Production UI - Moving towards a unified UI

TL;DRThe current production UI is fragmented, forcing players to memorize block production capabilities. Adding more blocks clutters the interface, turning expansion into a punishment. A Unified Production UI that lists all components in one view and automatically distributes production across available blocks would drastically reduce friction and make production scaling more intuitive.

My current pain points

After playing about 100 h of survival I have decided to write about current production system and the friction it creates due to its fragmented nature:

• Memorizing blocks and components: Separating production blocks into individual UIs forces players to memorize which specific block produces which component. This breaks the flow of gameplay, especially for new players or when managing a large base.
• Ingredient shortages: When a component fails to produce, it is unclear why. Players are forced to manually look through separate production queues to find the missing ingredient or blockage.
• UI scalability: The current UI scales poorly. As players add more production blocks, a new "register" is added to the UI for each one. This rapidly makes the interface cluttered and difficult to navigate, turning the act of adding production capacity to feel more like a punishment than something to strive for.

My proposed solution would be a unified production UI.

• Structure: A single screen displaying all available components, grouped by the block types capable of producing them.
• Benefits:
• Instant clarity: Players can immediately see what can be produced and which blocks are capable of doing it without memorization.
• Ingredient shortages: Missing ingredients or bottlenecks would be visible in a single view, eliminating the need to hunt through separate queues.
• Scalability: Adding new production blocks would simply increase capacity within the existing system, rather than cluttering the interface with new "registers".

Desired behavior:

In this unified system, the behavior for multiple blocks of the same type should be automatic distribution:

• A shared queue: If a player queues 1,000 Steel Plates, the system should automatically distribute the load. For example, if there are two Smelter, each would pull 50 (or a dynamic chunk size) from the queue and process them independently until the total request is fulfilled.
• Goal: This ensures that adding more blocks increases throughput naturally without requiring manual queue management for every single machine.

One potential downside is the loss of granular control. Some players may want to dedicate a specific block to a specific task regardless of the global queue.

Maybe it is possible to include a toggle or mode switch in the UI:

• Unified Mode: The default view described above, prioritizing ease of use and throughput.
• Advanced Mode: Allows players to revert to the classic per-block control if they need strict, manual assignment for specific machines.

A unified production UI would noticeably reduce friction for new and experienced players. It could change the production system from a management chore into a streamlined process, encouraging expansion rather than punishing it with UI clutter and management effort.