Soup Machine

Overview
The Soup Machine is an integral part of the player's Soup factory. Its purpose is to process two Ingredients into delicious Soup.

Making Soup
Soup Machines may be built from the Soup tab in the Structures menu for a cost of 300 Matter. Newly constructed Soup Machines will have two empty slots for Ingredients; once these are provided the machine will begin to create Soup with a flavour determined by the combination of Ingredients (see Soups for a list). Once finished it will output the results as a Soup Can, which can then be delivered to customers (refer to Delivering Soup for more about this step).

Once a Soup Machine has received Ingredients and created its first Soup, it will be "locked" to that recipe, and will only be able to accept those same Ingredients. Its slots will display the Ingredients it may take; missing Ingredients will be greyed out. As soon as the requested Ingredients are provided it will make Soup once again. Additionally, if the player stands at a Soup Machine that is missing Ingredients, a green radar will begin to scan. After a few seconds it will highlight a missing ingredient and point to the nearest source.

Soup Machines may also be built preset to a recipe that the player has discovered. This comes at a discounted price of 250 Matter and shows the value of the given Soup; however as the player discovers more recipes the list of preset Soup Machines can become lengthy and difficult to browse.

The only way to change the recipe of a Soup Machine is to demolish it through the Maintenance menu and rebuild it. The player should be aware of any landslide hazards or structures that might lose power when doing this.

Interacting with Players and Robots
The player can insert Ingredients directly into a Soup Machine. If the Soup Machine is locked to a recipe, only the requested Ingredients can be given. The player can also carry the resulting Soup Cans.

The only Robots which interacts directly with Soup Machines are the Charlie and Charles robots. If they are carrying an Ingredient and pass a Soup Machine requesting that Ingredient, they will insert it into the machine. If they are not carrying anything and pass a Soup Can created by a Soup Machine, they will pick it up. It should be noted that Charlie and Charles will never insert an Ingredient into a Soup Machine with no recipe; for this reason the preset Soup Machines may be desirable.