Manufacturing
All factory buildings use manufacturing lines to produce commodities. Factory buildings have one manufacturing line per level, each manufacturing line being able to produce its own product independently.
The manufacturing lines of a building can be configured using the "City" window (default F10). It is also possible to configure the manufacturing lines of new buildings at the time of placement, using the options at the bottom of the construction window.
Options
Each manufacturing line has a number of options to control what and how it should work.
Manufacturing Process
The dropdown allows the selection of what commodity the manufacturing line should produce.
For most non-factory buildings the only choice is technology.
Employ Citizen
Each manufacturing line can employ a citizen by checking the "Employ Citizen" checkbox. This will cause citizens from the city to periodically run the manufacturing line.
The rate at which a citizen runs the job depends on the income tax of the empire, and the ratio of productive citizens versus the number of jobs in the city.
Only when this option is checked does the manufacturing line act as a job in the city, so it is possibly to uncheck unneeded manufacturing lines in order to not waste productive citizens. For more information about jobs usage numbers, see jobs utilization.
Additionally while the chechbox is unchecked, avatars that are not in the chain of command over the city can't run the job manually.
Minimum Quality
Establishes the minimum quality of commodities used in the manufacturing process. Commodities of lower quality than the selected minimum will be ignored when fetching needed commodities for the manufacturing line.
The quality of tools and environmental factors does not matter, since they have no baring on the quality of the end product.
This option does not affect manufacturing processes that don't consume commodities. For example mining processes at mines, farming at a farm, or refining gasses from the atmosphere at a refinery.
Operation
To view the progress of a manufacturing line or operate it manually.
Components and Tools
The first box lists all the commodities that will be consumed when the manufacturing line is run. The second box list all the tools or other factors that are required, speedup or increase yield of the run. Tools may take durability damage when used.
Fetch and Run
Fetch will take needed commodities from the city's inventory and store them in the manufacturing line. Tools are not fetched, they are first used when the manufacturing line is run.
Run will first attemt to fetch any missing commodities, meaning that using the "Fetch" button is not actually nessasary. If all needed commodities are in the manufacturing line, a check is then made for required tools and environmental factors, on success the process is started.
Output
The manufacturing line displays a message to indicate how the last run of the manufacturing line went. It shows the quality and quantity of the commodities produced.
Can also display warnings about being unable to spawn a spacecraft or vehicle, failed patent prototypes, or obsolete discarding of product.