Game Mechanics Move Junction Boxes to the Wire Layer

cahd

Terrarian
Firstly, I know I'm not the first to suggest this, but the post was a while ago and was almost completely ignored. Moving junction boxes to the wire layer has been the only QOL change I've wanted for years. They already float and you can walk right through them, so why not take the last step and make them invisible? A lone floating block looks ugly and jarring, but anyone else who likes to build teleporter hubs at their base knows how useful they can be, even despite the four colors being available.

The only real obstacle to moving them to the wire layer is how they have to be hammered to change shape. I've thought of three ways to get around this:

1. The simplest way is to have the Mechanic sell all 3 shapes of the junction box individually. This would be far from the first time that multiple of the same wiring item in different "states" were sold individually - the pressure plates, timers, logic gates, logic gate lamps, and conveyor belts all already work like this. The junction box is actually one of the only exceptions to this trend and is definitely the one that makes the least sense. Additionally, the Mechanic has more than enough slots in her store to accommodate this.

2. As already suggested, another way is to add a new item similar to the multicolored wrench that places the different junction box shapes instead of wires. This would definitely be convenient, but takes significantly more effort to implement than the first way.

3. If junction boxes must stay as similar as possible to its current implementation, they could be given a similar mechanic to Echo Blocks/Spectre Googles. The Mechanic could sell another type of goggles that turns junction boxes visible and allows them to be hammered, and if the googles aren't equipped, the junction boxes would be invisible. Since the Echo Block/Spectre Googles mechanic already exists, this wouldn't be a very difficult implementation either, but it still involves creating a new, unique item.

Basically, I heavily recommend strategy #1, but I'm also offering #2 and #3 as possible alternatives.

If you compare junction boxes to similar wiring items (ones that are visible in the foreground and interact with wire in some way), you will quickly notice that it's the only one that has almost no reason to be in the foreground. For example, by seeing a timer in the foreground, you can immediately tell two important things - is it turned off or on? How often does it repeat? Also, just like a pressure plate, a timer can actually be directly interacted with by the player with no need for wiring tools. On the other hand, seeing a junction box provides you with 0 useful information. It cannot be interacted with (apart from hammering), and you need to turn on the wiring layer display to even see what it does. Which brings me back to my point, moving it to the wiring layer would not cause it to lose any functionality other than its uncanny ability to look out of place and ugly in your base.
 
My suggestion is to have junction boxes just show up when you're holding a hammer. But yes, this is such an obvious change that I really don't know why it hasn't happened. I also don't know why logic gates aren't wire layer as well. If I care what state my logic gate is in then I'll link it up to a torch or something. Or just pull out my Grand Design.
 
My suggestion is to have junction boxes just show up when you're holding a hammer. But yes, this is such an obvious change that I really don't know why it hasn't happened. I also don't know why logic gates aren't wire layer as well. If I care what state my logic gate is in then I'll link it up to a torch or something. Or just pull out my Grand Design.
Great idea, so simple and elegant. That should be even easier to implement and would make it act more like how wire turns visible when you hold a wiring tool or mechanism. Also completely agree about logic gates, I just didn't think about them since I don't really use them.
 
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