Tier 3: With the advent and significant advancement of the pirate-like "Skaar" faction as especially contributed to by master builder jrandall, role-playing the improvisational construction and refitting of vessels with common frameworks has come to mind in some players who are inspired by the Skaar style and their backstory. Take a look at jBeard84's Skaar Lock, Skaar Stock, and Skaar Barrel creations, for an example of this faction-specific phenomenon. And there are many designs which are modded versions of other creations. The idea is thus presented for a Tier 3 version of the Repair Bay, which besides repairing, allows a vehicle to be changed into another design from the factory, so long as they are of the same type. The cost of such an operation would be expected to be proportionate to the degree of change. The Repair Bay should check to see if the new type is valid, and if so, take the resource differences and despawn the old vehicle and respawn the new one in the same place with the same orientation, the new in place of the old, retrofitted. If the resource difference is positive, the resources should be placed in the Repair Bay for use in future repairs or later retrofits. The pre-retrofit checks should probably give a warning if there are certain problems with the source vehicle, such as items in storage or Pentaxid in the tank. Role-play wise, the Tier is 3 because it is utilizing each of three functions--repair, assembly, and now disassembly. Tier 4: Many times has a player wished their prized HV could grow up to be an SV, or perhaps an SV owner would like their SV to become a slightly similar looking tank heavier than the SV was, without having two similar looking vehicles in their base because pirates don't do that--they retrofit and improvise. With automatic block conversion, I wonder if the game engine couldn't be modified to finally allow a facility to do what people were doing by fiddling with their blueprints while Empyrion wasn't running, and convert in-game an SV into an HV or vice-versa, replacing type-specific blocks with other perfectly legal blocks, as configured within the repair bay interface, replacing down-facing engines with hover engines for example, or up-facing engines with steel blocks. All configurable by the player. Again, the interface should report if the new type is valid and if so, this time save a new factory blueprint as its Tier 4 function, then despawn the old vehicle like Tier 3 and respawn it in the same place with the same orientation using the new blueprint just made, the new in place of the old. Viola! We have our coveted SV/HV conversion and all is well in the world once more. A natural side benefit of the Tier 4 Repair Bay would be to allow a player to automate the upgrade of every armor block of a vehicle to another type. This can be an arduous task by hand, and so this is an in-game way to use certain convenient, complex console commands; block conversion is partly already in the game engine and is very helpful for vehicle design, and so just needs refining with an in-game use in Survival play modes. This is one such suggestion for doing that. And so role-play wise, a Tier 4 Repair Bay would now be utilizing four functions--repair, assembly, disassembly, and now total conversion.
