Autoproduction, DIY, "insert item name here" machine, and similar expressions are used in Eco by Strange Loop Games[play.eco] to talk about a store that continuously buys ingredients and returns the crafted item. The "auto" means items are crafted automatically as long as neighbours sell the ingredients to the store. This is a mechanism of production that adjusts to the demand of a server without effort and removes frustrating seesaw phenomenons and bottlenecks.

Hewn logs, mortared stone, wood boards, planks and fabric are common candidates for autoproduction at first. But every building blocks, metal bars, oil drilling products and even trucks can be made through DIY contraptions too.

• Provides crafted goods according to local demand: never worry about producing too much or to little;
  
• Players get what they need when they need it, increasing local growth and reducing frustrations;
  
• Players arriving later or those with a skill that is not in high demand need to provide basic resources to stay in the game;
  
• Autoproduction setup reduces maintenance and stockpile management in the long run.

Eco is a game where exchanges are key to survival, but players often have unequal opportunities to provide items from their profession. Reasons are many: arriving later, too many experts of the same profession, items in low demand, etc. Most common reason is farmers and hunters, who can typically sell very little but still require hundreds of building blocks.

So allowing your neighbours to bring basic resources is a powerful tool to bring balance and keep players active.

• I didn't know...this is what this guide is for;
  
• Most of the true value of crafted items lies in the ingredients;
  
• Fear of being useless.

If you examine the individual contribution of ingredients, calories, fuel and repair for crafted items, it is common to see the cost of ingredients exceeding 95% of the total cost. This could explain why so many players set their store in a way only them can provide ingredients (willingly or not).

But preventing others to bring resources when they don't have anything else to sell is a short-term illusion. Neighbours left without options to buy the crafted product will work with someone else, pick the skill themselves or leave after several frustrating days. Moreover, new and novice players fear that if other players get all the items they need now, there won't be anything to do later. This is also an illusion.

Obstacles have roots in fear and lack of trust in your local community. When you don't see a way to eat or when every item seems costly, it is perfectly normal to keep more control over your options to make money. Ironically, by exerting that control, players create an even more negative context and the server spirals down.

Apart from a better understanding of price and profits, the main solution lies in leadership. In other words, make sure your town has an efficient currency cycle and provide ample opportunities for work (government store and contracts). Discuss about reducing personal profits too. This will lead you to a world where players feel confident to find projects and money to eat. In these well managed worlds, I had my fair share of experiences where DIY stores without profits were abundant and their owners were even pressing their neighbours to sell more ingredients.

The most simple setup for autoproduction requires:

• store that buys ingredients and sell crafted items;
  
• a storage component (ex.: stockpile);
  
• crafting table with a large order for crafted items.

Both the store and crafting table can put items inside and take items from the storage.



For instance, your store buys stone and mortar and sell mortared stone. You also have a masonry table with 1000 mortared stones in production. Things are fine as long as your neighbours sell you ingredients and buy mortared stone.

But what if money is scarce and people are now selling you stones without buying anything ? Ingredients keep getting transformed and when you return a day later, your bank account is empty and you are left with a ton of excess product. Your storage is probably clogged too.

That is it, you have been robbed !

To avoid being robbed and keep storage clean, you must add an extra storage component to the previous design and manage access between the containers and the crafting table / store.

The idea is to create a cycle where ingredients bought at the store are put into the first storage component, but never in the second. The crafting table then takes from the first and can only put items in the second storage component.



😎The key component here is the second storage: it has a limited capacity. So when the capacity limit is reached, the crafting table stops to work. It will resume production when someone buys.

Two important questions need answers before you set this up:

• How many crafted items are you willing to accumulate before the machine stops ?
  
• How many ingredients are you willing to accumulate once the machine stops ?

This is where the store will put ingredients. If your store can put resources in many storage items, make sure the crafting table can take from all of them. Again, the crafting table can only put items in the second storage component.

The second storage component is important. It's capacity needs to be exactly the amount of crafted items you are willing to accumulate before the machine stops. For building blocks, I like to take two small stockpiles. That means as soon as I reach 162 blocks, the machine stops until someone buys a block. For other smaller items, like seeds or fabric, my limit is 100 or 200. In that case, no storage has a these limits. The solution is to take a chest and fill most slots with debris or broken tools and leave a single slot free.

Interact with your store and go to the storage section: make sure the store cannot put any item in storage 2 (there are 3 containers that count as storage 2 here).



In the buy section and for each type of ingredient, you should set the maximum amount of ingredients you are willing to accumulate once the machine stops. Make sure this limit is not over the capacity of your storage, otherwise people will travel to your store only to receive an error message (here it would be 500 wood units or less). This is a frustrating experience and other players may think twice about trading with you afterwards.

Also, make sure the price of the crafted item reflects it's real cost (ingredients, calories, fuel, repair). Setting a price below is called dumping : you may loose resources and start a competition with other players with the same skills. Selling a price above creates an exploitation machine instead: the passive money you are hoping to get will come from the work of your fellow players and contribute to loss of motivation and competitive behaviours.

⚠️ Many years playing Eco and I am still surprised by the sheer amount of players who setup exploitation machines and complain about people leaving their server.

If you have two steps in the recipe (ex.: dowels to hewn logs), have the final product first in queue (hewn logs before dowels). Make sure this table can only put crafted items in the second storage component and nowhere else.



This is a simple demo for a good DIY machine. With little adjustments you can use it for your regular store. You can also add advanced functions, such as taking wood from a personal container only when someone buys hewn logs without providing wood.

I am a player of Eco since 2018 and evolved in a variety on contexts: competitive, collaborative, communist (weird label), heavily modded, etc. I now only settle on vanilla worlds with medium settings and heavy emphasis on collaboration. I am a professional in the field of collaborative learning and a bit less novice everyday in quality management and writing in English.