Materials and machines

From Gardens wiki

Some goods are made of a material in a form: metal as an ingot, a plate, a rod or wire; stone as a block or crushed to grit. A material has properties from 0 to 1. Later recipes can ask for "any wire with conductivity at least 0.5" instead of one named good.

Materials

Goods with a material and a form

The forms a good can take: ore, block, crushed, dust, ingot, plate, beam, rod, wire, fine wire, gear, crystal, wafer, component (not every one is used yet).

Processes

A recipe with no process is made by hand in the Workshop, at once. Every other process is machine work: it takes time, and only a machine that does that process, at the recipe's tier or higher, can run it.

Machines

A machine is a building that works timed recipes, one at a time for all its copies: you pick the recipe under its tab's buttons. A run starts only when its outputs will fit, takes its inputs at once, and adds its outputs when it ends. It runs slower when power is short and stops with none. If its outputs no longer fit when a run ends, the run waits, whole, until there is room. Machines keep working while you are away, just as they would with the game open.

Each machine you own has a row under its tab's buttons (Mining; the Arcana tab for Arcana's machines). The first line says what it is making (a batch in → out, and its time), the risk of an infusion, and what it is doing in words (running, starting, no input, no mana, no essence, output full, no power, off, research locked, wrong tier), with how far along the run is and the time left. The second line says what a batch needs (each with ✓, or ✕ and have / need) while it waits to start, its rate at full work, the power it draws (and the share supplied when power is short), the mana it draws and takes a batch, and any automation rules on it (target and priority). The tooltip says the same at more length.

Machine recipes

Converters

Buildings that turn one good into another all the time (the Smelter, the Greenhouse, the Sabatier plant and the rest) follow three rules:

• Without an input they make nothing. Short of one, they work at what the store holds, and settle at the rate it comes in.
• When all their outputs are full, they take no input.
• With two or more outputs, they go on while any output has room.

The buildings that burn a good for power (the Coal generator, the Biogas plant, the Fusion and Antimatter reactors) and the Mycelial network, which makes mana, follow the same rules: no fuel, no power (or mana), and short of fuel only the share it allows. When a store can't cover everyone, it goes in this order: a building's upkeep first (it keeps working while its store holds any), then power (these generators; one switched off takes nothing), then ordinary production (the other converters, and machines), then automated work (runs an automation rule starts). Within one step, everyone shares alike; a machine's run leaves a tick of what the steps before it need. The Mycelial network takes nothing while the mana store is full.