Topic Transport, pathfinding and automation: boosters & cable cars
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In Response to PeterW
Hm, to be constructive, here's my counter-proposal on how things could work like:
Semi-intelligent lorries: A lorry fitted with automation would log all buildings it comes across. When coming to a sign showing "supply buildings" it changes direction, then attempts to even out material counts across all buildings it comes across. Example:
A lorry with 5 gold and 6 sulphur comes. It rolls past one chemical foundry with 2 sulphur, one storage with 4 sulphur, and another chemical foundry with 4 sulphur. No action so far. Then it comes to a bumper putting it into automation mode. Now it calculates that it has seen 2+4+4 sulphur in buildings, can add 6 itself, for a sum of 16. Furthermore, there have been 2 producers, which means that each should get 8 of those. Therefore, it will roll to the first one, give it 4, then take 4 out of the storage and give 6 to the other factory. As it saw no consumer for the gold, it will put them into the first non-full storage it comes across.
What can go wrong? Lorries can reach their storage limit, at which point they might have to downgrade their goals on how much to give per building (just repeat the above calculation with the remaining buildings). The same applies if the lorry would be supposed to give more raw material than it currently contains - which might happen when there's a storage behind the production buildings.
The nice property of this system is that it could scale extremely well, and that with less "magic" in the lorries. On top of that, it would make producing something on-demand quicker, as the raw materials would most likely already be present.
(Burn lazy evaluation! How ironic.)
Optional rails: Make them static-back. They would be constructible wherever you want them, no need for hubs. Rails automatically grab lorries when they pass by, maybe even have lower friction. But lorries should still be able to roll on their own. This should be how they travel across bases, with rails getting used mainly to get them over rough terrain.
They should deconstruct simply by Clonks grabbing them or a single explosion. Players concerned with rail security should just dig out earth below, so it can not be grabbed and meteor explosion don't reach it.
Semi-intelligent lorries: A lorry fitted with automation would log all buildings it comes across. When coming to a sign showing "supply buildings" it changes direction, then attempts to even out material counts across all buildings it comes across. Example:
A lorry with 5 gold and 6 sulphur comes. It rolls past one chemical foundry with 2 sulphur, one storage with 4 sulphur, and another chemical foundry with 4 sulphur. No action so far. Then it comes to a bumper putting it into automation mode. Now it calculates that it has seen 2+4+4 sulphur in buildings, can add 6 itself, for a sum of 16. Furthermore, there have been 2 producers, which means that each should get 8 of those. Therefore, it will roll to the first one, give it 4, then take 4 out of the storage and give 6 to the other factory. As it saw no consumer for the gold, it will put them into the first non-full storage it comes across.
What can go wrong? Lorries can reach their storage limit, at which point they might have to downgrade their goals on how much to give per building (just repeat the above calculation with the remaining buildings). The same applies if the lorry would be supposed to give more raw material than it currently contains - which might happen when there's a storage behind the production buildings.
The nice property of this system is that it could scale extremely well, and that with less "magic" in the lorries. On top of that, it would make producing something on-demand quicker, as the raw materials would most likely already be present.
(Burn lazy evaluation! How ironic.)
Optional rails: Make them static-back. They would be constructible wherever you want them, no need for hubs. Rails automatically grab lorries when they pass by, maybe even have lower friction. But lorries should still be able to roll on their own. This should be how they travel across bases, with rails getting used mainly to get them over rough terrain.
They should deconstruct simply by Clonks grabbing them or a single explosion. Players concerned with rail security should just dig out earth below, so it can not be grabbed and meteor explosion don't reach it.
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