It means that the maximum output of stuff is limited by how fast an individual player manages to hoard them. The better logistics, the more stuff. Time available will always measure the winner if everyone crafts at same speed, but if players aren't limited by cooldown someone who is effective and smart has the chance to hoard faster than someone who has more raw free time.
But if it's the same cd, what difference does it make? Crafting cooldown is not fun, this hidden gathering CD is more fun so isn't the logical solution in terms of enjoyable gameplay to choose the hidden one?
Players have always been limited by some sort of "cooldown", you are talking about candy land that doesn't exist, never has, never will. The only difference is how the cooldown is experienced, as lexx said very precisely, finding ore in encounters or a global cooldown for ores in mines, or finding a weapon in encounter like gauss pistol, it's just experiencing the same timer in a different way. Let's say gauss pistol is craftable, need to adjust certain features, chances, values for it to be craftable at the same speed it can be found in encounters, it can be done. Just like it's possible to adjust ores in random encounters to be found at such a difficulty it will match current time needed to make certain amount of items.
By cooldown don't understand only the raw amount of minutes added upon crafting an item, but also the time needed to obtain resources for it, movement between locations (currently more time is added, since we have to move to public places that workbench is relatively far), obtaining blueprints, it could be completing a quest for a rare resource, finding encounters etc. etc. time consumptions. That all just adds together and make the total time needed to get the final product- item. That's how item availability is controlled, player-dependant, yes, i say availability is flexible due to that. Someone who grinds more/spends time, no matter what system he will gain more, can't invent a new wheel, it's already there.
So far we haven't reached this point ever in the history of the game. Except maybe during prewipe madness.
Remove all time consumptions and that will happen.
Unsafe mines have a risk of meeting other players.
Bluesuit CW alts in comparison to a potential force of players that are able to defend themselves. It's what they/you are doing while you meet them, if you are going to carry some iron ore none cares ... if 5 newly crafted MAmk2, that's a different story.
It has to do with fun. Item availability can't be balanced because it's always player-dependent. Some have more free time, some don't. Unless you want to regulate the ammount of time every player can play daily, item availability is a joke.
Besides, if something is simply unbearably boring to craft then only the most hardened players will do it and rest will moan because they don't have those items and get pwned. Last session I didn't craft a single BA until the cooldowns got more reasonable. The grind wasn't simply worth it, some still did it but did they have fun doing it?
Item availability is the difficulty to obtain items, including crafting cooldown, simple solution is to ease it up and there's no problem, if it's too harsh then it encourages abusing/byapssing/cheating, call it whatever you want, but when it's reasonable it shouldn't provoke players to extremes. If it's too harsh, then let's say the cooldown could be experienced differently, like special encounter system that isn't abusable, gauss pistols are relatively hard to get, rare, that is player-dependant and it is controlled.
So if you have some mad ideas about ideal crafting systems, go ahead, share them, none is forcing you to keep quite.