Lights require minimal power to light-up?

[NoK0mm3nt]

Picture this:

You're fighting a large ship in Battlemode, so you cannot see power & shielding level. The ship has external running lights. All of a sudden, the shield effect disappears and your chewing into the ship's hull.

Shortly after, you hit a critical junction in their power configuration. Shield-recharge + their cannons completely drains the power system in seconds.

Awesome! You see the running lights flick off, occasionally flicking back on as power is briefly restored for mere moments before being drained again by their energy-crippled thrusters.

w00t! You've got them now!

Game over.

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Even if Lights didn't drain any power at all (so as to not cause any functional change to existing ships), but would only light up when Power > 0, we could have this.

 

[MossyStone48]

I always thought of them as self powered. Since we can turn them all off and on independently. A lot of logic playthings use lights and doors. Requiring power for them might throw a wrench in the work being done for logic. Maybe in the future. Once the testing on logic is done.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

Dear god no. Remember when Notch said he was going to make torches run out? And a massive shitstorm blew over. So no, lights should not have a power requirement, not for the small amount of light they give.

However, I do like the idea that when you 'shut down' a ship you knock out its lights. Would be fun shutting down a station and getting all spooky looking for baddies inside...

 

[jayman38]

I would like it if you could link lights to the power system in some way, so that they could, indeed be affected like this. This way, the lights can only be affected if the builder decided they should. You could set up lights like this not only externally, but also inside to let your engineer know that power is low and needs something to improve power generation.

Another idea: set up HTML programming so that a display block shows a different color background, depending on the percentage of maximum power that current power is at. E.g. 75%-100%: dark green background; 40%-75%: dark yellow background; 1%-40%: dark red background. Also needs to be programmable for shields. Maybe an option for a color gradient, such as shield background color on the left, power background color on the right.

While we're at it, it would be fun to have a "flicker" logic block. It would work similarly to the delay block, producing a series of On/Off signals in a staccato, pseudo-random pattern, to flicker affected systems. Imagine setting this up as an intermediate logic block between shields and external lights, so that when the ship is hit, the external lights flicker. Kinda useless, but fun for RP stuff. 2-states: straight, solid signal transmission (off?) or staccato, pseudo-random NOT signal logic (on?).

 

[Lecic]

God, no. You wouldn't be able to explore caves using just a small stack of light rods and your wits. You'd need to go through the hassle of pointlessly slamming down some power modules first.

Now, what I would like to do is be able to make logic output when various systems are at different levels of use. If power storage is below 50%, I could trigger some lights to flicker until power goes back above that point, for example. You could have lights that go on when shield storage is low, lights in the engines that turn on when you're moving, all sorts of cool things.

 

[Mariux]

What if the lights don't actually take any power, but when the ship does run out of power they turn off? That way, the power requirements would stay the same.

 

[Lecic]

What if the lights don't actually take any power, but when the ship does run out of power they turn off? That way, the power requirements would stay the same.

Then you still wouldn't be able to use lights on planets without power. ZERO power is the same as running out of power.

 

[Ithirahad]

Then you still wouldn't be able to use lights on planets without power. ZERO power is the same as running out of power.

...Uh, for one thing, how hard is it to put down a single reactor. And for two, there's still nothing stopping you from using parsen crystal capsules as lanterns.

 

[Lecic]

...Uh, for one thing, how hard is it to put down a single reactor. And for two, there's still nothing stopping you from using parsen crystal capsules as lanterns.

It's not that it's hard. It's just a complete waste of time and resources, and I don't see a need for it. Lights shouldn't need power. They're a decorative.

 

[Mariux]

Then you still wouldn't be able to use lights on planets without power. ZERO power is the same as running out of power.

I guess planets could be an exception...