I’ve been thinking this through properly, because the idea is useful, but it could also be very easy to abuse.
The basic idea would be a special Coin Chest, probably using the Infinity Chest appearance but working as a normal custom chest. Anything placed inside it that has a valid selling price would be converted automatically once it reaches the required amount, with no confirmation message.
For example, if the rate was 100 iron ore for 1 coin:
99 iron would stay inside the chest.
As soon as one more iron was added, the full 100 would be removed and replaced with 1 coin.
If 250 iron was added, 200 would become 2 coins and the remaining 50 would stay in the chest.
It would basically work like an automated recycling bin for surplus resources.
The problem is that even if we limited it to only one Coin Chest per force, players could still connect belts and several inserters from every side. With configurable inserters, they could feed it extremely quickly and turn it into a permanent coin-mining machine:
Mining drills → belts → Coin Chest → unlimited automatic coins.
That means the system could become another way of bypassing the coin balance we already worked hard to fix. We have already had to close similar loopholes involving coin rewards, biter nests and Spidertron-related mechanics, where coins could be duplicated or generated more than intended. I do not want to add a new feature that accidentally creates the same problem again in a different form.
There are a few possible safeguards:
Only one Coin Chest per force.
A fixed conversion speed that cannot be increased by adding more belts or inserters.
For example, a maximum of 1 coin every 30 seconds, regardless of how many resources are inside.
Automatic selling could also give less value than selling manually through the market.
For example, if the market gives 1 coin for 100 iron, the Coin Chest might require 200 or 250 iron for 1 coin.
There could also be a maximum income limit, such as 20 coins per hour for the whole force.
Only approved raw resources would be accepted, such as iron ore, copper ore, coal, stone, uranium, scrap, calcite and tungsten.
Machines, weapons, armour, modules, science packs and rare items would not be converted.
Unsupported items would simply stay inside the chest instead of being destroyed.
I’ve gone through the different options and tried to find a safe design, but even with these restrictions, the chest could still encourage players to send entire mining lines directly into it just to farm coins.
So I do like the idea as a convenient way to deal with excess resources, but I’m still thinking about whether it can be added without turning into another coin exploit or undermining the market system. I would rather take a bit more time and get the balance right than add it quickly and create another duplication or infinite-coin problem.
