Describe your enhancement

In the pattern grid, add a new option to mark a pattern as "conservative" with a "minimum batch size". For processing patterns, the remaining items must be specified as "conserved" in one of the output slot. If a pattern is marked as "conservative", the autocrafting will only schedule in the batch size equal to the amount of the most limited "conserved" item. If that amount is less than the "minimum batch size", RS system will try to autocraft ingredients needed for the "minimum batch size".

For example, say I have an automated setup of Botania runic altar, and I have a pattern that crafts rune of wraith, which takes 2 mana diamond, 1 rune of earth, and 1 rune of winter, and I set the pattern as conservative with a minimum batch size of 4, with the two runes as conserved items. When I request the system to craft 32 runes of wraith, the RS system would only craft 4 runes of earth and 4 runes of winter if I have none of them, and do crafting in batches of 4. If I already have 8 runes of earth and 6 runes of winter, then the system would autocraft in batch of 6.

You can specify a minimum batch size by multiplying the ingredients in the pattern. I don't really see any real benefit in adding a feature like this?

I think it is too complex either way.

This would also solve the problem with crafting with bucketed fluid too: if you request, say, 100 sinks, currently the RS system would craft 100 buckets rather than try to reuse the bucket. With minimum batch size, you can set it to a reasonable number so that you won't end up with 100 buckets in your storage.

What you forgot to mention in your first post is that the rune recipe gives the runes back. :/ I ofc totally forgot about that...

Reusable items need to be solved first. We can think about using more than one reusable item to speed up crafting after that.