DUPLICATE of Accepted Idea - Machine Locks

[julie2]

How about locks for machines? Especially out-door machines like Harvesters and drills. Presently, there's no way to stop some idiotic newspawn coming along and starting a project just to try the machine out. Then the project can't be cancelleled right away, if at all; and worse here's no way to tell how big the project is except by working on it (which stops you cancelling the damned thing at all).

hmm, I think a few of these issues really need to be adressed. There should be a way to find out how big a project is, for instance. But macjine locks would go a long way towards solving this particular problem.

[nitefyre]

At first, I thought you meant the locks indoors, and I was going to suggest just building locks on the doors.

About the Harvesters/Drills...I suppose it should work, but how exactly?

-Would the person with the key be the only one able to start the machine project?
Or
-Would the person with the key be the only one able to unlock the machine for usage?

Also, couldn't the maximum limit to how much the drill/harvester digs be lowered to avoid those massive newspawn projects...?

[julie2]

I think it would be best if the key was needed to start a project. I had a newspawn jump on a machine and start a new project the moment it finished its run. Unless it were to lock automatically at the end of the run, the other idea wouldn't help that.

I suppose the reason you can't cancel a project, once its started is to stop people vandalising other people's projects. ; but if a key were needed to start the project off, I suppose the keyholder could be permitted to end the project prematurely as well...if that isn't too big a headache for the programming department. If that were possible it wouldn't matter so much if somebody started too big a project by accident.

[Nick]

Lock them up and cancel the project.
Not everything needs to be solved by more coding. If there is a way to solve the problem in game, that's generally the best way to go about things. Because complaining here won't get anything to happen for a looong time.

[julie2]

Have you ever tried to cancel a Harvester project, Nick? You have to wait a couple of days before it can be cancelled even if nothing was collected. If something was collected, you can't ever cancel it.

I'm not complaining , just making a suggestion, and if the staff didn't want suggestions then they wouldn't have put this board here, would they?

[swymir]

I beleive this has been mentioned several times and I still think it is a very good idea. Something to keep in mind.

[Nick]

I'm not complaining , just making a suggestion, and if the staff didn't want suggestions then they wouldn't have put this board here, would they?

Well actually, I believe Jos already stated his programming plan for the next long while. I don't think they're entertaining any more suggestions for a long time.

[Lumin]

Thought this might be a good time to dig this back up. I've just been reading through some of the old threads here about the gathering change, and I figure since a harvester is now more important than ever we could certainly use an option like this.

Some idiot newspawn jumping on a harvester without permission or purposely sabatoging it might actually cause people to go hungry in some places, rather than just being a mere annoyance.

Also, I could see how businesses could benefit from it. Say a factory owner sends materials and workers to build a coal drill a few towns over, if they also had an option to build a lock they might decide they only want to give keys to the government officials or people they're specifically trading with. All it takes is one malicious person (doesn't even have to be a newspawn) to start an enormous project and trade and manufacturing could be disrupted for years.

At the very least, a message when someone starts a project on one of the larger machines would be nice, so they hav a chance to be stopped before anything gets gathered.. A harvester or a drill is large and probably noisy enough that it'd make sense for it to be more noticeable than a person tending a potato patch by hand or digging with a pickaxe.

[Agar]

I still agree that this is a good idea, and has only become more so.

Make a lock for the machine. If you don't have the key, the button for the "use machine" doesn't show up for you. That easy.

Other people, even without keys, can help you work on the project by looking up the actities list, just like always, the big difference is only a select few schmucks can now start the project.

[T-shirt]

I hope it will get implemented soon.

[Chris Johnson]

This is a duplicate suggestion of an already accepted idea

I have moved this to rejected suggestions and added the relevant points to the accepted thread