Some time a go I was wiring a binary digital counter, with an associated light display, and while expanding my building I accidentally broke part of the circuit. I now can't be bothered to squint through the tangled mess to find the pattern of wires missing which is a shame because I was using this for demonstration purposes. It had manual input and a pulse generator attached to it. This incident really got me thinking though...What if that pulse generator were one box? What if many aspects of this were only one box? So I ask you all: Tired of your circuits looking like THIS? (fig1.) Then I propose THIS: (fig2.) On Internal Wiring: The idea would be that you go to a specialized crafting station, it would have a drop menu of all available core wiring components (Logic Gates, persistent switches, latch, etc but NO small switches, NO lights or anything like that...) the idea being that you can drag and drop those components into the provided spaces (1 - 9) and then wire them to your heart's content. The presence of nine spaces will allow a reasonably amount of liberty for the user to optimize their circuit. On External Wiring: Circles A, and D are mandatory input/output respectively, and B and C would be able to be selected as input or output when you're building the circuit. Circle E would be the user's choice of an internal device, specifically an LED, button or switch to be placed when creating one of these integrated circuits and utilizing direct manual input in conjunction with external input and output. Though a user may wish to have more or less external input/output, it is not practical without a complete wiring system overhaul as there's simply no space for all those circles. IMPORTANT: E will not be visible when applying external wiring, it will show up on the creation screen only, it is an internal device just like all the logic gates and other stuff that would go inside this. Externally what one could expect to see is something like this: (fig3.) Ideally what you see here is a box for the user to specify their choice of: A button, a switch, a light, or a sealed space (Give the idea of some sort of interstellar manufacturing standards etc...) The light's colour will be up to the user and will be from a selection of 6 core colours as well as white light, the side will have four indicator lights that turn on if there is an input or output signal present, with a colour appropriate to the node colour (Input blue, output red) and will be greyed out if there is no purpose for them in the internal workings of the integrated circuit.(Capped just like if there's no internal input device or light) NOTE: This could not replace the current wiring system, it will not even make it obsolete, all components and aspects of the current wiring system are highly functional and the entire premise of these designs is based off of working in conjunction with, not in competition with the present system, these "ICs" could not be omnipotent while maintaining practicality and have some subtle limits that would require external usage of the current system especially on account of the small switch. The limit of four total Tx||Rx nodes also makes all existing aspects of the wiring system mandatory for this to work. This is entirely meant as a sort of optimizer for user friendliness In summary what you would have is: (1: )A crafting station where you go to build this, maybe its worked into the wiring station interface as a separate section called "Circuit Integration (2: ) fig3. The external specification screen, this would pop up first when building the integrated circuit and the user would essentially specify its combination of input output here, but they can go back and change it. (3: ) fig2. The internal specification screen, here the user would begin to build their circuit's combination of timers, logic gates, persistent switches, latches, and the likes, while connecting it to the input output specifications. (4: ) fig1. This is what you would no longer have, you would no longer have a full screen of wires blinding you as you try and work with or heaven forbid fix a digitally complex device. or base. this would allow you to save a lot of space and a lot of confusion, as well as lower your risk of breaking a circuit and making its replacement much simpler as we now would have an internal wiring system that persists when the piece is put on or taken off a wall. Other suggestions: Coloured wiring for users to work with, wire colour would change by using the wiring tool in a similar way to the paint tool when making new wires, and a conduit system that works like furniture but visually fits together like copper or sewer pipe, and has an invisible wiring connection to contacting pieces of conduit, would contain an input and output at a junction box furniture piece. This would allow a persistent and visually clean presentation system with the addition of having an aesthetic quality and all the while preventing wire clutter not to be used as a replacement to, but rather a supplement to the current wiring system.
you might check out the macrochip mod http://community.playstarbound.com/resources/macrochip-stable-glad-giraffe.3420/ . sounds like it's pretty much what you want. i agree that it should really be native.
