Factory children are created unbuilt, and do not build the children of child factories.

[Lurkily]

The topic is confusing, so bear with me while I clarify.  Currently, if I build a drone with a chain of factories, I'll start the game with every factory complete, and every sub-part of those factories complete, and when I release those parts, the factories will very very slowly rebuild the entire mass.

I would prefer to start with these things unbuilt.  Thus instead, you will start without all your completed drones.  Instead, the first factory will construct its sub-drone, as well as the second factory.  The second drone will construct the third factory, etc.

This will permit the building of a 'seed' that you can release which can grow into a swarm, or a progressively more complex structure.  For instance, you could drop a factory that just spawned a scanning gun turret and a factory.  That factory might spawn armor and a couple more factories, which would, in turn, spawn more armor and guns, to create a progressively more fortified creation.

As it stands now we enter the game with an entire castle built, and when we drop the one factory, it builds the entire creation at once, or nothing.

An alternative might be to make the factory construct in tiers; direct children first, then children of children, then grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc; this would also serve the purpose of making construction less of an all-or-nothing affair, and more of an organic process that can happen in stages.

[omegahax0r]

This would also make large segmented designs viable. Having factories only build up to the next factory set to spawn not printed is a brilliant idea.