Lights and Logic vs. Power

[Winterhome]

Simple suggestion here.

Light blocks and logic blocks should instantly switch to "Off" states when the entity they're on has 0 power or less, then revert to their original state when power comes back on.

A dead ship should be dead, aye?

 

[therimmer96]

+1

also, when the ship is rebooting they should be off, and when the ship is overheating, any lights that were on should start to flicker

 

[alterintel]

agreed

 

[spunkiethefirst]

I agree. Turrets and other rail entities should suffer as well if they don't have their own power. Direct door activation should still be possible, but activating doors through logic should not. Should it also affect activation and block placement through buildmode? How about having the logic activate through use of the handheld power supply beam?

 

[Bench]

I'd say so that makes logical sense for lights, but I wouldn't implement it for logic, too much potential for issues.

 

[Planr]

What Bench said. It's a nice thing to add but not for logic cause that has the potential to seriously screw up people's delicate logic mechanisms on their ships... although if they're overheating, chances are the logic stuff is already kinda wrecked :P

 

[Winterhome]

I'd say so that makes logical sense for lights, but I wouldn't implement it for logic, too much potential for issues.

The idea is that a trap system wouldn't work without power, but I see where you're coming from here :P

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I'd say so that makes logical sense for lights, but I wouldn't implement it for logic, too much potential for issues.

Yeah, if all logic blocks suddenly turn into an off state it is possible to permanently lock circuits. Perhaps when power is lost they keep their state but no longer emit light and can no longer interact with other blocks such as lights and doors, which also shut off.

 

[Billazilla]

I would love to see a failing ship's lights flicker and maybe its turrets spaz a bit...

 

[spunkiethefirst]

A compromise would be, logic on a power starved ship could no longer update, that should achieve the same function, and might reduce processor load.

Attempting to activate logic/computers on a power starved ship would bring up a warning window stating "no signal due to power failure".

 

[Raisinbat]

Light blocks and logic blocks should instantly switch to "Off" states when the entity they're on has 0 power or less

Thats a terrible idea; a lot of logic systems need to be "on" in order for the system to work in a default configuration, like radio buttons, this means an emp weapon, or simply losing power on the ship could disable your logic and it would need to be reset. If your logic is important to the ship's functioning this will ruin your ship completely. Same thing with "pausing" it, you end up losing timing in concurrent systems (timer on turret, turret gets power drained, turret no longer synced with main ship) Keep power systems and logic separate please.

Disabling logic on overheating ship should absolutely be done though, and probably also warheads since suicide drones can still be a threat even when they're "killed".

 

[spunkiethefirst]

Thats a terrible idea; a lot of logic systems need to be "on" in order for the system to work in a default configuration, like radio buttons, this means an emp weapon, or simply losing power on the ship could disable your logic and it would need to be reset. If your logic is important to the ship's functioning this will ruin your ship completely. Same thing with "pausing" it, you end up losing timing in concurrent systems (timer on turret, turret gets power drained, turret no longer synced with main ship) Keep power systems and logic separate please.

Disabling logic on overheating ship should absolutely be done though, and probably also warheads since suicide drones can still be a threat even when they're "killed".

I'm not grasping your argument. I'm seeing it as suggesting logic should be immune from outside influence unless the ship is overheating, is this correct?

Instead think of it as a temporary frozen state that disengages when the power comes back similar to an overheat event but without the countdown to self destruct timer.

 

[Raisinbat]

I'm not grasping your argument. I'm seeing it as suggesting logic should be immune from outside influence unless the ship is overheating, is this correct?

Yes. Why would you add non-cosmetic logic to your ship if the behavior isn't guaranteed? Logic guns would be completely useless. You only need to disrupt a single logic block to undermine the entire system, a single emp weapon could render your ship completely dysfunctional. I can see what you mean when talking about lights and doors, but you have to take into account how this affects ships that rely on logic to function at all; you're basically adding something close to an insta-death mechanic to these ships:

• Suicide drone: Requires push effect linked to a clock. Clock = not block linked to delay, one of them active. If both switch off, clock dies and the drone can no longer move
• Logic gun setup: Delay line + clock, same as above. Even if you restart the clock you'll probably miss one round of fire. eg. with swarmers this means you lose 15 seconds of firing, and that's IF you restart it at all, on NPC ships this renders the weapon gone, and you dont usually want to fiddle around in build mode mid-combat

What you are sugesting would render a lot of ships completely useless, and for what? I don't understand why you want this change in the first place; these blocks dont use power, why would no power affect them? If you want to make RP ships where you can damage logic systems externally that's easily done by putting it in another entity and sticking that on the hull; forcing this mechanic into all logic is crazy. Having a logic block that turns on/off at certain power/shield levels would be great so you can make this stuff yourself though.

 

[spunkiethefirst]

Ah I think I see the misunderstanding. I'm not suggesting that all logic should be forced into off state on power loss that was the thread authors suggestion. I'm suggesting it pauses till power comes back. I suggested logic freeze instead of all blocks be forced into off state after bench's comment. Maybe Azereiah could update the first post to say freeze logic instead of force off, this would maintain clock timings and other sensitive connections.

 

[nightwalker_007]

I'd say so that makes logical sense for lights, but I wouldn't implement it for logic, too much potential for issues.

Yes I'd agree there. Besides, I still want the ability to activate a button on my ship to turn on a push module so I'll keep moving, even though my ship's core is dead. Not the easiest way to fly, but it works.

 

[spunkiethefirst]

Yes I'd agree there. Besides, I still want the ability to activate a button on my ship to turn on a push module so I'll keep moving, even though my ship's core is dead. Not the easiest way to fly, but it works.

The push module wouldn't fire if ships out of power. Interesting method of working around dead ship core though.

 

[Raisinbat]

I suggested logic freeze instead of all blocks be forced into off state after bench's comment

The problem with freezing is that it leads to desyncs. Let's say you have a timer on your ship, which is connected to a blast door and a logic gun.
It goes Delay1 -> Open Blastdoor -> Delay2 -> Delay3 -> Fire Logic gun -> Delay 4 -> Delay5 -> Close Blastdoor
If the blastdoor has it's own delay timer, which is often easier with modules, hitting the main ship where the gun is can cause a desync where the door opens, gun fails to fire if its hit during delay 2 or 3 then logic gun goes off with the blast door down and does nothing. Anything that interferes with logic at all is bound to cause lots of malfunctions, making logic impractical for combat designs. This particular example you can work around by putting all the logic on the main ship, and only having wireless connectors on the blastdoor, but that just means more irritating wireless connections you have to do.

In fact, writing this i found a universal solution to the suggestion, and even the first one where logic completely resets; it's trivially simple too:

Place all logic in a separate module docked to the ship with its own power supply and surround it with armor from the main ship. It cannot be hit by EMP, it will never lose power, it's just a lot of extra tedious busywork when making a ship.

 

[Zaphord]

I'd say so that makes logical sense for lights, but I wouldn't implement it for logic, too much potential for issues.

Agreed. I don't want my launch catapults shorting out on my carrier and undocking all my fighters just cause I'm having power issues.

Having my landing lights go out would be a big enough pain as is.

 

[FatCobra]

Having logic "shutdown" or freeze could also cause problems with escape pods.

 

[Zaphord]

Having logic "shutdown" or freeze could also cause problems with escape pods.

Also not cool. You should at least be able to abandon ship of things go seriously sideways.