Very interesting changes, I don't have a good handle yet on what it all means in real terms...
Do overall spacecraft material costs and build times remain similar, with the load now put on module manufacture instead of spacecraft assembly? Are material costs now radically different too, are their proportions changed?
Even the whisper of an item designer is exciting. I hope in future it will be possible to create buildings and spacecraft with much lower data footprints just by telling them to load items (like furniture) in specified places, rather than repeating meshes everywhere in the ship/building design.
The organ situation is a nice test-case for something that could make the item designer attractively flexible. As well as being able to make individual organs, it would be nice if a butcher could produce "Offal: 10/100/1000 pack". If you then wanted to place an organ as a decoration, or if a ship design wanted to grab an organ model to place in a location, you could specify which exact organ model you wanted at the point of placing (or in the ship blueprint). i.e. You have a 10 pack of organs, and you place 10 decorative items in your room using any 10 organ models for which you have the blueprint. Obviously, this only applies to items with the same stats - not sure if organs do. But items like "Furniture: 10 pack" obviously would.
Do overall spacecraft material costs and build times remain similar, with the load now put on module manufacture instead of spacecraft assembly? Are material costs now radically different too, are their proportions changed?
Even the whisper of an item designer is exciting. I hope in future it will be possible to create buildings and spacecraft with much lower data footprints just by telling them to load items (like furniture) in specified places, rather than repeating meshes everywhere in the ship/building design.
The organ situation is a nice test-case for something that could make the item designer attractively flexible. As well as being able to make individual organs, it would be nice if a butcher could produce "Offal: 10/100/1000 pack". If you then wanted to place an organ as a decoration, or if a ship design wanted to grab an organ model to place in a location, you could specify which exact organ model you wanted at the point of placing (or in the ship blueprint). i.e. You have a 10 pack of organs, and you place 10 decorative items in your room using any 10 organ models for which you have the blueprint. Obviously, this only applies to items with the same stats - not sure if organs do. But items like "Furniture: 10 pack" obviously would.