ButcherCraft v0.10.7-alpha.1

Employee Machine Operation Update

This update expands ButcherCraft's employee system by allowing workers to operate processing machines through persistent, finite work assignments.

Employee Machine Operation

• Employees can now operate both the Grinder and Patty Former.
• Added persistent machine-operation assignments that survive save/reload.
• Employees physically travel to their assigned machine before beginning work.
• Machine assignments use a specific production quantity rather than simply processing everything available.
• Employees automatically stop the machine after completing the assigned quantity.
• Extra input remains in the machine for future work.
• Employees remain responsible for their machine throughout the assignment.
• Machine operations use the same continuous processing system available to players.

New Employee Commands

/butchercraft employee operate <employee> <x> <y> <z> <quantity>

/butchercraft employee operate-status <employee>

/butchercraft employee operate-cancel <employee>

These commands allow you to assign machine work, inspect an employee's current operation, or cancel an active assignment.

Smarter Machine Operation

• Employee assignments create a single persistent Machine Run rather than repeatedly starting the machine for each item.
• Each item is still processed as its own bounded operation.
• Employees stop at the exact assigned production target.
• Active processing finishes at a safe cycle boundary before the machine shuts down.
• Employees will not accidentally continue processing beyond their assigned quantity.
• Player STOP commands interrupt employee operation without the employee immediately restarting the machine.

Material Handling Improvements

Workstation reservations are now role-aware.

A machine can have:

• one employee acting as the Machine Operator; and
• one compatible employee temporarily acting as a Material Handler.

This allows another employee to deliver material to a machine without forcing its operator to give up control.

Material Handling and machine operation remain separate jobs—the delivery employee does not gain permission to start or stop the machine.

Empty Machines & Incoming Material

Employee-operated machines now distinguish between an empty machine that has more material coming and one whose available work has run out.

• If a compatible Material Handling delivery is actively inbound, the employee can wait for it while preserving the same Machine Run.
• When the material arrives, processing can continue without restarting the machine.
• If no additional supply can be proven, the employee will not leave the machine running empty indefinitely.

Output Blocking

• Employees correctly recognize OUTPUT BLOCKED.
• Input is not consumed while output capacity is unavailable.
• The existing Machine Run is preserved while blocked.
• Processing can continue under the same Run once output capacity becomes available again.

Save, Restart & Recovery

• Employee machine assignments are persistent.
• Exact employee, workstation, reservation, and Machine Run relationships survive save/reload.
• Active machines continue to follow ButcherCraft's restart safety policy and do not automatically resume processing after a restart.
• Employee assignments participate in ButcherCraft's checkpoint and hard-crash recovery systems.
• Replacement machines cannot inherit assignments belonging to the machine previously occupying the same location.

Fixes

• Fixed a case where an employee assignment could become permanently stuck after its original workstation was replaced.
• Proven consequence-free orphaned assignments can now be safely cancelled so the employee can receive new work.
• Ambiguous recovery situations remain blocked rather than risking modification of the wrong machine.
• Improved reservation cleanup and exact workstation identity handling.

Validation

• 1,785 Java tests — 0 failures/errors
• 321/321 GameTests passed
• Clean production build passed
• Datagen stable with zero unexpected changes
• Client initialization and resource loading passed

Current Limitations

This remains an alpha release. The following systems are still planned for future development:

• Machine wear and damage
• Lubrication and maintenance
• Machine breakdowns and repairs
• Dry-running mechanical consequences
• Production-driven automatic employee assignments
• Multi-machine tending by a single employee
• Multiple simultaneous Material Handlers on one machine
• Checkpoint retention/compaction

Minecraft: 1.21.1
NeoForge: 21.1.250
ButcherCraft: 0.10.7-alpha.1