Include Pliers or Pliers like functionality in the base game

[blakemw]

So like a good little beta tester I disabled all my mods for the public testing branch, including Pliers, and I miss the hole in my tool bar.

This is by no means the first thread pleading to include Pliers in the base game. But I figure it can't hurt to make another appeal! Note that Pliers now even includes an optional "Errand mode" which makes it less overpowered.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2629866529

Note that whenever I refer to "pipes", I also include wires and conveyors and such.

Join dis-join asymmetry

A regular annoyance is that pipes can be joined as a free and irreversible action. So if say you have an oxygen pipe and hydrogen pipe side by side and accidentally draw a pipe across them, they are now joined and mixing, this can't be undone without having duplicants run there, tear it down and rebuild it!

This is not the first time this argument has been made, and it won't be the last time. As long as pipes can be joined as a free action, they should be able to be dis-joined as a free action.

If joining pipes becomes an action that requires duplicant intervention, then dis-joining pipes should also be an action that requires duplicant intervention. But I don't really have a problem with pipes having magical nano-technology that allows them to perform limited reconfiguration at the behest of the printing pod AI.

Not having pliers doesn't hurt advanced players as much

The reason is that besides the convenience of being a free action, Pliers doesn't do much that bridges don't already do. If you had the foresight to spam bridges everywhere, you can freely split pipes without leakage by de-constructiong a bridge and can freely join pipes by building bridges. And bridges are often cheaper, the same cost, or barely more expensive than pipes, may build faster, and greatly accelerate fluid flow rate, while also for free-flowing loops leaving "holes" that allow the packets to compress leaving a stretch of pipe empty.You can even place a backwards bridge overlapping a pipe to cut off the flow, without touching the pipe itself or having the foresight to include a liquid shutoff. If you fully abuse bridges then Pliers is little more than a QoL mod that makes your pipe network less ugly.

But if like a normal human being you just build the pipe you want and only use bridges when you want pipes to cross, instead of preemptively spamming bridges everywhere for their magical powers, then not having Pliers hurts a lot more.

Also an advanced player has a much better idea of exactly what the piping has to look like. Pliers is of huge benefit to players who have to mess around with a build a lot before it starts working. Pliers is practically an enabler of complex builds for players with intermediate experience.

The game has changed over time

While it's not useful for all network types, electric wires can be disconnected and reconnected as a free action by using the Power Switch, once it has been constructed. This is something that used to require a duplicant intervention, but was later turned into a free action. In a similar but not identical way, the Automation Switch, once constructed and with AND gates if necessary, allows turning on and off things as a free action. The ability to do these things as a free actions greatly reduces the specialiness of using pliers (in non-errands mode) to disconnect or connect machines as a free action.

Pliers is great in sandbox

Sandbox is excellent for messing around with builds, and Pliers is great for messing around with builds. In Sandbox there's no problem with it being a free action.

Pliers is realistic

Putting aside the free action aspect, if say you want to split a wire in two, you have to tear it down and rebuild it. Just cut the goddamn wire with snips, it's not that complicated.
 

[TaeganRiles]

Working from a in-game lore perspective, if the entity the player represents (AI, overseer, whatever) can remotely command two disconnected power lines/pipes/automation wires to reach out and connect to each other then surely they should be able to command those same components to cleanly disconnect without needing a duplicant to do it manually.

The Pliars mod adding this has saved me from so many potential catastrophes but it has been abandoned and revived multiple times which makes me worry about whether it will continue to be maintained.

It would really be nice if this functionality was just included in the base game since it's already halfway there.

[meekay]

Resurrecting this thread. I was thinking about this during my run this morning. It seems like this could be tied in pretty naturally with the skill tree. I see this functionality as being like Plumbing: I can deal without it if I have to, but a skilled worker can save me time and prevent a mess.

• In sandbox mode, pliers take effect immediately, no dupe work required.

Otherwise:

• Disconnecting or re-routing a low-voltage wire or an automation wire can be done by any dupe.
• Disconnecting liquid pipes requires a dupe with the Plumbing skill, same as emptying a pipe.
• Disconnecting gas pipes also requires a dupe with the Plumbing skill, same reason.
• Disconnecting a heavy-watt wire (either normal OR conductive) requires a dupe with Electrical Engineering, same as building a Heavi-Watt Conductive Wire.
• Disconnecting or re-routing a conveyor requires a dupe with Mechatronics Engineering, same as building the conveyor in the first place. 

I'm not using the pliers mod right now because my self-imposed rule is no gameplay changes, but I would absolutely love to see the base game "adopt" it.