Jacsmac

Off the top of my head, sticks and metal rods seem like items a lathe would make. As for more items, perhaps a lathe would be the perfect way to introduce wooden items like bowls, plates, and maybe even fancy things like chess pieces or instruments.

I've been thinking about a solution similar to this, too. Maybe there should be a chain of crafting recipes that cycles between each part, frame, etc. by using cupronickel bits, giving a use to any spare cupronickel lying around and increasing the demand for nickel.

About 150 hours of gameplay ago, I finally gathered all of the components for a Terminus teleporter, except for the temporal alignment node. No problem, I thought, I'll just grab that one by exploring caves just like the other parts. Given enough time, I then had enough parts for a rift ward, a resonator, even the night vision mask. Except the temporal alignment nodes. I've been so close to having this cool tech that adds something unique to my exploration experience; if I could just get this one part, I would have this in my hands soon enough. The temporal alignment node is a (presumably) very rare drop from locust nests, specifically the cages and large stalactites (aptly misnamed stalagmites by the game). Tell me why, after breaking more of these than I could ever expect even happening upon in the first place, I somehow get every other part more than 2 times? This feels ridiculous, and there has to be something I'm missing that's keeping me from getting the drop. Dozens of these locust nests are not dropping ONE of this specific part and I haven't found it myself in any ruins or story structures so far. TL;DR Temporal alignment node is chasing me, but I run faster

Should clarify: 50 blocks was the distance I was away from the pulverizer before doing trial tests (when I first noticed odd behavior), and I ran trials at distances from 2 to 100 blocks away in the Creative mode world. Survival mode singleplayer and multiplayer tests were both from 2 to 5 blocks away.

My game version is v.1.21.4 and View Distance is set to 256; I was not more than 50 blocks away while the stones were processing. In a creative test world, 100% of the pulverizer product made it into the chest in multiple trials, even if some of the items stuck around for about half a second or so before the hopper decided to pick them up. When going back to the original world on singleplayer, the results closely mirror that of the test world trials (while standing 2-5 blocks away from the hopper and pulverizer and watching closely). What I had failed to consider previously was that I was losing materials while another player was connected to my world via LAN connection; trials ran with multiplayer enabled and other players connected proved that an amount of items less than 10% was lost because the items despawned before being hoppered into the chest (they lingered on top of it for much longer than tests in singleplayer). Furthermore, if the power to the pulverizer is cut while an item is hanging out on top of the hopper, it is likely that the item will despawn because the output of the pulverizer will not 'motivate' the hopper to pick it up by pushing it. I will update to v1.21.5 and run more trials to make sure what the definitive cause of this issue is.

I appreciate the fast response! The solid block next to the hopper did reduce the problem. However, there is still a loss of material if I am not standing next to the output to pick up loose items. I did some searching, and found this on GitHub from a few years ago: The amount of material lost decreased significantly, but about 5-10 per stack is still lost (more or less than the 10% mentioned in the bug report). Is this behavior still intentional? It's frustrating to see items floating in the center of the hopper and not getting into the chest.

I'm working on unlocking steel and have begun the process of making refractory bricks. To make things easier, I have set up an automatic pulverizer that takes rocks out of one reed chest and should deposit all of the products into another. However, when I am not at the windmill or my house next to it, more than half of the crushed rocks disappear! (I know of crushed titanium requiring multiple ores, but not Quartz or Bauxite.) As it turns out, I have to keep my eye on the system as the hopper refuses to pick up some of the items: Is there something I can do to make sure all of the items make it into the hopper without my intervention? If it helps, I've noticed that when more items come out and push the crushed rocks around the hopper decides to pick all of them up.