Suggestion: Times and Pressure Switches

[goboking]

Timed Switches and Pressure Switches are two things I'd love to see added to the game.

The former, time switches, could be set to Day/Night.  This would give us the ability to turn on lights in the main base during the day and the sleeping quarters during nights.  The energy this saves is ultimately negligible, but it would allow the lights a window to cool down.  Given that temperature management can be a quiet killer in this game, this would be quite handy.

I think a pressure switch would only work as a tile.  It would activate when a duplicant crosses it, obviously.  Allowing us to input a delay (in seconds) would give us better control over what we can do with this.  An obvious one is decontamination chambers leading into/out of our base.  As a dupe enters the chamber from the outside it would trigger the pressure switch, which in turn activates a gas pump and floods the chamber with chlorine, killing germs before they're tracked into the base.  At the base-side of the chamber a second switch could activate a second gas pump that vacuums all gas out of the chamber.  I'm sure there are all kinds of practical uses players could come up with using such a switch. 

[Michi01]

2 hours ago, gobokin said:

The energy this saves is ultimately negligible, but it would allow the lights a window to cool down.  Given that temperature management can be a quiet killer in this game, this would be quite handy.

I think the heat produced by lights is also pretty negligible compared to other heat sources (not that it wouldn't still be useful to prevent that bit of heat production).

[goboking]

8 hours ago, Michi01 said:

I think the heat produced by lights is also pretty negligible compared to other heat sources (not that it wouldn't still be useful to prevent that bit of heat production).

True, but lights are the only heat producers we can't tuck away in the bowels of our base.   Some form of automated control could offset this restriction.  Or maybe I just want to challenge of devising a day/night power grid that functions properly. 

[Kasuha]

16 hours ago, gobokin said:

The former, time switches, could be set to Day/Night.  This would give us the ability to turn on lights in the main base during the day and the sleeping quarters during nights.  The energy this saves is ultimately negligible, but it would allow the lights a window to cool down.  Given that temperature management can be a quiet killer in this game, this would be quite handy.

It would be nice but it's not very important for the game itself and it can be done using tools already in the game if you really want to have it. For instance you have one duplicant that has two one way doors to his bed and the both routes have a vacuum airlock (two doors with gas pump in between). When the duplicant goes through it, he lets some gas in that airlock, the pump starts working and that can trigger whole lot of things. You get one trigger in the evening and one in the morning. It's not trivial to implement but the feeling when you get it solved is worth the effort

Similar thing can actually be used as your pressure switch. Although I think there's no point in flooding the decontamination room with chlorine after use - it should be flooded permanently. 

[goboking]

Apologies for bumping such an old thread, but I wanted to throw a big Thank You Klei's way for adding these very things in the Automation Upgrade.