You mean an industry kind of like the Kletka Simulator, but for special items? That might work, although I don't think it would make sense to put it on NPC colonies to create demand for DEA. From a lore standpoint, why would NPC colonies have a factory to build special items but not have any installed in their buildings?
I edited my comment (probably a little too late) to switch the item thing to a potentially abandonned station drifting in unexplored systems. Though I must say that the idea of an industry that can be built both by the player and by npc worlds would've been really interesting if they could use those special items too, indeed.
So, an abandoned station built during the Domain-era that was a factory to produce special items? Something that valuable would probably have to be guarded by powerful remnants, and have some sort of unique quest to discover it and explain how it works to the player. The scope for that is probably too big for this mod and would be better left to vanilla, or a mod that solely implements that quest.
The problem is I can't overwrite the default farming and/or population buildings to accept a custom special item.
The Relay Hypertransmitters added by Industrial Evolution can be installed in vanilla Military Bases/High Commands, so unless Hartley did something outrageous there, it's doable.
Unless you mean that you'd just prefer to avoid tinkering with vanilla industries, in which case: I can respect that.
I wasn't aware Hartley's implementation was possible. That does open up making stellar reflectors a special item to be installed in vanilla buildings, and selling them to NPC colonies to introduce a DEA demand would be nice. I still see some problems:
1. Installing the stellar reflector item would preclude installation of the fusion lamp or hypershunt, right? Given the similarities between the fusion lamp and reflectors, this is probably not a good idea.
2. How could I communicate to the player in a concise way that they should sell stellar reflectors to NPC colonies to generate revenue with Domain Archaeology?
3. Even if the player knew about this mechanic, they would likely choose to keep the stellar reflectors for themselves to enable terraforming and boost farming output.
I can think of some other uses for this though - maybe split up the genelab functions into different special items, and put a few on vanilla colonies to generate DEA demand. For example, I could put a lobster-seeding special item in the aquaculture industry on Volturn.
My historians offered me the locations of special items a good bunch of times(and not just ones you can get by raiding core worlds). Some problems with that, though:
-You first need to give them all the donations they ask for
-If your playstyle leans towards exploration(like mine), by the time you give them the donations and meet them again, there's a good chance that you'll already have the special item they'll offer directions to
-It costs a whole 4 story points, which again isn't worth it if you tend to explore everything
So yeah, provided it's sufficiently demanding, I'd say that a DEA-based special item crafting system would have its place.
That's good to know. I'll see about implementing this in the next patch.