Use cases for the signal selector/distributor?

[Primalflower]

I have yet to find a use for them. Have any of y'all used them?

[asurendra]

Sometimes its necessary. For example, in flipped asteroid, where magma spine widht is limited, and you just cant build as many logic wires as you want

[Knurek]

7 hours ago, Primalflower said:

I have yet to find a use for them. Have any of y'all used them?

I've never used the selector myself and the distributor I've used only once a long time ago with buffer gates to make a switch loop for automation ribbon connected to door automation, which would move regolith debris sideways in space biome.

Possibly both of them can be useful in connecting multiple automation signals onto a single wire and then a second wire to synchronize switching selector and distributor between signals. This way they allow you to send an infinite (well actually limited by space on the map) amount of different signals, one at a time, using a single ribbon cable.

[Dracian]

For my part, I used them before Spaced Out with my space scanners :

The aim was to be able to use the space scanners both for Rocket and Meteor detection, depending on the switch position. At some point I also tried to use them in order to switch between different NatGas sources depending on what was in my reservoirs, but it was a lot of trouble for too few benefits

[blakemw]

My summarization is "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas", never used them and never felt like I have a problem that would be solved by them.

ONI just doesn't seem to "need" complex automation, now this is obviously true for any game, but like taking Factorio, you can easily play Factorio without using circuit network or with only using very trivial circuit network, but the general logistics of the game means it's tempting to do things like sending an automation signal that causes stuff to be produced on demand, especially with mods where you might have hundreds of things that could be produced and automation can multiplex stuff onto a single belt. But ONI logistics are centered around duplicants which have relatively sophisticated AI and in ONI there's also generally a weakness in the ability to measure things, like hypothetically you might want to produce one kind of food on demand but in ONI you need a weight plate or a fridge devoted to just that one kind of food in order to measure it, unlike in Factorio where chest contents can be measured separately, basically ONI lacks the granularity in measurement and production to make complex automation practical: you always need a lot more buildings to do a complex automation solution than the simple solution.

I suspect the best use for signal distributors/selectors would not be solving practical problems in ONI but stupid dupe tricks like building a calculator in ONI, fundamentally they are logic gates and could be used for various kinds of logic. There are also "obvious" uses with the Pixel Pack, but that's in the same category as Pixel Packs do literally nothing useful for a colony.

[myxal]

A cheap, 4x3 tempshift plate. Haven't actually used one that way and I'm not sure if areas where a temperature equalisation is needed, have the necessary free space in the automation layer.

[SharraShimada]

10 hours ago, myxal said:

A cheap, 4x3 tempshift plate. Haven't actually used one that way and I'm not sure if areas where a temperature equalisation is needed, have the necessary free space in the automation layer.

Automation layer does not interact with temperature? I build my automation stuff from lead, which should melt at 70°C, but it does not.

[myxal]

42 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

Automation layer does not interact with temperature?

I'm not sure what you're asking. I'm pretty sure everything in the automation layer heats up or cools down according to whatever atmosphere it's sitting it. Wire runs don't transfer heat between cell, but that's not in question. I'm not transferring heat through automation wire runs, I'm just using the selector/distributor buildings (with no wires hooked up) as tempshift plates.

The selector and distributor are 4x3 "buildings" built out of metal, and as such have a thermal mass, and achieve a single temperature across all their cells instantly, transferring heat  from/into whatever atmosphere/solid tiles are on top of them. This is how tempshift plates (actually, anything you build as a single entity) work, with the plates having advantage that you only need the central cell dug out, so you can transfer heat to/from natural tiles.

The "free space issue" I mentioned is that - the selector and distributor each have a ton of automation ports on them, and this makes using them around machinery or airlocks difficult, as either of those will have their own automation port which mustn't conflict with any of the selector/distributor ports. And it only gets worse if you actually want to use the automation ports on the machinery/airlocks.

42 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

I build my automation stuff from lead, which should melt at 70°C, but it does not

I don't know where you got that, lead melts at around 330°C. It decreases overheat temperature by 20°C, putting most buildings overheat temp to 55°, but that's not the same as melting. Last time I looked, most automation buildings don't have overheat temperature. Certainly not gates or wires.

[blakemw]

12 hours ago, myxal said:

A cheap, 4x3 tempshift plate. Haven't actually used one that way and I'm not sure if areas where a temperature equalisation is needed, have the necessary free space in the automation layer.

I've done this. Unfortunately building based heat transfer is heavily dependent on "heat capacity per tile covered", given that it's only a 25 kg building that covers 12 tiles this means its heat transfer per tile caps at 2.4% of that of a Tempshift Plate of the same material. I've still used them in this role but they are limited to when only small amounts of kDTU/s are needed, one case is "remote temperature measurement", you can't have a thermo sensor on a building but you can overlap a foreground building and a thermo sensor with a background building, often an automation bridge or conductive wire bridge is perfect and will allow much higher rates of heat transfer due to the "divided by number of tiles" factor, but if for some reason 4 tiles need to be bridged then the single distributor/selector is the only option besides completely different kinds of solution like a gas loop with a gas pipe themor sensor.

 

Incidentally automation port overlap isn't a serious problem because for whatever reason the "yellow" ports on a signal distributor/selector is allowed to overlap normal automation ports: but it functionally disables the port it overlaps with.

[Nova Starlight]

When you use it with automation ribbon (full 32bit) or tricked automation wire (31bit), that's where they truly shine.

Still can't find a practical use case for ribbons themselves though.

Back then I tried to use them to design a Finite State Machine to control my practical build. It ends up being much bigger than it's worth, though.

[Primalflower]

20 hours ago, Nova Starlight said:

Still can't find a practical use case for ribbons themselves though.

ribbons are useful if nothing else for the sake of compression, I've used them to clean up mass relay automation a few times before