Function Part Discussion

Wait, no one can think of any purpose for pulleys?

Moving heavy amounts of compounds up and down. Thats actually all pulleys are used IRL anyway. However, with a stairyou can alredy do that, arbeit at amuch slower rate.

Now that i think of it, lifts/elevator use a pulley to transmit their force from the motor. Not sure if we want elevator in the game anyway.

What do you mean by using stairs to lift objects?

Yeah I don't think we will need elevators or lifts.

If you have a bunch of bricks you have to get on top of a building, you can just walk up the stair with them. Using a pulley would allow you to get them up faster.

However, i dont think we will even simulate that. Once compounds get to a building, they will just be added to the building stockpile and avaible to use anywhere on the building. So even though pulleys are usefull, we are not going to simulate to a level we need them, so we can just skip them.

Oh okay, I see what you mean, pulleys are null then.

Thats what i said.

I've looked at the descriptions, and there is something else to add. Radioactive materials and antimatter need to be sealed as well (Actually, all energy fields will be sealed anyway, so antimatter doesent matter (no pun intended)). For radioactive materials the sealing is important so it doesent spill out radiation. There is no pount in covering part of it in metal if you leave a gap open.

Hello again! Exam season is finally over (at least for me)!

That's why I come back here, to check out what happened for the past few weeks and start contributing again. I want to rekindle this thread, since I can see it kind of lost interest. You seem to have discussed quite some FP's while I was absent. Can someone please give me a post containing all of the info on the FP's you have discussed so I can update the description and we can continue the discussion?

I already updated the OP while you were gone for hammers and containers. Also, it's less of a loss of interest and more of a beginning of exams on my part. Everything we decided upon is in the OP for the hammer and container descriptions.

So, if pulleys are discarded, should we move on to cages?

We should.

They would be used for storing and capturing creatures. However, cages that hold stronger creatures need to be made from sturdier materials. Someone needs to elaborate this a bit more.

I think we could even ignore sturdiness for simplicity's sake. We could just make it so that cages must be built out of construction materials, to prevent the player to make them out of water, sand, or silk. Then it will just be assumed that all creatures will be more or less secure in that cage. Also, the cage can only fit one organism each, and has to have enough room to fit that organism.

However, on the more important question, what would be some in-game purposes of cages?

Making traps?
If you want to catch a animal, yor units could make traps using cages.

No traps are a different FP.

NickTheNick wrote:

No traps are a different FP.

Okay, but its kind of strange to me, beacuse there are various traps which need to be made of something.

OK, here's what I think about cages:

They would be used to store organisms. To be able to store an org, the cage needs to be the same length, width and height as the creature it's designated to store.

If a cage is supposed to store an underwater creature and is placed on the surface, it would get the appearance of an aquarium.

That's all, I think. Anything else?

Again, these specifications will not be important if we can't think of any purposes for cages in game.

Also, the cage would need to be equal to or greater than the dimensions of the organism.

I think I could help with that.

Perhaps a more scientific race would use cages to keep live specimens for captive study, or, for entertainment purposes, they could be expanded to be of fair size, and the sapients could make wildlife preserves, or aquariums and the like.

I'm a very inventive kind of person. In my mind, there is a function for everything. .3.

Cages are different from zoos, which would hold organisms in captivity for entertainment. Having to use cages to study animals will give bad micro-management, and by the Strategy Mode studying individual organisms will not have much importance, and taking animals to captivity would use ropes, not cages. Wildlife preserves could not fit inside cages, they would be treated as completely differently.

This still means nothing for cages. If there are no ideas by tomorrow we should just move on.

Well then, one cage by itself wouldn't be much, but a bunch grouped together could be used for storage, like the cages at a humane society. Basically, with the way you put it, I'm seeing them as components of larger things. Though they could be used by civilians like humans have portable kennels for things like cats dogs, birds, etc.

Those aren't in game purposes. Of course there are uses for these things in real life, hence why they exist, but in a game many of these functions are not included. For example, there will not be any simulations of the inside of buildings showcasing animal abuse, such as the humane society, and so that is not a use for the cage. There would be no purpose in game for the player to create buildings that showcase animal abuse, thats just not a level of detail we are putting into the game. Also, personal pets won't be bothered with, and so cages don't matter for that either.

Well, they could be used for interrogation, maybe. Perhaps with the right modifications, they could be quite effective for that. Kinda like a medieval crow's cage. .3.

I agree with moving on. The only use i can think for cages are as containers, and we alredy covered that.

So next one is a scythe. That would be used to harvest plants. The problem i see is which plants can be harvested by a scythe. If we get that kind of setled up, the other thing is how effective they are. that would just be a factor of how big the cutting part is. The longer, the faster it can harvest.

Interrogations would also be too specific. Plus, even if that were included, there are already prison cells and dungeons for that.

EDIT: Ninja'd. I think scythes should only speed up plant harvesting, by, say, 100%?

Well, scythes are mostly used for harvesting plants like grains, corn, things on stalks.

Also scythes with serrated blades could be used to increase efficiency with woodier/thicker stalks.

I think that is too much specification. Just 100% to all plant collection, unless there is some glaring exception I am missing.

Also, it should be able to be used as a weapon.