Factory Part

The Factory part duplicates other drone parts that were attached to it in the editor when activated, with a few limitations.

## Mechanics

When the "Print" keybind is activated, the factory creates all drone parts as well as all their child parts that were attached to it in the editor out of thin air. Activating the "Decouple" keybind will cause all parts that are directly connected to it to disconnect, treating all immediate child parts similarly to a Decoupler. Disconnected parts still function normally, but no longer share resources, fuel, or energy with the factory and its parent parts, unless overridden by the Wireless Resources perk.

The Factory part has a printing cooldown of one second per child part. This also includes parts attached to child factories. The cooldown is indicated by the fullness of the red glow in the Factory.

The Factory will refuse to print parts if there are still at least one child part attached, or if the cooldown has not ended. Factories ignore other entities in the world, allowing you to clip parts into your own drone, enemies, the Nimbatus, or even terrain.

Factories can also be assigned a "Start State" in the editor. It defaults to "Printed" which spawns all child parts normally when loading a world, and causes the factory to start a single cooldown sequence, but can also be set to "Not Printed", where child parts are not spawned until the Factory is triggered, and the Factory starts off with a full charge.

Factories have an additional output named "Ready to print", which is constantly activated whenever the Factory is not cooling down. It will still be activated if there are child parts that aren't decoupled.

Factories will still function normally while frozen. They also do not cost any resources to print parts.

Factory parts are not allowed in any competitive modes. Drones possessing the Factory part will not be allowed to enter competitions or races.

In Survival Mode, Factories can sometimes be offered as a wormhole loot drop. Can also be found in solar systems with singular planets, although extremely rare. The factory is one of the rarest parts in Survival Mode.

## Strategies

The Factory part is very powerful for use in both Campaign and Sandbox. Its duplication mechanic allows for the creation of many useful drone mechanisms.

### Sub-Drones / Hives

Factories can be used to create a massive amount of disposable sub-drones that can easily crush many "destroy" missions without risking damaging your main drone. VTOLs are often used for these sub-drones.

### Regenerative Armor

One can exploit the printing behavior of Factories to create armor that regenerate quickly when destroyed. Since Factories will never print if any child parts are still attached, setting the "Print" keybind to a key or tag that is always On will cause it to quickly regenerate detached or destroyed parts. However, this technique is nearly impossible to employ in Survival Mode, because the Factory is one of the rarest parts in the game.

### Missiles / Nukes

Factories can create TNT missiles that are very effective against common enemies. One can also pack a massive net of TNT inside a Factory which is set to "Not Printed", allowing this Factory part to compress a massive explosion in a lightweight package. This is utilized in some "World Killer" or "Nuke" builds on the Steam Workshop.