Game Designs from an Alternate World: Mastery Crafting

I think Beyond the Depths wants to be a enriched version of CR-8's circuits from Backpack Hero.

Imagine the energy charges were elementally themed like Opus Magnum process elements, and could combine or react with other things while being shot around in CR-8's circuitry. 

See also: what Minecraft's crafting system wanted to be. 

Moreover, this could be built up incrementally. Starting with CR-8, you could add two kinds of charge, which then produces two kinds of output. Then a third, which is made by combining the first two during processing. Add in reactions from the elbow bends and stuff, e.g. a toggle that only toggles on one kind. 

Add in, adjust and balance as needed, repeat until you have a genuine model engineering game. Like in real life, at some point it's so complicated that it's unreasonable to find the optimal solution. NP-complete, ideally. You can practice real research in this model environment. (Or just buy designs off the Robocraft blueprint store, if that's what you prefer.) The point of doing it incrementally is to ensure that it's an engaging game at all levels of complexity. 

Now imagine the Depths missile warheads were based on the circuitry you loaded into them. Do Opus Magnum processing to determine the kind and the CR-8 mechanics to determine magnitudes and power and so on. 

Now imagine, as per Minecraft, whether it was a warhead at all depends on the circuitry. Rather than having fixed pre-defined recipes, the function of the object would be defined more by what it's good at, rather than being a binary that's capable or incapable. At the lower level there would be a pickaxe recipe, but there would be no need to restrict it to use in pickaxes. It would instead be an interactive element of the crafting system.

The game industry doesn't even want to create difficult games, let alone engage in difficult real-life tasks. They are weak. 

Maybe one day they'll realize games are supposed to be interactive, as opposed to cosmetic theme parks with a few to-do-list chores stapled on. 

P.S. Lytebringr plagiarized all the best processes, but he plagiarized the best, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There aren't alternative sources for the videos, and even if there were, his channel is conveniently centralized.