autocrafter: replacement with the same item should remain in the main inventory

[fluxionary]

currently, all replacements are placed in the output inventory, requiring extra machinery to inject the item back into the main inventory for repeated crafting. an example is e.g. from farming: crafting flour from wheat and a mortar and pestle. it'd be nice if the mortar and pestle remained in the input inventory after the crafting.

[S-S-X]

replacements should go into output inventory, for example to get replacements out.

[OgelGames]

It should be both, with a button to switch it.

[SwissalpS]

It should be both, with a button to switch it.

I don't like this idea.
Players will also want a digilines command to switch it.
Plus it would make the code, we only just added, for detecting space for these items, more complicated and less manageable.
As I understand it, this would not only simply switch between targets but also require inspection of which items to send to which inventory.

It's something, that can easily be solved in-game with a sorting tube, that I don't think it's worth the amount of code to maintain.
Besides now there would be one less thing to solve in-game. Autocrafters are already considered, by some, as OP the way they are.

[fluxionary]

i omitted a very important condition in my request. this should only apply to replacements which replace the item with itself. items which are consumed or transformed should continue to go to the output inventory.

[SwissalpS]

I omitted a very important condition in my request. this should only apply to replacements which replace the item with itself. Items which are consumed or transformed should continue to go to the output inventory.

Thanks for elaborating.
It was part of my reasoning against implementing this issue's suggestion:

As I understand it, this would not only simply switch between targets but also require inspection of which items to send to which inventory.

This adds at least two more levels of complexity to the code. For something that can be solved with a trivial in-game element: sorting tube at injector's exit side.

[OgelGames]

As I understand it, this would not only simply switch between targets but also require inspection of which items to send to which inventory.

It's simpler than that, because get_craft_result returns the replacements separate from the result. All you would need to do is decide which list to put the decremented_input items in, no inspection of items required.

pipeworks/autocrafter.lua

Line 29 in ebe2331

local output, decremented_input = minetest.get_craft_result({method = "normal", width = 3, items = recipe})

[S-S-X]

Most important thing I see is this:

It's something, that can easily be solved in-game with a sorting tube, that I don't think it's worth the amount of code to maintain.
Besides now there would be one less thing to solve in-game. Autocrafters are already considered, by some, as OP the way they are.

Especially this part:

there would be one less thing to solve in-game

Implementing full automation for everything in code is interesting yes but mostly for mod developer. For players it will unfortunately take away challenges and content. This is main reason why I see this as a downgrade instead of upgrade.

[fluxionary]

how about an argument for consistency w/ the game engine? if an item in a crafting grid is replaced with itself, it stays in the crafting grid. you don't have to keep moving it back from your main inventory into the grid.

[FeXoR-o-Illuria]

"it stays in the crafting grid" This is a horrible behavior in the first place IMO because one manually needs to remove that item from the crafting grid to e.g. not lose it on next death.

IMO those "replace with same" recipes are mostly an annoyance and don't add much to the game.
(And even many of those with containers IMO like bottled/canned/... stuff.
Yes, buckets kind-of make sense to me - then again a wooden bucket would also do - and if that would be expended on use players won't be terribly outraged I guess)

If you want more elaborate processing either add expendable material or special nodes/builds to do the processing outside the crafting grid.