MaidAssemblyLine

  # maidAssemblyLine

  **Touhou Little Maid × Create.** Your maids become **deployers** — the machine that applies
  the item in its hand to whatever is sitting on a depot or a belt.

  Give a maid a workstation, a place to restock from, and a product to make, and she walks
  over, sits down, and runs the line. All three of Create's deployer recipe families are
  supported: the deploying step of a **sequenced assembly**, a standalone **item
  application**, and **sandpaper polishing**.

  ---

  ## She is a real participant in the line, not a decoration

  - **She starts the job.** An empty depot and the recipe's starting item in her hand is
    enough for the assembly to begin — no player standing over the bench.
  - **She works the whole pile.** Drop a stack on a depot and she works it down one item at a
    time, while everything the step produces lands in the depot's output buffer behind it. A
    funnel above carries finished goods away without ever touching the work in progress.
  - **She feeds herself.** Out of material, she walks to her supply chest, takes a stack,
    comes back and carries on. The line runs unattended for as long as the chest holds out.
  - **She holds her place on a belt.** Short of material for an item already at her station,
    she keeps it still until she is back with what it needs — so the belt cannot carry your
    work past her while she is away. The hold is on a timer, and it lets go by itself if she
    dies, unloads or is taken off the job. **Nothing she does can jam your belt.**
  - **She tells you what is wrong.** Too far from her post, station gone, chest full of the
    wrong thing, no recipe, needs a tool — she says which one, in a speech bubble, above her
    head. The line stops being a black box.

  ## Depots, belts, and everything else

  **A depot** is where an assembly starts. **A belt** is where she joins a running line — she
  works the item on her own segment and leaves alone anything a real machine has claimed.
  **Any third block** is something she uses what she is holding on, exactly as your
  right-click would: a hoe tills and turns rooted dirt, a shovel makes paths, an axe strips
  logs, scrapes oxidised copper and takes wax off. Each of those tool actions is individually
  switchable, and each only ever changes a block in place — which is what makes them safe to
  leave running beside a loop that retries several times a second.

  ## Shifts

  She keeps **the maid's own timetable** — the same work, idle and rest schedule TLM already
  runs. On shift she is at her post; off shift she is back at your side. She also gets up by
  herself when her workstation is broken, blown up or carried off by a contraption, when you
  move her post, or when you hand her a different job entirely. Whatever happens, she always
  returns to being an ordinary maid.