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.
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.
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 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.
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
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 unlockstrong energy wireslater 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):
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
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 itemsBoost Tier II: Boosts production rate by 100%. Requires 3 energy / 10 itemsFilter 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)
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
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
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?