As requested, I'm cutting up my other post into individual sections for easier commenting.
How can a simple inverter be the same size as a full sized rocket engine? :-) I built what was a fairly simple control system and it took up nearly half of the ship. Additionally, once you've rearranged all the gates to fit neatly into the ship it makes it really hard to them find a particular gate if you need to tweak it. Also, when your ship is half logic gates, as soon as a single one is damaged the whole thing tends to fail. I'd like to suggest the following additions.
a) Allow the player to build their own logic units using a logic unit workshop, in the same way that there is a weapon workshop. This would allow the creation of control systems and autonomous controls that could be easily reused in multiple drones and updated as needed.
b) To build a new one the player picks small (1x1), medium (2x1) or large (2x2) or huge (2x3) box. The size could affect the number of input/output's available and/or the number of items that can be put in it, but personally I'd not do that and only use the size to prevent recursion by only allowing user circuits to be used inside other user circuits if they are smaller than the one you want to add them to.
c) In addition to the current logic items available there would also have to be an input and an output objects added. These would have two parameters, the name (which is used to label the entry when its used in another design), and a tag/key pair that turns on and off inside the circuit to match the outside signal for an input and is used to set the output value on an output.
d) All tags and keys used inside a user circuit would of course be insulated from the outside. So, for example, if you have an AND gate in your circuit that uses the letter A as an output, the only thing that would see that A would be inputs on other gates in that circuit. The inside of other circuits used would not see it, nor would controls outside on the actual ship.
e) I'm not sure if sensors should be allowed inside a circuit or not. I think that maybe you should be able to, though perhaps it'd be worth saying that they can only go in circuits that are larger than the sensor, and maybe the same size too, to prevent sensors being shrunk by placing them inside a small circuit. I think that it would probably take some play testing to sort that out.
f) The Logic Workshop could either reuse the drone editor, just with the non circuit items missing, or with a little more effort you could make something more circuit looking by not using tags and keys for signalling, but rather add small connectors to the gates and then have the user connect them by simply drawing a wire from one connector to another.
g) It would also be nice if the Logic Workshop also had either a mode toggle, or a small window you can turn on and off that would display the circuit's grey box and allow the user to place black wire and large and small lights on it. The lights would then be connected to whenever signals the use wants, allowing a custom circuit to have the same sort of indicators that the built in ones do that show the current gate status.
h) If you wanted to you could add a new arm to the tech tree just for these circuits. Make the player unlock the four sizes. Maybe put a limit on the number of gates on a user gate and then include a couple of tree entries to multiply that limit, with an unlimited option as well. You could either do the size increases as a general option or you could add them as a separate set to each size.
Post
Ian S
As requested, I'm cutting up my other post into individual sections for easier commenting.
How can a simple inverter be the same size as a full sized rocket engine? :-) I built what was a fairly simple control system and it took up nearly half of the ship. Additionally, once you've rearranged all the gates to fit neatly into the ship it makes it really hard to them find a particular gate if you need to tweak it. Also, when your ship is half logic gates, as soon as a single one is damaged the whole thing tends to fail. I'd like to suggest the following additions.
a) Allow the player to build their own logic units using a logic unit workshop, in the same way that there is a weapon workshop. This would allow the creation of control systems and autonomous controls that could be easily reused in multiple drones and updated as needed.
b) To build a new one the player picks small (1x1), medium (2x1) or large (2x2) or huge (2x3) box. The size could affect the number of input/output's available and/or the number of items that can be put in it, but personally I'd not do that and only use the size to prevent recursion by only allowing user circuits to be used inside other user circuits if they are smaller than the one you want to add them to.
c) In addition to the current logic items available there would also have to be an input and an output objects added. These would have two parameters, the name (which is used to label the entry when its used in another design), and a tag/key pair that turns on and off inside the circuit to match the outside signal for an input and is used to set the output value on an output.
d) All tags and keys used inside a user circuit would of course be insulated from the outside. So, for example, if you have an AND gate in your circuit that uses the letter A as an output, the only thing that would see that A would be inputs on other gates in that circuit. The inside of other circuits used would not see it, nor would controls outside on the actual ship.
e) I'm not sure if sensors should be allowed inside a circuit or not. I think that maybe you should be able to, though perhaps it'd be worth saying that they can only go in circuits that are larger than the sensor, and maybe the same size too, to prevent sensors being shrunk by placing them inside a small circuit. I think that it would probably take some play testing to sort that out.
f) The Logic Workshop could either reuse the drone editor, just with the non circuit items missing, or with a little more effort you could make something more circuit looking by not using tags and keys for signalling, but rather add small connectors to the gates and then have the user connect them by simply drawing a wire from one connector to another.
g) It would also be nice if the Logic Workshop also had either a mode toggle, or a small window you can turn on and off that would display the circuit's grey box and allow the user to place black wire and large and small lights on it. The lights would then be connected to whenever signals the use wants, allowing a custom circuit to have the same sort of indicators that the built in ones do that show the current gate status.
h) If you wanted to you could add a new arm to the tech tree just for these circuits. Make the player unlock the four sizes. Maybe put a limit on the number of gates on a user gate and then include a couple of tree entries to multiply that limit, with an unlimited option as well. You could either do the size increases as a general option or you could add them as a separate set to each size.
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