Slight rework to chute crafting/placement

[keiki]

So me and my friends have been playing with the chutes. I do love how they are useful while still remaining realistically grounded. However, I find that they're kinda clunky to work with.
In particular:

• There's too many different items you have to keep in your inventory (ie, elbow, 3-way, cross, etc)
• Once you craft a section type, you're kinda stuck
• It's difficult to lay out a pattern you want while juggling the different types of sections

I do understand that a lot of this is an intentional part of the difficulty, but I think there's a really slick rework you could implement that would solve these issues while increasing realism

1. Keep the "chute sections" item, but with some changes
   1. Remove solder from the recipe
   2. Rename to "Unsoldered Chute" (or similar)
   3. Optionally, add a sheet-metal bending tool of some kind, and use that instead of a hammer
2. Instead of crafting the elbow, 3-way, cross chutes, etc, let the player directly place down chute section
   1. In particular, make the chutes automatically connect to each other for ease of use. I'm imagining how redstone works in Minecraft, or how pipes work in most Minecraft modpacks
   2. I know it kinda feels gamey, but it really makes it way easier to work with, and I'm sure there's animations or block models that can make it make sense
3. Finally, don't let the chutes work when you first place them.
   1. Since they are "Unsoldered", the chutes will let items fall through if you try to use them
   2. Instead, you have to go over the chutes with a torch/candle/soldering-iron + solder in your hands to complete them
   3. Once they're all soldered, then you're good to go
4. And finally finally, if the user breaks the chutes, drop the Unsoldered Chute sections
   1. In particular, this means that if you've already soldered, you lose the solder you used for that section

Or in other words, the idea is that you first bend the sheet metal into a round shape, then lay it out, and then solder it all in place. I think this system has a few benefits:

• It's much easier to manage, there's really a couple items you have to manage at any given time
• You can mess around and experiment with layouts without any fear of messing things up
• But there's still some risk+commitment due to the solder not being refunded
• And it's arguably more realistic due to needing to solder the chutes in place.

[Rainbow Fresh]

It is arguably more realistic having to solder the laid-out pieces together in place but if we are going to the realism route, getting the pre-soldered parts back is not. Soldering solid metal pieces of that size together would require more tools and efforts to even attempt separating them again in which case you'd not get the original quality of part back. And I don't think adding "pre-used" versions of parts and coming up with downsides to reusing them after they were already soldered once help much nor will it be very fun for the player.

That being said, the general idea sounds nice. Being able to free-form place chute parts from the raw material rather than pre-crafting 4 variants of chute and having to spin each part, no matter the direction, atleast 3 times for it to rotate in the right direction sounds like a good QoL improvement. Soldering them in place sounds like an immersive mechanic. I'd even go as far as to say they don't auto-connect, but we use the tool mode menu to choose which part to place and in which orientation.

As for what to do when breaking fully soldered pieces... Personally, I wouldn't be too opposed if you needed a pickaxe to break them which turns them into copper bits of varying quantity. After all, you take the active, conscious action of soldering only once you are done laying out the shape. So having to demolish the system afterwards could come with a "start over from smelting" kinda deal. It is solid, nearly block-filling pipes of metal soldered together after all.

Edited Friday at 05:37 AM by Rainbow Fresh