Crafting with multiple resource stacks

Would it be possible to further overhaul the crafting mechanic and introduce a method that enables multiple items to be crafted using stacks of resources? There was an improvement with this release tying the inventory to the crafting table, but there's still far too much time lost in producing goods when you have to click the recipe every single time to produce one item.

What I'm suggesting is that if you put say 53 ingots on to the crafting table alongside 53 pieces of coal with your smithing hammer + sheet mold - the outcome should allow you to select a recipe, hit craft and then the menu should produce a "How many of this item would you like to produce?" notification which can be entered to the upper limit of that particular recipe. In this example if we were making iron sheets, the popup would allow you to make between 1 and 17 sheets (3 ingots, 1 coal, smiths hammer and sheet mold.) Once you hit OK after scaling to 17 in this example (whilst maintaining a cancel button to back out) then you would be left with 17 iron sheets, 36 coal and a hammer that has been dealt 17 loss points of durability + the sheet mold. If in the instance the hammer has 16 points of durability left, it would craft the 16 sheets and notify the user that the hammer is broken and the full output was not met.

The reasoning behind suggesting this is that crafting takes far too long with the current process and involves wayyyy too much tedious clicking to get anything done in a timely fashion, especially when mass resources are involved to make a large number of products in any one go. Enabling stack use in recipes would dramatically reduce this.

A 'Make last' option would also be a good stop gap for the time being if this were to be worked on for future releases, so that only one click is involved, instead of having to click the recipe, hit craft and rinse and repeat over and over again.

 

And how long do you think it should take to make each item? Surely one would not produce say.. 20 sheets of metal instantly.

 

You could put a time to live/countdown on each instance of the craft, sure. What I'm trying to say that should be avoided is the constant clicking to do something when it could be streamlined in to all of 2 clicks, saving you clicking 34 times. Some people may enjoy that and it can still be done 'manually,' but for those who prefer to keep the cartilage in their knuckles from deteriorating, I think it's a necessity. The production times as they stand are dependent on how fast you can click the recipe then click craft, and your lag to the server. There is no "timer" on the craft, it's instantaneous as is.

I know this isn't UO, but the "make last" trigger was a feature of crafting.

 

I would enjoy a "make last" button that would simply add the same materials to the table as the last item you crafted and then craft it again... all in one click. It would still require you to be at the computer to make each piece as opposed to having a queue type system that would allow you to set up a run of sheets to make, and then go watch tv. I think that's sort of what the Devs are trying to avoid.

I doubt they will let us add mat stacks to produce multiple items simultaneously either. Perhaps if the craft animation time would scale to the number of similar items being made in one session... that might be a viable option. But that would be similar to the queue type system really so likely not going to happen.

The new craft window is certainly an improvement over the previous version, but it could still use some polish and more improvements for sure. If you are looking for a way to eliminate mouse clicks (to save your fingers) without removing the crafting time element... I believe the "make last" button would be a wonderful solution that they might give us.

Personally, I would also like to be able to select an item from my recipe book (maybe double clicking it to "select" it) and have all the ingredients populated from my inventory to the table. If something requires lesser refined items that I don't have made yet, it doesn't work... or perhaps turns to the page in my book to the recipe of the missing part? I know these types of things would make the crafting code more complex. But if these types of changes make their way in, it would make crafting a little easier on our knuckles/wrists.

 

I've not tried crafting yet in this release, but hasn't it long been the case that dbl-clicking on a recipe auto-populates the craft window and places any previously crafted item in inventory. Granted you still have to hit CRAFT but it does reduce mousing around.

 

Now we has two windows when working a crafting bench if they added a third and made so the crafted products was placed there.
Then would have click recipe click craft repeat and then in the end take from the 3rd window

 

I might argue that the problem here is that the game requires mass production if you want to survive as a crafter. I'd rather see a system where you craft a tenth as many objects, but each object allows for ten times as much interaction.

 

There is a really nice feature that you do not have to click for every step you take to get somewhere, in fact you can hit NumLock & keep running till you hit an obstacle.

Crafting should be the same, option to set max number crafted and either stop when you teach that or hit a wall of empty resources. The time would be the same as doing it manually. It should not be necessary to use ghostmouse or other macro tool to do it for me when the feature should be included.