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User:Khearn/Mechanics101

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Revision as of 20:22, 3 February 2016 by Khearn (talk | contribs) (Initial version. Table of how devices react to on and off signals.)
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This is a collection of basic stuff one needs to know about mechanical stuff.

Open/Close signals[edit]

Many people seem to assume that levers and pressure plates send a toggle signal, that causes a bridge/door/whatever to simply change state. This is wrong, they send either an "on" or an "off", and the target responds, depending on what it is. It's a trivial difference if only one lever is connected to one bridge, since pulling the lever twice will get them synced up and henceforth pulls do indeed simply toggle the bridge (as long as they don't come too fast).

But if you connect two levers to the same bridge, things get more complicated. Pulling lever 1 may raise the bridge, but then pulling lever 2 doesn't seem to do anything, because it sends an on to the bridge that was already raised. At this point, but levers are in the on position, and pulling either one will lower the bridge.

Note that you can tell what state a lever is in by it's character (assuming you use ASCII - but most tilesets make it fairly obvious). If it's an ó then it is in the on position (and will send an off if pulled), and if it's an ò it is in the off position.

Here's a summary of the various things you can link a lever to, what they do when they get an on or off, and the delays that might be involved.

Item On Off
Action Delay Action Delay
Bridge Raises or retracts 100 ticks Lowers or extends 100 ticks
Door Opens Immediately Closes Immediately
Floodgate Opens 100 ticks Closes 100 ticks
Floor Hatch Opens Immediately Closes Immediately
Grate (vert or horiz) Opens 100 ticks Closes 100 ticks
Bars Opens 100 ticks Closes 100 ticks
Upright Spears/Spikes Retracts 40 ticks Extends 40 ticks
Gear assembly Toggles Immediately Toggles Immediately
Track Stop Disables Immediately Enables Immediately
Cage Opens/deconstructs the cage Immediately N/A N/A
Rope/Chain Releases/Deconstructs Immediately N/A N/A
Support Deconstructs Immediately N/A N/A

Pressure plates send an on signal immediately when their criteria is met, and an off signal 99 ticks later.

Note that some things may respond to a signal a tick later, depending on the order in which things were built. See Pressure Plate#Build order for more details.