Automation

Overview
The automation update is an upcoming rebalance of the game's economy and mining system. It will enable ships and bases to have centralized mining, refining, processing, and crafting systems similar to games like Space Engineers. Certain blocks in the part spawner will be given crafting recipes, namely those that are very complicated or otherwise have niche uses like motors and teleport lasers. all basic parts, modules, and basic optics/engineering/ship systems will remain free to spawn. The ones that are given recipes will have values assigned to them. To spawn them you must pay the cost, or you can use the crafting system to make them for free out of the raw materials you mine and refine.

Power Systems
At first, machines won't require power, just time. When a viable power system is created, most machines will require power to work. Power can be generated in multiple ways, namely: solar, thermoelectric, isotope decay, nuclear fusion and fission, and wind. No coal or oil power, though crude oil will exist and be used to make plastics.

Crafting and Selling
A mining depot will be added to earth where you can sell raw materials and crafting components. This will be the primary way to earn credits early on. A depot to sell raw materials and buy crafting components will exist on the Trade Station. Crafting components will also be able to be crafted from raw materials by players, themselves used in the creation of parts that cost credits.

Ores
All planets in the game, except those whose scanner entries list "no resources" or those which are meme planets (Ice Cream Planet, Kex, Sucrose etc.) will be given exterior ore deposits of various materials. Some planets in the game already have deposits like this, and they'll remain unchanged. Rare resources will be spread out to encourage exploration, and resources will not be randomized (but their positions on the rock faces will be) just like now.

Planets will have deeper veins of resources indicated by surface ores. These will be functionally limitless but very difficult to reach, requiring high-end mining equipment. They'll be slow to produce resources, but they'll exist. Asteroids will use a similar system, but they won't be limitless and won't require fancy equipment; just a ship drill. These "deeper veins" of planets won't actually exist; you won't ever see them visually, but your machines will detect and tap into them.

Precursor Technology
Four uncopyable and unsaveable Precursor devices will be found in the Aether. They use their respective shards as fuel and have a 15-minute global cooldown each upon taking one.


 * Creation Engine: Found on the stardust island and allows you to craft any block for free using its internal Stardust energy buffer, with energy required increasing based on recipe complexity
 * Warp Drive: Found on the vortex island and allows you to instantly warp to any planet in the game at the cost of Vortex energy, with energy required increasing based on distance to selected body
 * Zero Point Reactor: Found on the stardust island and acts as a limitless source of free power as long as it's fed with Solar energy
 * Chronal Accelerator: Found on the nebula island and speeds up all machines in its attached network by a factor of 10 without affecting energy costs, consuming a small amount of Nebula energy each time a machine takes that buff into account