needs some power....

[canadianchuck]

i was hoping for some ways to manipulate power.
specifically a lever block and the ability to connect power blocks to things.
levers you could turn lights on and off, power blocks on and off, or activated explosive blocks(so they can explode).
connecting power blocks would be usefull for making things just stay on forever. so i could create a ring of repair blocks that would always be on which could rpair my ships hall.
it could create some problems on ships if you connect power blocks to laser weapons. you wouldn't be able to tell the amount of energy used with just one power bar but you would be able to use up all the energy on your heavy cannon but still be able to blast away with some smaller guns.

 

[schema]

Hi,
thanks for the suggestion.
There will be a way in the future to switch off lights. I don't really understand what you mean by connecting power blocks to usable blocks. If you have repair blocks, they won't use any power unless you spesifically use them, or are you talking about some mechanism that would automate that?
At the moment, placing power blocks will increase your maximal energy capacity, as well as the rate, at wich power is generated. So if you have one big gun, that drains the energy, you can still have small guns, that take take energy slower as it regenerates.

cheers,
- schema

 

[beetlebear]

We talked about this for a few minutes and have come up with a very simple solution to what you are suggesting but it will be something we test and work on in the future.

Great idea,
Thanks for playing StarMade
- Beetlebear

 

[canadianchuck]

so lets say ther is this unbeliavable long asteroid that you want to harvest but you don't want to sit there all day holding down the mouse button. so you instead place some salvage beams pointing down the length of the asteroid. now how do you start this thing?
you place some power blocks and then specificly select one of those blocks with [C] then you go over to the salvage beam control and press [X].
Now the salvage beam is turned on as long as that one power block is still intact.
You could even go so far as to place a chest block somewhere. then you select the salvage beam control with [C] and then the chest with [X]. That way all the salvage material has somewhere to go.

I'm sure there is a more effeicint way of doing the sme thing that would create less problems but it'sthe basic idea.

 

[schema]

I see,

so basically, it's more of a 'lever' block that lets you turn on/off blocks continuously.

I think this feature wouldn't even need its own block. I could place that in the weapon assign panel as a checkbox.

If you activate a block that has the 'toggled activation' checkbox on, it would continue to activate (as fast as it can), until you press the mouse button again with the same weapon slot selected.

 

[canadianchuck]

i'm not talking about a ship but doing this on a ship is good.
I don't know if you'll change it but currently you cant place core blocks and docking modules on an asteroid. You can place control modules but you cant activate or use them on an asteroid either. I can only assume you cant do this on planets either.
This could be a good feature to get guns shooting in different directions! i Know the problem with getting guns to shoot from the side of the ship to shoot were there pointing is because weapon modules fire where the shooter is looking. so if you have that box checked you'll just turn auto fire on or off but you wouldn't have control over the module besides turning off autofire(when inside a ship).