wires.md

Wires & Energy Pitch 01

This is a summary of my current thoughts about wires! It contains a lot of smaller surveys, which you can then vote in the #surveys channel for!

For example, if there is an [A] then you can click the A reaction in discord to vote for it!

Vote in the #surveys channel of the Official Discord.

Wires vs Energy

Availablity

All this content will be available from level 18 only to make sure it doesn't complicate the current gameplay. The requirements for reaching level 18 will be lowered though so you can reach it faster.

The ideas

First idea is to split this whole topic into Wires and Energy.

Energy will be required to power advanced shape processors or maybe even secondary hubs. You will also be able to speed up existing buildings with it. (Details below).

Wires will be used to be able to build logical components. For example, filtering inputs, enabling / disabling buildings or building circuits. (Details below).

• [A] I like the idea of power
• [B] I like the idea of wires
• [C] I don't like any of both

(You can select [A] and [B] here if you want)

Energy

Energy will be used for multiple purposes. It will be a integer value, that means, there can only be multiple of 1 Energy. There can't be things like 0.5 Energy.

Producing Energy

You will be able to place a new Energy Generator on the regular building layer. It will require shapes to generate energy which it propagates to the wires layer.

This is how the generator would look on the regular layer (draft!):

And this is how it would look once you switch to the wires layer (draft!):

You could then connect wires (see below) to those 4 ports. I can also imagine having upgrades later which unlock more ports.

• [D] It should require one specific (very complex) shape to generate energy
• [E] It accepts all shapes, and generates energy based on the shape complexity
• [F] I don't like this idea at all

Transporting Energy

There will be energy wires which allow you to transport the energy. There will be a straight version and a crossing (which distributes energy evenly to all outputs in order).

The energy wires will have a capacity (Like, 10 energy / second).

I can now imagine multiple options:

• [G] You have upgrades which increase the capacity of the wires
• [H] You unlock strong energy wires later which have a higher capacity and look bigger.
• [I] There are no upgrades for the wires.

I think the cool idea with the strong energy wires would be that you could use them near to the energy generator, and then switch to regular ones further away. For example (ugly draft):

Use cases for energy

Advanced Shape Processing

There will be advanced shape processors which require energy to modify shapes. For example, I could imagine shape welding which welds a given shape by using 1 energy / shape.

The welding itself would simply modify the border color of the shape.

And this is how it would look on the wires layer, where you have to supply the energy:

• [J] I like the whole idea
• [K] I like the idea of having to supply energy, but I don't like the welding idea
• [L] I don't like the idea at all

Powerup Pins

Another use case are such called powerup pins. Every item processor will have slots which you can fill with pins. There will be several different pins:

• Boost Tier I: Boosts production rate by 50%. Requires 1 energy / 10 items
• Boost Tier II: Boosts production rate by 100%. Requires 3 energy / 10 items
• Filter Pin: Allows to block the input / output slots of balancers. Those will be controlled with different wires and don't require energy, but need to retrieve signals via logic wires (see below).

Example on how it could look:

• [M] I like the idea of pins
• [N] I like the idea of the boost pins
• [O] I like the idea of the filter pins
• [P] I don't like any of the ideas

(You can select multiple here)

Secondary hubs

I can also imagine having secondary hubs. You could place a limited amount of them, and they would require 1 energy / accepted item or so.

• [Q] I like this idea, and there should be an unlimited amount of secondary hubs
• [R] I like this idea, and there should be a limited amount of secondary hubs
• [S] I don't like this idea

Logic Wires

I will write more about logic wires in the next pitch! I haven't finalized all the ideas and I'm also running out of letters for the survey! :P

Since energy won't affect current game, then I don't think that the concept of "energy" is appropriate. Maybe something like a "booster" that needs shapes to operate would be more appropriate. The operation would still be as explained above just not mentioned as "Energy" as it would be confusing for early game.

Firstly, I don't really like how the wires connect to the middle of a building. I know it is a draft, but my suggestion is that something that can be connected has a purple outline and when it is connected, it kind of looks like an extractor but purple, but instead of an arrow it has a ball and is entirely thinner.
Secondly, I know the welder is another new idea, but what if anything that goes through the welder can have other things stacked and whatnot, but what if it is gone through a cutter, the welded shapes cannot be separated?

Like the idea, thought it would be nice if you could choose to play it 'classically' with out the new features.

Make a new mode called Creative Mode and only allow secondary hubs there instead of the main game. IMO this secondary hub thing will break what most people enjoy your game for in the first.

I'm tempted to vote K, but really I'm just not sure what you're getting at with the welding.

When I started playin' this game, and noticed how the bad things that annoyed me in similar games just weren't present in your game, I immediately became addicted to it. One of these things is energy, which I don't like at all. I mean, your game is supposed to be minimalistic. Imo energy would just make everything unnecessary complicated. Too much things too keep count of. Also you can't do shit with energy. No fancy factories, no nothing. Energy is the equivalent to: "cuz it's supposed to be realistic." I don't know if that's what you want your game to be. Also, another comment said boosters would be better, but imo it's the same with that. You can't do shit with it. Also, isn't the whole purpose of the universal upgrading and leveling system defeated by something that individually increases performance? I mean, I was so happy when I noticed that all things were upgraded automatically and I didn't need to rebuild all my factories!

However, being able to color borders with this welding thing would keep the minimalism while adding another whole layer of complexity. Only thing you could mess up if it gets hard to discern what exactly it is that you need to make, but that should be easily avoidable.

The wires for logistics and advanced technological craziness would be amazing though. I'm 99.9% sure that if you allow basic capabilities for automatisation, similar to the robots in factorio, people would do automated factory expansion with highly complex behavior trees. Best example for this, while keeping it insanely minimalistic, would be Minecraft's redstone actually. Just be sure it doesn't turn into something like ComputerCraft mod for Minecraft, which would not be minimalistic at all, but straight up programming.

EDIT: Forgot the secondary hubs. I agree with another comment that this is one of the things that really keep your game challenging. Only one hub, with a limited amount of inputs and steadily increasing amount of items that need to be delivered. I mean, I personally wouldn't mind a very limited amount of secondary hubs, but not really experienced enough to know whether this will affect the experience positively or negatively.

I don’t like the idea of energy at all.
The Energy Generator would just sit there and consume shapes making it practically irrelevant.
It is more convenient to place a couple of buildings more to get to the desired speed instead of boosting single buildings with energy.

In think the interesting part is the logic layer.
There should be only three types of wires: logic wires = red [A] and green [B] with the signal A-Z and data wires = blue [D] for shape data.

With the logic wires you can enable/disable an output of a splitter or an underground belt output.
With the data wires you can transmit the shape data from the hub to a comparator to generate logic states.

By the way instead of a compact splitter left and right it would make more sense to have a 1 to 3 splitter and a 3 to 1 combiner.

The splitter, combiner and the underground belt output has two inputs for red and green wires.
In a configuration menu for each part you can decide between [A AND B] or [A OR B] and which signal to compute.
For splitter, combiner you can configure which input/output port you want to enable/disable.
For underground belt outputs you can disable the output so the underground belt is connected to the next underground belt outputs in the line.

I love the idea of logic wires and conditional balancers, which are not limited by energy. This is fun.

I can imagine at some point the game will have end game random contracts. You see 3 options:

• build 500 X, reward A
• build 1000 Y, reward B
• build 750 Z, reward C

You sign up for a contract and want to deliver shapes to get your reward. Reward can range from currency, cosmetics, power-ups, map terraforming.

In such end game conditional logic is a perfect fit, as you can aim to optimize your factory to be flexible and adjust to produce various shapes.
For example you can write wires logic as:

enable if [active contract contains<color<white>>]

or more specific

enable if [active contract layer <2> <top left> is <red> <rectangle>]

The key is to have reward be rewarding enough for players to be willing to do it.

I believe being able to purchase map transformation is one of the rewards people may want to get.
Clearing unused mines to clean factory area or growing/building new mines of shapes in short supply will let players make their own factory.

For those who use wires to their full potential and reached the level of semi/full automatic factory through the conditional logic wires the next level of progression/currency sink may be cosmetics - placing flooring, walls, painting/applying skins to factory components. That is easy on CPU and has no upper limit to currency price or contract difficulty. In the concept of signing up for a contract player is willingly accepting the difficulty to get reward he desires.

I like the idea of secondary hubs, but I think they should be limited. And I think once you build one, you have to constantly supply power to it. If power drops, or you don't feed complex enough shapes to keep the power online, then power shuts down and the secondary hub stops accepting items entirely.

Might be neat if the power accepted 2 inputs, kept a small buffer of one shape, and eventually stopped accepting more of that certain shape in lieu of a new shape. Giving us time to figure that new shape out and feed it in while the buffer runs through the current shape.

People mostly vote for what makes stuff easier, beware the votes for 'easy'!

The key question is: What would Energy bring to the game?
The way it's described here, the Energy Generator would practically act as a hub you deliver shapes to. That's fine so far.
From there, you get underground wires to 'transport' Energy with limited capacity per wire. However, those wires are nothing but inferior belts. They do practically the same thing, except you transport only one thing, without nice visuals, you place them on a seperate layer where you don't have to worry to block space you need for something else, and it seems they can feed into the machines above from any direction. That seems incredibly boring in comparison to the game as is, a bit like the sewage pipes in old simcity/cities skylines.

For energy to be successfully integrated, I think it needs to be entwined with what's going on above ground a lot more.
Here my suggestion:

A] Don't connect energy to machines directly, but with a seperate machine orthogonally next to it. Let's call it an "Electric Feeder" as it feeds electricity to machines, and it can just be 1x1. Many designs won't have a space for that additional machine included, such that they need to be reworked - that's intentional, since coming up with designs is what makes the game interesting. Could even be a better Feeder providing more boost could be larger, just to shake things up again.

B] Start out with a shape-powered Electric Feeder. A comparatively simple shape could represent low-tier electricity, and for the first Feeders, you won't need wires, they just consume those shapes. Those could even be more efficient than later Feeders getting their electricity from wires in overall shape consumption. Mind - this is at a stage where they'd be used to boost production, before they are a requirement for "welders" and the like.

C] Allow only small wires underground/in the "wire layer" - those that connect to individual Feeders. Larger wires, like the ones that connect to generators, should be above ground to have interaction with the rest of the game.

D] Perhaps small wires could be done gridless. Essentially, place a transformer at the end of larger overground wires, and in the "underground mode" you just draw straight lines between Transformer and Electric Feeder. It could even be an option that upon placement, a Transformer connects to all Electric Feeders in reach, and an Electric Feeder connects to a Transformer in reach. Just show the connections on mouseoever, and the player practically never needs to enter a wire layer.

Of course, none of this applies if the "wire layer" can be made as engaging as belts. But on a seperate layer, just think like this: If belts would work like wires, would the game still be fun? If not, then it's probably not the best implementation.

Energy: I don't really like energy at all. It seems like an unnecessary complication. After ~20 hours of gameplay I already have a lot of stuff going on, and I don't think it would be fun to go through and connect all of it to energy to upgrade it. That's busywork. I like machine speed upgrading automatically. I also find it fun to work out space-efficient patterns so I can do stuff with 10+ shape painters (or whatever) and it seems like energy would lend itself more to using one machine but powered up, which I feel breaks a big aspect of the game.

Logic Wires: I'm for this because it would be an optional layer of cool stuff for advanced players, like redstone in Minecraft. It looks like it wouldn't be necessary at all for the "story mode" (since you said it wouldn't unlock until level 18), but it would be there once you're finished with that for people who really want to dig into the game. That's ideal.

Question: How would blueprints work with wires?

Love these concepts! I made this account just to comment this.

I am in support of building unlimited hubs, but only if they have a steep price to build/maintain. Maybe the cost doubles for each Hub you already own.

For the energy system, I love the idea of making a power generator and supplying it to special production lines. One thing I would love to see would be power beacons instead of individual connections (like factorio beacons). Limited-range boost beacons would add a challenging but optional way to power up buildings. Imagine trying to fit as many painters in a 15x15 square as possible, instead of making long lines like the previous tech.

For getting energy itself, my suggestion would be that each energy station requires its own unique shape, with increasing difficulty. Not too sure if this would become too tedious to keep doing though. I just hope that energy isn't made the same way as blueprints, with just the same shape mass produced. You definitely have more direction than I do, but my vision for energy would be like small-scale hub upgrades that give you optional rewards.

Love this game and great work!