Auto building projector | Keen Software House Forums (2025)

My suggestion is a projector block that connects to conveyor system (for mats) and builds blueprints. Most blueprints have more than 2000 blocks and we consuming too much time to build them.I tried with weldership but some blocks were not build. I believe that projector is absolutely necessary for survival mode.

In other words you want an automatic shipyard?
I believe the current implementation is quite good, and you have to engineer a good solution to weld it completely.

I understand your thoughts about it taking too much time, but I feel it is necessary, if you want to speed it up, and you control the server, or it is singleplayer, bump up the welding speed.

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sooo something like that then........

That looks beautiful... but costly... i really don't think something like that is reasonable for most people outside of creative.

I'm acutally kinda jealous, i spent some time developing a smaller printer that could reasonably be built in survival and landed on planets to boot. (to bad world file is lost and needs a rebuild)

There is a vanilla solution to this. Shiyards with various levels of automation have been around ever since the projector block came out. If you dont like the wall of welders design, there are also vanilla solutions using roboti arms, autopiloted welder ships, etc.

How's this? (shameless self-promotion) It has its drawbacks and it feels a bit like an exploit, but there it is.

It is kind of a pain when there are unfinished blocks inside the ship, but there are ways to make sure it doesn't happen. Just tap the left mouse button while pointing your welder at a block and it will place the frame without pulling any additional resources. That way you can just start one layer of the ship, turn the projector off, and go in with a welding ship. Repeat until all layers are done. It's a bit of a pain, and perhaps placing the frame with the hand welder should become more of a feature and less of an exploit, but you can make it easier on yourself by changing your ship designs, the machine you weld them with, or both.

It's not really that expensive. A lot of that armor looks like it's cosmetic anyway. You should totally (re)build that printer you made, maybe scale it up a bit to print larger ships. If you want to have your ships built for you but you're not willing to invest any resources for that capability, I'm sure there are plenty of mods for ultra-wide area welders that could do the job. If you want something like that to be in the vanilla game, though, I don't think that is likely.

Yeah, you can barebones a shipyard pretty easily. The most costly part is going to be the grinders, but even those aren't that expensive.

Keeping in mind the amount of resources your going to need anyway for the size of ship you're attempting to build.

This feature already exists, just engineer it!

i count 20+ refineries? thats a fair investment

as for the old printer, it could make a ship that was 41 long, 11 high and any number wide (welder # dependent)

it had more pistons, but theyre by and far cheaper then a huge grid of welders. it would work like a 3d version of a normal printer so one line then extend.

cost wise yes it is a bit of an investment but 90% of that is purely cosmetic. that has alot of refinerys because well its a production facility so it kind of needs them. that said i have never really had an issue in 1x survival in making a bank of 20 or so refinery's after i get a semi decent sized mining ship sorted out

and that is the MOST expensive way of doing that size. i know i can make one that uses alot less parts but just doesnt look as good

and also consider the fact that it is enterly empty space. not such a huge block count after all

the main issue is setting the pistons to the right speed to weld all blocks fully (a few dont due to collision meshes but they are normally ones that you access anyway

And you're right on that front, late mid to end game a nice shipyard like that is easily viable. My design was/is intended to be a fairly cheap model that can be landed on planets and used as production support, so keeping it smaller and light was a must. I think all compacted it was only 19 long, 13 high, and it's width was # of welders +4

Most of which was a skeleton structure

tbh for me thats an early game goal. having a fixed static base to make everything i need and a large mining ship to dig and a a refining barge that sits near the asteroids to refine what i have just dug as i then go an mine some more. once i have enough in the barge its merge then back to whereever i decide is home to build a full bore shipyard. but thats just how i play as an engineer

I play in a similar fashion, but I'm curious. Will planets change that much for you? For me I'd like to try and mine only on planets, keeping out of space. I think I'd have to do a serious redesign to make a proper functioning planetary shipyard. Including moving either the printer or ship clear of one another to move.

truth be told, i honestly dont know as they arnt out yet and i dont do the source stuff that invariably wont actually be a true working version that only gives hints not real facts

There are several mods which expand the default grinders/welders considerably. They will allow you to use fewer welders, as well as being much more likely to complete interior blocks. Not vanilla, but there IS an easy solution.

I don't think a wider welder is suitable to build and repair, after attacks, a ship with about 5K blocks, which have damages not only on outer layer but in the inner blocks. Shipyards can't build ships with that dimensions because for example a ship is 50x20x35 and the next ship you want to build is 50x90x40. You will need a new shipyard.