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[Twilight]

Hello,
 as we all know, levers with mistaken identitites can be horribly dangerous things.  Toady, here is an easy yet powerful idea: when a lever is "Q"-ed, (or "K" -ed) there should be a space there for an optional description text line.  Under "Q", there would have to be a new option, '"W"rite a description', for players.  Hit the key, write a text line (i.e., "main farm floodgate"), and finish.  This can be changed by the player again and again.  The text shows up in the lever's window and eliminates guesswork (make for interesting succession game possibilities, too).  No more searching for a lost piece of notebook paper!  Any luck that this idea might fly?

[Toady One]

Something will happen sometime anyway.  The lack of clarity with levers has been on the list since before the first public release.

[Blue Eagle]

This has been suggested at least 3 times that I can think of.
It's probably going to happen.

[puke]

bah.  to spice things up, levers should have random functions.  an unskilled mechanic with low quality mechanisms could create a lever that randomly activates any feature that was previously connected to a lever.  or that connects a feature at random to any pre-existing lever.

OR, when you create a "pull lever" job, a dwarf could randomly pull the WRONG lever based on his lever pulling skill!

[Twilight]

Well,
 as long as it's on the list, then it should work itself out.  The only "problem" with this has nothing to do with the game, it has to do with players forgetting or not knowing what each lever does (yes, in real life, we'd have a little sign, such as "Do Not Pull - Fortress Magna Destruction Switch!").  Really, its not to make the game better, but, to make a significant improvement to the game playing.  Really, an editable simple line or two of text associated with each lever would more than do it.
   Random functions?!  Now that would be wild - maybe an option for insane fortress builds!  Now, pulling random levers could work with insane dwarves, possessed (fey) dwarves, adventurers who are drunk or insane, or (one day) drunk dwarves getting out of hand at one of their "parties".

[Haedrian]

quote:Originally posted by puke:
<STRONG>bah.  to spice things up, levers should have random functions.  an unskilled mechanic with low quality mechanisms could create a lever that randomly activates any feature that was previously connected to a lever.  or that connects a feature at random to any pre-existing lever.

OR, when you create a "pull lever" job, a dwarf could randomly pull the WRONG lever based on his lever pulling skill!</STRONG>

Then you flood your whole fortress with magma and you start complaining about somethign you have NO control over...

[axus]

quote:Originally posted by Haedrian:
<STRONG>

Then you flood your whole fortress with magma and you start complaining about somethign you have NO control over...</STRONG>

What kind of engineer doesn't put in some safeguards?  Magma floods should require at least 3 levers.

I'm sure he was kidding, its funny to think of what could happen... "do not pull this lever!"

[Dryn]

quote:Originally posted by Twilight:
<STRONG>Hello,
 as we all know, levers with mistaken identitites can be horribly dangerous things.</STRONG>

To aid memory I generally engrave the stone underneath. Of course this does lead to situations where your irragation lever has images of imolated dwarven miners and your instigate-desperate-measures-to-stop-invasion-from-killing-us-all lever has images of plump helmets...

[Eagle of Fire]

The other day, I was messing up with balistas and catapults... When I noticed how uneficient they were because of the siege operator showing his nose whenever he feels like it, I thought about making pressure plates to automatically fire at the ennemy. So I created one pressure plate for each siege engine, and it took some time because I had like 9 balistas and 4 catapults...

Then,  I decided to make 2 more pressure plates for each balistas to cover enough ground to make sure an ennemy would be fired upon when they get near the siege engine. Took some time to finish again.

It's only then, when I was ready to hook up the pressure plates to the siege engine, that I noticed that I actually can't hook up a mechanism to a siege engine...

*sigh*

[Arkan15]

quote:Originally posted by axus:
<STRONG>

What kind of engineer doesn't put in some safeguards?  Magma floods should require at least 3 levers.

I'm sure he was kidding, its funny to think of what could happen... "do not pull this lever!"</STRONG>

"Don't touch that! You fool! It's the history eraser button!"

[Axehilt_VuP]

One thing which would partially alleviate this is if things which are affected by the lever flashed in a color when the lever's "Q" menu is active.  Won't help with offscreen stuff (unless you could scroll while in the "Q" menu), but would give immediate visual feedback for nearby objects.