points come from, and by the mid point of the game you had so much points that you never had to worry about having enough anymore. So I scrapped the idea of research points, and made it so that research costs resources instead. I'm a lot happier with this, as it provides a greater sense of achievement to performing the research, rather than it just being something that basically comes for free.
Another smaller change is that I have made it so you can see future research items that are yet to be unlocked by scanning resources. This way you have more of an idea of what you are working towards, when finding and scanning new resources
