Generators (For powering lights in mines etc.)

While also ensuring that you have access to it so that you can refuel (if fuel is implemented) and upgrade and repair it?

 

That too. Might get tricky, a turret isn't going to do it(unless it has good IFF detection).

 

So is an And-Gate. This is getting tiresome. If an enemy reaches your And-Gate, it would be no different than finding your generator.

You just want to force a weakness onto your opponents because you think it will deepen PvP. Well, having that weakness probably would deepen the PvP strategy, and would be a great addition to PvP arenas in the form of an And-Gate. Meanwhile I'd still be able to create a NAnd-Gate so that my royal bedchamber's door only unlocks if the intruder walks all the way past all my booby-traps without turning the lights on.

EDIT: I think I may as well mention that it would probably work that way in the game's code-- It would literally be an And-Gate.

 

You're forgetting the need for fuel.
Yes, weakness is good. Because you NEVER want minmaxers with no min, otherwise it gets impossible to play(or boring, if you're the minmaxer in question).

 

It's like the need for ammo (or lack thereof).

You can just stockpile it until you never have to worry about running out.

 

...Until you suddenly run out.
And where would you get enough fuel like that?

 

You mean until you suddenly notice you're below half storage, so you spend the next five hours farming more so that you don't run out later? Boring... This is what would really happen, just like how in Terraria players will go back home to get more ammo before they run out, unless they aren't paying any attention at all. If they are one of these people who don't pay close attention, then that's all the more reason they should dislike the idea of generators because they'd create more grief than good.

Why not just have rare weather events like sunspots or magnetic storms that disrupt all electrical devices? At least those wouldn't be an obnoxious chore that comes as part of an unhelpful mechanic that prevents me from using NAnd-Gates. We don't even have any idea how fuel will work in Starbound. At any rate, I doubt it would be a difficult task to stockpile it, just boring and time consuming.

I'm only going to say this once: Running out of fuel for a generator would be as exciting as a stick in the eye-- painful and annoying, not fun. If you just want to gather resources for something, gather more ore to build the next tier of furniture, or gather crops so that you can eat, or gather bricks to build a new base, or gather items from chest in a new dungeon, or gather entries for new mobs on that new planet for your log book.

 

OHGODOHGODOHGOD! I can't see! IT hurts! Aaah!
A stick in one's eye would be very, very exciting. With the added bonus of you now get to brag about your shiny new eyepatch and scare little kids by popping out your glass eye in front of them.



It also depends on how fuel is gathered compared to other resources.
It could be extracted from gas pockets in the atmosphere (Or have a passive refinery set up for those who don't have access to flying vehicles yet.
Or on planets with no atmosphere, it might be a substance that covers its surface very uniformly. Allowing it to be easily mined using strip-mining techniques.
If you really hate getting fuel, then set up a machine to do it for you, as it is in a simple, reliable pattern. Either use the simple atmospheric refiners, but that wouldn't work well compared to a surface-mining machine, which would have a high upfront cost but would pay for itself and the fuel it uses much faster.

 

I do have to point out that we don't know how much fuel is going to be available. Farming the stuff may be more difficult than you think.

 

If you really think so, why don't you try putting a stick in your eye right now?
It is only exciting in the most unpleasant way, and certainly not fun.

If you can set up an automatic process to generate power, how is that different than not requiring power in the first place? The only difference is that you tacked on a prerequisite to using your stuff, in addition to the crafting materials and recipe. In my opinion, if I take the effort to craft something, I should be able to use it. There shouldn't be other prerequisites that you have to gather, like power or ammo.

If it is difficult to farm, then you can expect to be without power for a lot of the game. It just means you'll spend even more time farming it and even less time using it, not that you'll run out more often. This is just like ammo, as I mentioned before. If the ammo is rare, you just won't use weapons that take ammo until you've stockpiled tons and tons of it (or you end up never using it at all), like the Star Cannon in Terraria.

 

Hmm wires and lights and independent power sources are a wonderful idea. I would be pleased to see such items in the game.

 

I was thinking that Pseudoboss was referring to how excitement doesn't exactly mean enjoyment.
But yeah, he's only half joking. After all, eye patches are cool, especially when coupled with scars.

I don't think that auto-turrets that are placed should distinguish between the player or any other valid target. They should be an environmental hazard to anyone who is nearby while it is activated; basically just like spikes, lava, and other traps that aren't really considered "imbalanced". If everyone is fighting on the same field, then anyone can potentially get the tactical advantage.

I also like the idea of drones that would work like turrets. You could have a gun that shoots a sticky bullet, and then the bullet itself shoots at the nearest hostile target, for example. There is a thread on Remote Drone Blasters here, which is basically what I'm talking about. The thing is, it wouldn't be a permanent fixture; it would just use a portion of your energy like any other gun, and only stay up for a few shots and then disappear or return to you or something.

There also are not truly non-renewable resources; just go to another planet. If you have infinite planets, you have infinite resources.

 

Why would you use turrets if they don't have IFF? And how would you shut them off remotely without a requirement for power?

Right, but that meas you have to be nomadic, which is problematic for me.

 

Same reason why you would use spike traps or lava. To defend your base from careless intruders.

Attach a switch or screen to it via the wiring system, then flip the switch. I presume that's the same way you'd do it with a power requirement, too, which is my whole point-- the power requirement is just tacked on and wouldn't change the actual functions of anything (except to remove NAnd-Gates).

Consider that mobs will only spawn around you or other players, and other players would find a way into your base while you were away regardless of whether turrets had IFF or not. The drones would be more of a weapon than a static defense, though. They wouldn't serve the same purpose as spikes/lava/turrets, but they'd also be more like those than a regular weapon. Perfect for people who like the Engineer or Demo-man in TF2.

 

1.) There is no ammo in the game. Chucklefish confirmed that all guns will use energy.
By the way, energy is basically your player's mana bar. It automatically regenerates.

2.) The wiring system is a wireless link signified by a transparent line between two furniture items.For example, you can link a bunch of lights together so that if you turn one on, they all turn on together. You can also place one, turn it off, then place another one and link the two together, which creates a NOR-Gate (a.k.a. an inverter) because turning one on will turn the opposite one off and vice-versa. Using NOR-Gates, you can create any other type of logic gate without even needing a specific item for each one. This has been a confirmed feature for quite some time.

3.) I'm talking about two different things. Turrets are obviously static defense, but the drones I mentioned are shown here and are just weapons that can be used for a more supportive role. I don't see why IFF is so important for static defenses, though. You can just have a system to disarm the turrets from outside (like a keypad, or having to press buttons in a certain order, or any one of a dozen other options that can be set up using logic gates) and then tell all of your team mates the code so they can get in/ change it before each round of PvP. If turrets had IFF and could be used en masse, you could just hook a million of them up and instantly kill any boss-- that's not balanced, no matter how much power they required, because it is still an easy way to kill any foe without any skill.

 

1., 2.: .....huh. I didn't know that.
Although making other gates with an inverter does require that the inverted signal is connected into the wiring somehow, yes?
And what's powering the player's energy bar?
And if we have energy anyway, what's to keep us from making a powergrid to power our more immobile stuff?
3.No you wouldn't be able to, if you had power issues. Or at least the size of the powergrid you'll need will be an inhibiting factor.

 

3 would still be a problem for non-IFF turrets (Which is growing on me the more I think of it.) because one could just box him/herself in after placing a billion turrets, put a button in the box, activate all the turrets after summoning the boss, and 1-shot it, deactivate all the turrets and loot away.
Depending on how difficult DPS in the form of turrets is to get, this might be reasonably possible. Or it might be nigh impossible, and if you can turret-kill a boss I applaud you, and you deserve to one-shot it without any skill because you just spent 12 more hours than I did trying to down it the "lazy" way.
If you had a generator, there'd be several ways to make building multiple turrets easier or more difficult.
First the limiting factors that a generator could have 1) you could have each tier of generator have so many possible uplinks, so that with a low-tier generator you could only place 3-5 turrets, upgrading it would allow you to place dozens. 2) the generator has a maximum power draw, exceeding that means you can't power any more turrets without an upgrade. 3) Fuel could be consumed faster when more energy is being consumed, deterring placing more turrets than you need. (Depending on if energy is consumed with each shot or constantly consumes energy or both, the limit would be changed.) 4) The generator could only be moved with heavy lifting equipment. This is a personal favorite of mine, because I hate the fact that players can shove hundreds of swords, mountains of rock, trees, axes and high explosives up their ass with no ill effects. I think that's kinda strange to say the least. With heavy lifting equipment required to move generators and other massive pieces of equipment, it would make it much more difficult to just place a gen and a bunch of turrets wherever you happen to need it.
A generator could also make turreting easier while making it not overpowered. The generator could be expensive, but the turrets cheaper, so that as a prerequisite, you "unlock" turret capability with a generator, allowing you to place enough turrets to reasonably defend your base shortly after you get it. Combined with factors such as the ones listed above, this would make a generator simultaneously empowering and limiting.

 

I'm not sure if I understand the first question. The inverter itself is a group of things. It isn't an object that gets connected to wiring, it IS two objects and the wire between them working together as a system. A logic gate is an input-output system, not unlike functions in mathematics. The output of an inverter is the opposite of the input, so if the switch is on, the light is off, and vice-versa.

Nothing powers the player's energy bar. It recharges over time automatically, like mana does in Terraria. You don't have to collect anything, you can just stand around and wait for it to replenish. If you need an excuse for why it works that way, perhaps it is fueled by bio-electric current from the player's body, or maybe it's just a video game.

If other environmental hazards can harm bosses, you could just lure them into a pool of lava, spikes, etc... The main difference is that other hazards probably can't stack (I.E. more spikes doesn't mean more damage). Chances are high that the only way to fully solve the balance issue is to eliminate the stacking, possibly by giving foes invincibility frames after being hit by turrets. For rapid attacks that would be nerfed by this, it could only cause invincibility frames a certain percentage of the time.

I can think of many other ways to stop players from abusing turrets and other hazards, but the generator idea would not really be a limiting factor. There is still no cap on how many turrets you could possibly build or anything; it would just end up taking more time/effort to build it all because you'd have to create more generators to tack on.