Teleporter interface gui idea

I kind of think that this cheapens the idea of teleporters, they teleport you from point A to point B, and they cost 2 teleporters and 2 MFSUs per linked teleporter pair, with this idea you could set up one way teleport systems between one central teleporter with one MFSU and then all it would cost you is the cost of a teleporter to get from point A to point B, point C, and point D as well. Also, private machines are more Forestry and Buildcraft territory, but I could potentially see that maybe working.

Quote from CrafterOfMines57

I kind of think that this cheapens the idea of teleporters, they teleport you from point A to point B, and they cost 2 teleporters and 2 MFSUs per linked teleporter pair, with this idea you could set up one way teleport systems between one central teleporter with one MFSU and then all it would cost you is the cost of a teleporter to get from point A to point B, point C, and point D as well. Also, private machines are more Forestry and Buildcraft territory, but I could potentially see that maybe working.

Have you considered trying to link 20 different outposts to a central location? Having to have 20 units in the same location would get VERY cumbersome and resource intensive.

CrafterOfMines is objectively correct. It would be cheaper to set up a teleporter network if one teleporter could link each to multiple destinations. The way it is now, if you have 3 destinations you want to be able to teleport between, you need a minimum of 4 teleporters. One in the first destination, one in the second destination, and two in the third to serve as a hub. If your suggestion is taken, it would only need 3, since you could travel directly between any two.

What we have here are two different design philosophies, each leading to different conclusions. IC2's teleporter implementation is 1:1 as far as source:destination goes, whereas Mike's is unspecified. IC2's mechanic favors the construction of teloportation hubs, one centralized teleporter area leading to many subsidiary destinations. Mike's suggestion would favor a decentralized distributed teleporter system, with one teleporter in every viable destination. Since one could potentially connect to all, no need to make any kind of central hub.

Silly idea: Perhaps some kind of hybrid mechanic would work. Say, the player sets the teleporter's frequency manually, but the source:destination ratio is preserved at 1:1. Two teleporters on the same frequency would be able to link. This way, if the destination's frequency is known the player could change their local teleporter to that frequency. Of course, they should take care not to have more than two viable destinations, lest the player be allocated evenly between the two of them.

Quote from The_Paragon

[...]lest the player be allocated evenly between the two of them.

Oh, I like that! Not necessarily for the IC2 builtin teleporter, but I might write it as an addon. Unsure what I'd name it, "cheap teleporters", maybe?

Quote from narc

Oh, I like that! Not necessarily for the IC2 builtin teleporter, but I might write it as an addon. Unsure what I'd name it, "cheap teleporters", maybe?

ACME Teleporters! Quick! Cheap! Safety not guaranteed! Not sure about naming, but I agree that this is an idea for an addon rather than for IC2.

How about if the player is careless in how they set their destination(s), the device offs them and spawns rotten flesh on the teleporter pads?

Okay, so I just spent a good half hour thinking about this (and another half-hour writing this post!), and I'm kind of thinking of Star Trek-ish teleporters now. I'm not 100% sure I'm still on-topic for this thread, but let me run by you what I've been considering:

Firstly, teleporters can operate in "linked" mode -- if there are two of them on the same frequency, they use something like wireless redstone to talk to each other and make your point-to-point transit more or less safe... but if there are more than two, the results tend to be quite deadly. The actual teleport process will consume power from both units, and there's a range cap above which they will refuse to link (not sure how large a cap -- does 5km sound okay?).

Secondly, a teleporter can operate in "arbitrary" mode, where it will try to send (or receive!) from arbitrary coordinates, but can have various modes of failure. To start with, before it can do anything, the teleporter needs to acquire a lock on the remote coordinates, which gets harder and harder the further you're trying to go. Secondly, the lock, once acquired, has a signal strength that varies semi-randomly, and eventually decays the longer the lock is held. Trying to teleport to a poor lock can place you up to 16 meters away in any of the three axes (depending on signal strength), which can be very dangerous in some circumstances (like teleporting off the edge of a ravine, or in the ground). Trying to teleport from a poor lock can be safer -- for you -- but may end up pulling mobs nearby or even just blocks that clog up the teleporter pad.

To enhance these mechanics, we can have a few other things, and the first one I thought of was teleport interdiction. Either as a block that consumes power to maintain an interdiction zone, or as items (interdiction grenades) that temporarily make it (nearly) impossible to acquire a lock in the area. I haven't decided yet if teleporters should be directly affected by interdiction, or just the locking mechanism, though my thoughts on the matter are that they should reduce their range for both modes of operation.

Another item I'm thinking about is a personal teleport beacon -- an item you carry with you that allows a teleporter to know your current coordinates (using the same frequency settings as teleporters working in linked mode, and with the same limitations), which may also boost lock acquisition slightly. Combine with a powered (but fairly cheap) block version of the beacon that can boost lock acquisition in the area, you could go out with a personal beacon and several of the block variant and still be reasonably secure in your ability to return -- though you will have to leave the beacons behind if you do. The beacons should not connect to the energy net -- if you want to recharge them, you have to hit them with a battery (or more likely, an energy crystal) -- to prevent them from being used as cheap teleporter stations. I'm further thinking they can act as chunk loaders for their chunk for as long as they have charge, which should be on the order of 5 minutes.

Finally, to tie everything together, teleporters should work as CC peripherals. For extra awesomeness, combine with Wireless Redstone, and you get a system that can send you out into the world and pull you back -- but you have to program the control computer for it. In fact, I may make the simple teleporters be completely incapable of arbitrary mode (otherwise that's a LOT of GUI work) unless you also have ComputerCraft, in which case, the peripheral API can expose all the functionality required. If someone else wants to take on the GUI work, though, it will be an open-source project and I am more than willing to accept enhancements.

So how does that sound?

Quote from narc

So how does that sound?

I would likely use this system over IC2s system, I really like it. The star-trek-ian remote acquisition concept is a stroke of genius.

The only part I'm remotely ambivalent about is the teleport beacon, specifically the "unpowerable" booster blocks that can be placed in the world. I like the idea of boosting or dampening your "entanglement acquisition signal" - or whatever pseudosci we're throwing at the wall here - but placing a block down, even if it ends up costing you the block seems like it would too easily defeat an infrastructure-tied signal dampening system. Say you're trying to prevent teleports into and out of a region, so you set up these dampening towers tied to your eNet. All would be well and good, but if Jonny Trollsalot is carrying around 64 singal-booster blocks, he can circumvent your infrastructure with little to no preparation ahead of time. Perhaps moving the signal booster to an infrastructural block (tied to an eNet) would be better? Just a thought. Or, how about a compromise: The more signal-booster items that a player has in their inventory, the better the chance that their signal has of overcoming whatever environmental dampening is happening. Perhaps make the "beacon" item nonstackable, so that the player is effectively trading "likeliness of successful teleportation" for "amount of stuff they can take with them".

So, in a nutshell: Signal dampening block, requires EU, reduces chance of player's successful teleport in area. Signal boosting block, requires EU, increases chance of player's successful teleport. Tricorder Signal Beacon item, unstackable, kept in inventory to boost individual player's chance of successful transport.

Anyways, the whole idea sounds awesome. I'll make the textures

Quote from The_Paragon

All would be well and good, but if Jonny Trollsalot is carrying around 64 singal-booster blocks, he can circumvent your infrastructure with little to no preparation ahead of time.

Yes, I was thinking of that, as well, but there are ways to mitigate it and still keep the usefulness. Nonstackable is an idea, as well as simply making its range extremely small (think of it like a torch that you'd have to be standing in to be in the signal-boosted area). That, combined with the ability to stack the dampeners (as in having multiples of them become exponentially more effective if they cover the same area) means it's possible to make an area that no signal booster will ever get you out of.

I'm also thinking of MFFS integration sooner or later -- it sounds very Trekkish to bring up your shields to prevent enemy teleports, n'est-ce pas?

Quote from The_Paragon

Anyways, the whole idea sounds awesome. I'll make the textures

Excellent! I've already started the github repo. Let's see where we get from here.

I would for some "Advanced Teleporter" allowing transportation without that FreqTransmitter system, wich is kind of a pain, and wich allow you only 1 way of teleportation per teleporter, wich is to me a reason why it is so unused.
I would suggest a sort of FreqTransmitter having the ability to "record" coords while rightclicking with it. It could records up to 3 different coords. Then, you'd just have to put it in the GUI of the teleporter and these ones would be saved in the Teleporter (With a max of 5/6/7/8 area). With that system, the player could chose in the GUI where he want to be teleported. Of course this would need to be more expensive (about 4 diamonds instead of 1 I would say)

Quote from narc

n'est-ce pas?

That's funny for a French user, seeing a french word used in english as something fun ^^. Before going on that forum, I thought the only words used from French were "Déja vu" and "Rendez vous" ^^.

Quote from MatLaPatate

[...]I would suggest a sort of FreqTransmitter having the ability to "record" coords while rightclicking with it.[...]

That stirs some ideas (forgive my brevity, but it's long past my bedtime): with the frequency system one doesn't need to pass coordinates of teleporters to other teleporters, but... I could see something like a laser designator capturing coordinates for targeted capture or delivery. At the moment, I've got BeamMeUp pretending to be a CC peripheral more than anything, but that makes for a good quick coordinate entry system. I'm pretty sure that's not what you were talking about, but thanks for the idea.

Quote from MatLaPatate

That's funny for a French user, seeing a french word used in english as something fun ^^. Before going on that forum, I thought the only words used from French were "Déja vu" and "Rendez vous" ^^.

Well, I studied French once (never got much vocabulary, though, I'm afraid). It just seemed like the perfect thing to say there, and it looks like it was -- it amused at least one person besides me!

Just out of curiosity, is there more meaning to your nick than the rhyming? I mean, "the potato" sounds like it could have either a very silly or a very interesting explanation. Or is my lack of knowledge of French culture/vocabulary making me miss a joke somewhere?

Quote from narc

Just out of curiosity, is there more meaning to your nick than the rhyming? I mean, "the potato" sounds like it could have either a very silly or a very interesting explanation. Or is my lack of knowledge of French culture/vocabulary making me miss a joke somewhere?

Nope lol, that's just because it sounds ridiculous ^^.

Darn it, Mat, my hopes are all dashed now! Or perhaps mashed? With a few bits of well-cooked beef on the side? Erm... no, I'm tired, not hungry.

Quote from narc

Darn it, Mat, my hopes are all dashed now! Or perhaps mashed? With a few bits of well-cooked beef on the side? Erm... no, I'm tired, not hungry.

LOL.
The point is, I created this nickname because we're going with a Friend to create a French Team (for video games, such as the Total War serie) called "LaSoupeAuxLégumes" (wich means "TheVegetablesMashe" ^^). The fact is, there is plenthy of phrases in French involving vegetables and food ^^. So we'll try, as you did, to make at minimum 2 joke on it per game (an example would be the phrase: "Faire chou blanc" meaning "to fail", the "chou" being a cabbage ^^). I've already created a list of "To-say" phrases in game while playing against/with french ^^.
It looks like I'm crazy, I know. But, actually ... I'm crazy