How to prevent people like me from accidentally crashing the server with mechanics.

[Janonas]

This is the machine that caused the server to crash today. It was absolutely my fault, but not my intention. What i was trying to do was make a looping timer component, and this was the simplest way i knew how. I now know that you can use a controll unit for these sorts of things, however, newbies might not understand how it works, and try to find alternatives, witch might lead them to this lag machine. Why this machine in particular? To answer that, we need to look at simpler (and less laggy) versions of this machine and why they dont work.

1. Delay/Relay loop
Doesnt work since components cant create a loop

2. Graviton pressure plate loop
Doesnt work in practice, possibly caused by some sort of cooldown

3. Disposals loop with signal pipe, with a single thing going throught it
The signal pipes activates once, then remains dormant for some reason

This leaves only this machine able to fulfill the job.
This is assuming that the player doesnt know about the abilities of the control unit, However, a player searching for some sort of a timer loop component isnt going to know that the control unit can do that.

Solutions:

1. Making a new component named "Timer" witch would send a signal every X seconds, witch could be changed.
2. Allowing relays and delays to create a loop
3. Make the signal pipe send a signal anytime something passes through it, instead of once per item

Either one of these would be good to prevent people from accidentally creating the lag machine.

But most importantly, make the thermal printer require resources to print. Give every printer about 20 prints, until it needs to be refilled by some sort of paper pack, witch could be ordered through QM.
This is the most important thing to fix, since thermal printers are currently very easy to exploit.

[Zamujasa]

From what I overheard it's more of a matter of mechcomp components being coded in an unoptimized way... though the control unit auto-toggler thing should be added to the wiki if it isn't already.

[Triacontakai]

pretty sure that thing crashing the server is a fluke, i've seen a shitton of contraptions that look very similar to that for loafing and havent seen any crashes

[The Gorog]

It has been some time, but what I did was an arithmetic component, linked to a relay, which was linked to another relayed, then going back to the arithmetic.
Id set the arithmetic to "add" mode, A to 1, B to 0. You send the output of this to the first relay, and the second relay sets it as the new B.
This way you can make a counter. Arithmetic components seem to have a delay of 1/4th a second, so it can count 4 times a second.

Only problem I had that it would occastionally not count up. No clue why, didnt notice a pattern,