What did you have in mind for being in the crafting industry? I love the idea of having the building but outlining its purpose first is important.
In my mind at least you'd have to have a special chest or something with two or three 9x9 spaces in which you'd layout a crafting recipe. then, the crafting building could produce the item without actually using the resources. that's my basic thoughts on it. Unfortunately, this is pretty easily abused (Think diamond block). So you'd have to heavily regulate my idea which kinda takes away the fun.
I guess the alternative is that it does use up the materials (given same basic idea as above) but it can add special properties to the item. Like, free enchantments, or even other special abilities. This would be much more feasible and much harder to abuse. that said I can also see it being harder to implement.
Well those are my two ideas. What ideas did you have?
The generally accepted idea for the industry is that an item frame is used to denote what the current 'item-to-craft' is, and then yeah, provided the proper materials to craft said item are in the input chest, it will just continuously make that thing over and over.
Do you have plans to spice it up at all? That solution is definitely better than my complicated chest idea but still has the problem of being rather unnecessary. If I have the materials I can craft it myself in a fraction of the time.
I noticed there were special items floating around with things like +10% health and the like. Being able to add abilities like this (and just good old enchantments) would make the crafting industry worth the extra time it takes to craft the item.
Well some other thoughts included the random chance for a crafted item to 'crit', yielding 2 things from 1.
Due to the other industries covering items/armor/tools (Blacksmithing, Enchanting, etc), those would probably cover items yielding 'special' enchants and the like.
We haven't thought it through too much beyond that though.
Ah yeah that makes a lot of sense. No point in repeating something that already exist!
Well with all the special recipes being introduced perhaps they can only be used through the crafting industry? I could imagine special items that can only be crafted in the crafting industry that would make it necessary for certain items and such. This does change the basic idea behind them though. You'd no longer be able to use the crafting frame idea because then you're stuck in a Catch-22. Having to craft the item to be able to use it in the crafting industry but unable to craft it because you need to use the crafting industry. XD
Another possibility is to make certain items uncraftable normally and can only be crafted through the crafting industry. so for instance a diamond sword would need to be made here. Also, something like an enderchest would also need to be crafted here. Unfortunately I could see this falling under the category of "annoying" to some people so its a bit on the edge of what you'd probably want to do.
Might be annoying for things you already can craft, but it'd be neat if there were new items that only the industry could make for sure.
Unfortunately, it can be a big divide if only a town with a crafting industry can craft things as it gives them a potentially huge advantage over other towns if the item had, for example, a use in PvP. Certainly something to keep in mind though!