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Author Topic: Pressure plate sensitivity on tracks  (Read 1216 times)

fricy

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Pressure plate sensitivity on tracks
« on: June 16, 2013, 08:11:42 pm »

Pressure plates built on tracks have a sensitivity range of 50 urists.

We have a lot of materials, but their densities are more or less in the same range, which means that the weight difference between the minecarts is rather small. I counted only 12 10 possible trigger states. When building automated minecart systems that's only 12 10 different hauling routes, and has a very big error margin: if you calibrate a plate to trigger on an empty platinum cart (850-900 urists) that range can easily be met with an adamantine cart that has some bars in it, or a copper cart with some clothes or other light things, etc.

Thus, I'd like to petition to increase the sensitivity of pressure plates built on tracks to 10 urists.

I know I may be the only one with this problem, :) but it should be an easy change and add a lot more flexibility.

Spoiler: Minecart weights (click to show/hide)

EDIT: corrected the wood densities.
« Last Edit: June 19, 2013, 06:32:26 am by fricy »
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Waparius

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Re: Pressure plate sensitivity on tracks
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2013, 09:16:16 pm »

Another idea might be to have an option to key pressure plates to some kind of trigger you could add to specific minecarts, or alternately to add something to a cart that trips adjacent levers when it passes them by (perhaps costing a small amount of momentum).
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fricy

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Re: Pressure plate sensitivity on tracks
« Reply #2 on: June 18, 2013, 03:22:30 pm »

Yeah, it would be great if we could add a trigger to minecarts that don't depend on weight: it's possible to select empty minecarts, but not loaded ones as their weight will always depend on the contents. Water and magma loads have a fixed size, so you can target those, but only those.

But these changes should be included in the trap upgrade arc, my only wish now is one minor change that gives the current system more flexibility.

Larix

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Re: Pressure plate sensitivity on tracks
« Reply #3 on: June 19, 2013, 04:19:12 am »

Only tangentially related to the topic (i think it's a good idea) - the list of cart weights is erroneous, because you put the comma/decimal point wrong for wood. All their densities are listed as ten times what they actually are. Should have been easy to spot really, because water has a density of one and most types of wood swim in water, i.e. their densities are lower. A blood thorn cart should actually weigh 50 units, not 500.

More importantly, all wooden carts are _much_ lighter than any metal cart (apart from adamantine), and they're so light that pressure plate sensitivity is practically useless for separating carts made of different wood types.
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fricy

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Re: Pressure plate sensitivity on tracks
« Reply #4 on: June 19, 2013, 06:45:47 am »

Thx Larix for spotting that mistake.
This means that the situation is even worse: only max. 10 triggers, I'm not sure where Bloodthorn belongs with the weight of 50. If it falls into the 0-50 range, and not the 50-100 then it's  only 9.