How about another “let’s fix bases to make them easier and more friendly to build and alter” suggestion?
First off, I did some searching but my search-fu has been very weak lately, so if some (or all) of this has been suggested before, forgive the revamp of the same old ideas.
Second off, I have no idea how feasible any of this would be at this point. I can see several possible show-stopping problems:
1. The existing bases might make this idea unfeasible.
2. The coding work required for any or all would simply be too great.
3. The coding work may not even be possible.
Third, this is a bit long, so warning you ahead of time. It could have been far longer and more involved, but I’ve tried to distil the ideas down into their cores without going into a ton of detail.
With those said, on with the show.
I have come up with several ideas that would make building, maintaining and revamping a base far less painful. They would also have the advantage of making bases extremely customizable when it comes to the layout. Needless to say, I have concentrated on the layout portion, but some of these ideas would also require deeper work to include the outfitting of the base.
Idea 1: Revamp the Base Building Interface
While the AE interface is not perfect, it has several advantages over the base interface. The biggest advantage is that when using the AE interface, you can stop in the middle, close out and turn off the system returning to it much later to work on an unfinished product without anyone but you knowing it even exists. The second biggest, and most important to the idea, is that it tells you exactly what is wrong with a mission and then leads you right to the problem and the solution.
What I propose is a more forgiving and more helpful base building interface.
1. Let US place the danged doors. The computer never seems to know where to place the doors and when it gets a door location into its little head, it hangs onto it tenaciously no matter how invalid it is.
2. Allow us to work on the base and have the interface let us make mistakes, inform us of those mistakes, then lead us to correcting them.
EX: You move a power room, but the doorways do not line up into a valid location. The old interface makes you jump through a lot of hoops to build some sort of gerrymandered room configurations or delete parts of your room decorations to move the room. The NEW interface would allow you to drop the room and inform you there’s a problem placement and what the problem is. You can then go in and place an appropriate door where YOU want it, not where the system decides it wants it.
3. Allow us to reconfigure the base without making any changes at all until we punch a “finalize” button that changes the base all at once. If the base in in an invalid configuration, it informs you what is invalid and you can then go fix it and finalize.
4. Give us an “undo” button that undoes the last action (or last 10 actions) of that building session so we can clean up errors easily.
These 4 “simple” changes would require a complete rebuild of the base building interface, but would make it far more user friendly. That rebuild of the base building system would also allow a chance for changes to how we place items in rooms (elevation control, for instance).
Idea 2: Take a Page From Legos
This is the biggest alteration to the current base building system I'm proposing, and since the one before it is "rebuild the whole interface" it must be a big change.
Right off the bat, I’m not proposing eliminating “presized rooms.” I am however proposing a complete rethink on how the rooms are built and placed.
Under this system rooms aren’t really rooms, they are collections of 1X1 squares that are “earmarked” as a specific type. You would start off with a 1X1 One-Of-A-Kind Entry Square that contained the entryway and from there could build as you saw fit.
You would have 1X1 Power Room Squares, 1X1 Teleport Room squares, 1X1 Vault Squares and so on. Each square can recognize the square beside it. If they’re the same type of square, they form a single unit, if they’re of a different type, the squares don’t accept each other and require that one or the other be moved one open space away. However, linking one “group of squares forming a room” to another “group of squares forming a room” is not done by the current doorway square, but by a specialized decorative-door or defensive-door square.
The interface would be set to recognize how many of a type of squares were linked together to form a single unit room and would calculate how many of a specific list of “utility items” could go into a cluster of that size. Additionally, the interface would have to have the capacity to recognize a single square as well as a group of squares as a room unit and be able to allow you to select just one square for moving or deleting or select the whole group for deleting or moving.
Such a system would have many advantages:
1. Infinitely customizable. You could build rooms of any size and configuration you wanted. Rather than having 2 power rooms, you could have one gigantic one housing both generators. Rather than two giant TP rooms, you could have one exactly sized for Hazard Zones and another exactly sized for city zones. Rather than squares and rectangles, you could have a “U” shaped control room or a ring of defensive rooms around the vault.
2. Doorways would now be light-able, decorate-able and defendable. No more dark doorways unless you want them dark, no more bare doorways unless you want them empty.
3. Base revamps and expansions would become far, far easier. If you had a 3X3 Vault and wanted to change to a 4X4 you just add the squares and then deal with the “invalid placement” of wall items. No more having to rip apart the entire room and rebuild from scratch to increase the size.
That’s the big two. Yes, it is a lot of work, yes it may not be possible, but I’d love to hear the critique. Who knows, it might get seen by a Redname and spark a few ideas for later.
How about another “let’s fix bases to make them easier and more friendly to build and alter” suggestion?
First off, I did some searching but my search-fu has been very weak lately, so if some (or all) of this has been suggested before, forgive the revamp of the same old ideas.
Second off, I have no idea how feasible any of this would be at this point. I can see several possible show-stopping problems:
1. The existing bases might make this idea unfeasible.
2. The coding work required for any or all would simply be too great.
3. The coding work may not even be possible.
Third, this is a bit long, so warning you ahead of time. It could have been far longer and more involved, but I’ve tried to distil the ideas down into their cores without going into a ton of detail.
With those said, on with the show.
I have come up with several ideas that would make building, maintaining and revamping a base far less painful. They would also have the advantage of making bases extremely customizable when it comes to the layout. Needless to say, I have concentrated on the layout portion, but some of these ideas would also require deeper work to include the outfitting of the base.
Idea 1: Revamp the Base Building Interface
While the AE interface is not perfect, it has several advantages over the base interface. The biggest advantage is that when using the AE interface, you can stop in the middle, close out and turn off the system returning to it much later to work on an unfinished product without anyone but you knowing it even exists. The second biggest, and most important to the idea, is that it tells you exactly what is wrong with a mission and then leads you right to the problem and the solution.
What I propose is a more forgiving and more helpful base building interface.
1. Let US place the danged doors. The computer never seems to know where to place the doors and when it gets a door location into its little head, it hangs onto it tenaciously no matter how invalid it is.
2. Allow us to work on the base and have the interface let us make mistakes, inform us of those mistakes, then lead us to correcting them.
EX: You move a power room, but the doorways do not line up into a valid location. The old interface makes you jump through a lot of hoops to build some sort of gerrymandered room configurations or delete parts of your room decorations to move the room. The NEW interface would allow you to drop the room and inform you there’s a problem placement and what the problem is. You can then go in and place an appropriate door where YOU want it, not where the system decides it wants it.
3. Allow us to reconfigure the base without making any changes at all until we punch a “finalize” button that changes the base all at once. If the base in in an invalid configuration, it informs you what is invalid and you can then go fix it and finalize.
4. Give us an “undo” button that undoes the last action (or last 10 actions) of that building session so we can clean up errors easily.
These 4 “simple” changes would require a complete rebuild of the base building interface, but would make it far more user friendly. That rebuild of the base building system would also allow a chance for changes to how we place items in rooms (elevation control, for instance).
Idea 2: Take a Page From Legos
This is the biggest alteration to the current base building system I'm proposing, and since the one before it is "rebuild the whole interface" it must be a big change.
Right off the bat, I’m not proposing eliminating “presized rooms.” I am however proposing a complete rethink on how the rooms are built and placed.
Under this system rooms aren’t really rooms, they are collections of 1X1 squares that are “earmarked” as a specific type. You would start off with a 1X1 One-Of-A-Kind Entry Square that contained the entryway and from there could build as you saw fit.
You would have 1X1 Power Room Squares, 1X1 Teleport Room squares, 1X1 Vault Squares and so on. Each square can recognize the square beside it. If they’re the same type of square, they form a single unit, if they’re of a different type, the squares don’t accept each other and require that one or the other be moved one open space away. However, linking one “group of squares forming a room” to another “group of squares forming a room” is not done by the current doorway square, but by a specialized decorative-door or defensive-door square.
The interface would be set to recognize how many of a type of squares were linked together to form a single unit room and would calculate how many of a specific list of “utility items” could go into a cluster of that size. Additionally, the interface would have to have the capacity to recognize a single square as well as a group of squares as a room unit and be able to allow you to select just one square for moving or deleting or select the whole group for deleting or moving.
Such a system would have many advantages:
1. Infinitely customizable. You could build rooms of any size and configuration you wanted. Rather than having 2 power rooms, you could have one gigantic one housing both generators. Rather than two giant TP rooms, you could have one exactly sized for Hazard Zones and another exactly sized for city zones. Rather than squares and rectangles, you could have a “U” shaped control room or a ring of defensive rooms around the vault.
2. Doorways would now be light-able, decorate-able and defendable. No more dark doorways unless you want them dark, no more bare doorways unless you want them empty.
3. Base revamps and expansions would become far, far easier. If you had a 3X3 Vault and wanted to change to a 4X4 you just add the squares and then deal with the “invalid placement” of wall items. No more having to rip apart the entire room and rebuild from scratch to increase the size.
That’s the big two. Yes, it is a lot of work, yes it may not be possible, but I’d love to hear the critique. Who knows, it might get seen by a Redname and spark a few ideas for later.