Mod-API Change - Gas as consumables in production blocks

To Keen: The next update is to be one-for-the-players. I read Marek's blog on the Space Engineers ecosystem and how development is swinging towards better compatibility with modding and the mod community. I would love to see this change added to the next update as one of those cool little under-the-hood changes for the modding community.

To The Casual Player: Before we dive into this, I'm asking for a change in the mod API. This request wouldn't change the behavior of the default game and the way it currently works in vanilla game-play. It's regarding a game mechanic available to modders.

I'm asking for their to be a feature available in IMyProductionBlock to allow for a quantity of gas to be comsumed with manufacturing recipes of components, ingots, and other gases. The volume of gas would have to be accessible from inventory and deducted at the completion of each divisible unit of the item or whatever scheme makes sense in the game.

Gases used in production do not become a part fo that item They are not retrievable from the item when disassembling. Basically, a gas can then be modded as a consumable in the manufacturing process. That can add an interesting dynamic to the game, the same way that gas is already used as a propelant or a source of fuel to produce electricity.

I'm going to walk you backwards from the final mod to the game mechanic in this example.

I want to produce a modded block called a "Military Laser". It shoots a higher damage laser beam and more often than my other mod block, the "Civilian Laser". One difference between the two is that the military version uses a modded component called "High Quality Optics". That component's recipe is made from silicon but also consumes a quantity of nitrogen gas in the process of making each divisible quantity of high quality optics. The optics are only made of silicon wafers and if disassembed only returns silicon wafer (ingot).

Under the hood, the .sbc containing the recipes for components could have a quanity of gas within that recipe and as a gas it would have the mechanic of being subtracted out of inventory but not added to the ingot types recovered from the component being disassembled. Using a gas as part of the refining of ore seems as if that might be trickier to implement in the game. Could the API be changed to let a gas and an ore go into the production of an ingot in a refinery?