(08-15-2016, 11:46 AM)Noah Buttes Wrote: PROGRESS NEWS:

Work on borg-material implementation is still moving forward. I am working on making a bi-material system for custom robotic parts. One material will serve as conductive artificial muscles, nerves, and other soft tissues. The second material will form the metallic exoskeleton of the arm.

Basically, the idea is to have the two different materials affect different attributes of the part. The muscular material will have a strong impact on movement speed and power efficiency, but only a small effect on durability. In contrast, the exoskeleton will primarily affect durability and will only have relatively minor direct influence on movement speed and power efficiency. Additionally, the exoskeleton material will determine the physical appearance of the limb. However, both materials will have a strong impact upon the part's weight.

The goal is to prevent any one set of materials or alloys from being the absolute best while still rewarding people for going out of their way to get rare or obscure materials.

I appreciate any and all feedback and criticism regarding this system.

(08-16-2016, 10:27 AM)Noah Buttes Wrote: I just realized that I'll have to change how the sheet metal reinforcement process for cyborg parts works in order to make it compatible with custom material borg parts.

Quick question: should part reinforcement continue to function as it does now where you click the part while holding some sheet metal to upgrade it? Or should I migrate part reinforcement over to the crafting bench and make it so it uses raw materials rather than sheets?

• Fewer resources used
  
• Quicker (I mean, probably)
  
• Appeals to people who don't like change
  

• Much harder to code a good consistent system for this due to the reinforcements on reinforced metal sheets
  
• Less intuitive
  

(08-16-2016, 12:21 PM)Mordent Wrote: I'd fully support removing the "reinforcing" idea entirely. It shouldn't be necessary with the new system, as I understand it.

You could optionally keep the "light" variants, as they can't be reinforced anyway. They'd just have different base/multipliers/however-you've-done-it for their movement speed and durability.

(08-16-2016, 11:51 AM)ferriswheel1 Wrote: Reinforcing sheets is such a pain for very little payoff, since it means the borg is a good deal slower. If it means less coding work I'm all for getting rid of it. I've never used workbenches, but they could probably benefit from actually having a regularly useful function.

(08-16-2016, 02:10 PM)Frank_Stein Wrote: I think a crafting table makes more sense, but in regards to keeping the upgraded heads while scrapping reinforcing over material choice, just make the other both heads different design styles

(08-16-2016, 02:44 PM)ferriswheel1 Wrote: If we do keep reinforcing, I'd like to see legs being able to be reinforced at some point. Currently there's literally no advantage having legs over treads, being able to be reinforced could actually set them apart.