limez

It would be really nice to have ways to apply the same settings to multiple parts at once, such as a hotkey to copy settings, or being able to multi-select parts and edit them all at once.

It could be one sensor detecting polar coordinates based on your collector or the ship. Or maybe a sensor that interacts with other sensors and communicates relative coordinates?

Also, distance sensors should be able to detect them!

Not just the drill, I think the saw, spike, and TNT also need tech!

I WANT TO MAKE A TRAIN

Here was my problem: I was building a sumo drone that would sit at the edge of the arena and zip around the edge really fast. It worked well until it hit something, then it was a roll of the dice which direction it would bounce, and usually it would end up disoriented and shooting itself out of the ring. My initial solution was to have it change direction if it detected an object in the direction it was going, but then I hit a problem. I don't know how to get my bot to know what direction it's going! Basically what I needed was a flip-flop: A logical system that takes two inputs S and R and outputs two values Q and NOT Q. Based on its circuitry, it's very tricky to build in Nimbatus since you need time awareness for synchronizing and some other "power" signal to keep the current output alive. I think it's possible to build this using buffers, impulses and NORs (well, we just have OR and NOT for now), but it takes at least 8 parts, and even that's not sure since I haven't quite gotten it working yet. The idea behind using a flip-flop for this problem is I could set "Enemy detected left" to the R input, "Enemy detected right" to the S input, "Go left" to Q and "Go right" to NOT Q and I think that would be a simple 1 piece AI! Oh, but it's only alpha, so maybe this dream can live. I think having a part acting as effective memory, even just a single bit per piece, would give us enormous power for building complex AIs. As a CS majour, this game is a dream come true and playing it makes me weep with joy at the potential crazy drone AIs that could be built for this game. We just need more power!! tl;dr: we need a switch with two inputs: one for "on" and one for "off"

I made my first autonomous roamer with tracking turrets. The logic bits are detached for now since I'm still working on it and it's easier to have them spread out, but everything else is onboard. The feeling of sitting back and watching this do missions on its own is so nice.