Best logic to activate a jump inhibitor in a pirate?

[Panpiper]

I'm building a set of pirates for my server, and also to enter into the ZimmTech: Pirate Fleet Competition. I have included a jump inhibitor in the designs, figuring that would make major sense for pirates. Currently I am using a simple clock made with two delay blocks and a button to activate them. Once a second, one of them activates the jump inhibitor computer.

While this does work, the pirates do in fact siphon power off of any charged jump drives in their vicinity (which can be a bit of an issue when you have a half dozen such pirates docked on your homebase), I am not sure this reactivation every second is necessary, desirable or possibly even less than ideal.

I am fairly clueless when it comes to logic systems, figuring out basic clock controls is about as far as I've gotten. Does anyone who has more of a clue have any suggestions or insights?

 

[Tunk]

The jump inhibitor is a pain in the bum because it acts like a flip flop.
Additionally when the entity is unloaded it will turn itself off.

So far the clock method is the most reliable way to keep them going I've found, it just means the inhibitors are half as effective as they could be.

 

[Edymnion]

Keep the clock, but activate it with a turret.

I know you can have an area trigger column on either side of a turret barrel so that when the turret swings through it it'll activate, but you might be able to put an activator/button on the axis block itself. If you can do that, build a backwards facing turret so that it has to turn around to fire forwards, which would trigger the activator.

Then either way, have that start your clock (and have some logic to prevent it from turning back off next time the turret moves).

That way your jump inhibitors only activate when the pirate detects a hostile (aka a player).

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

If your only concern is docked pirates draining your jump drive you could easily rig the clock up to an activator next to your rail docker. That way the clock is off when the ship is docked and active when flying... Of course because they act like flipflops it may dock in the on state... hmmm, I'll have to experiment with this one.

 

[Panpiper]

If your only concern is docked pirates draining your jump drive you could easily rig the clock up to an activator next to your rail docker

That's an interesting idea, something to definitely consider, and perhaps for other reasons as well. That said, the docked pirates are actually not a huge problem, as my jump drives tend to be both very large (so the drain effect is quite small) and fast charging (so I can refill them in a fraction of a second). Accordingly I can still jump just by timing the click well enough.

My main concern was simply how to structure an activation logic that would work most elegantly and importantly, unfailingly, when spawned in as a pirate.

Edymnion's idea is interesting, but perhaps too volume intensive for tiny pirate fighters. Moreover it would likely require major work on all the pirates I have already built. (They are currently using the three block clock logic I outlined above.)

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

That's an interesting idea, something to definitely consider, and perhaps for other reasons as well. That said, the docked pirates are actually not a huge problem, as my jump drives tend to be both very large (so the drain effect is quite small) and fast charging (so I can refill them in a fraction of a second). Accordingly I can still jump just by timing the click well enough.

My main concern was simply how to structure an activation logic that would work most elegantly and importantly, unfailingly, when spawned in as a pirate.

Edymnion's idea is interesting, but perhaps too volume intensive for tiny pirate fighters. Moreover it would likely require major work on all the pirates I have already built. (They are currently using the three block clock logic I outline above.)

My guess would just be the basic clock as being the best and I don't see any need for anything more complicated. The pirate ships will spawn and the logic clock will start ticking thus activating the inhibitor. Easy as pie.

 

[StormWing0]

A logic clock with a count long enough to account for the power drain of them say about 16 to 20 seconds of delay before you need the clock to check again.

 

[GRHayes]

I'm building a set of pirates for my server, and also to enter into the ZimmTech: Pirate Fleet Competition. I have included a jump inhibitor in the designs, figuring that would make major sense for pirates. Currently I am using a simple clock made with two delay blocks and a button to activate them. Once a second, one of them activates the jump inhibitor computer.

While this does work, the pirates do in fact siphon power off of any charged jump drives in their vicinity (which can be a bit of an issue when you have a half dozen such pirates docked on your homebase), I am not sure this reactivation every second is necessary, desirable or possibly even less than ideal.

I am fairly clueless when it comes to logic systems, figuring out basic clock controls is about as far as I've gotten. Does anyone who has more of a clue have any suggestions or insights?

When the ship is docks you use a reset circuit. The circuit tests if the system was last on or off. If it is on you shut it off. Since I don't know if you can actually test the jump inhibitor you can make a parallel circuit to it and put a button in place if it is turned on then you turn the system off. If it is turned off you leave it alone.

The outside of that you can use whatever method you want to keep it active.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

When the ship is docks you use a reset circuit. The circuit tests if the system was last on or off. If it is on you shut it off. Since I don't know if you can actually test the jump inhibitor you can make a parallel circuit to it and put a button in place if it is turned on then you turn the system off. If it is turned off you leave it alone.

The outside of that you can use whatever method you want to keep it active.

Oh yeah that's very do-able. If the jump inhibitor does in fact act just like a t-flipflop than you can just have a t-flipflop keep track of the state of the inhibitor so when you dock it makes sure to send one more pulse to both if they are on.

 

[GRHayes]

Oh yeah that's very do-able. If the jump inhibitor does in fact act just like a t-flipflop than you can just have a t-flipflop keep track of the state of the inhibitor so when you dock it makes sure to send one more pulse to both if they are on.

Glad I could help.