Walls

I had a thought that so far I have planned on almost everything being crafted from refined metal and energy crystals.  And so in my insomnia state in which I tend to think of these things I thought what value will the other collectible items in game have.  I think I have discovered the answer in the way that crafted items of anything but metal and energy crystals will interact with shots that have been fired.  If one were to build a wall of say, dirt, for example then that dirt could only be destroyed by enemy melee attacks.  This would mean that walls put up would provide good cover for players and structures, both of which can be damaged by both melee and distance attacks.  This then brings up the idea of stone.  I want stone to be one of those things that only builders can break and/or harvest, meaning that stone walls are impervious to everything except builder melee attacks.  So a base that has been surrounded by a nice stone wall will be protected from long distance attacks so long that the enemy is not able to get line of sight on anything inside.  Since ramps will be pretty easy to put in it would be a very simple thing to set up a base that one can move out from.  I hope this will provide incentive to collect and process other materials.

On another note before I had said that recipes would be forgotten when winning conditions have been met.  I think I'm going to change it so that there will be a timer for certain recipes so that they won't come into play for a given time period after winning conditions.  I think I will rank the recipes and make it so higher ranked recipes take longer to unlock.  So for example if someone has learned a rank 4 recipe then they will not be able to craft it for 4 days after winning conditions have been met.  That way everyone gets to keep their recipes, but the winning faction won't start out with a huge lead as far as knowledge goes.