Power and material supply cabling

nanoViral

<div class="IPBDescription">cables</div>I was just thinking, for the sake of (more) realism, what if power nodes (for the marines) and RT's automatically had engine created cabling that connected to all the alien/marine buildings in the level? I've always thought that most games depict technology as being magical, and don't address the fact that "wireless energy transmission" is probably not how, say a marine spawn (a TELEPORTATION device that probably eats up a..."few" billion volts?) would really get their power. And if an armory were to use nanofabrication to create weaponry/devices (and that would be the most believable avenue for creating so many different things from one building), the fabrication process would still need raw materials. So, when an RT completed being built, a "restube" would appear on the deck, stretching from the RT to each building in series. To make it contrast to the power cabling, the restube would be rectangular, and be mostly straight lines, with accordian joints where needed, and make some noise to simulate the more mechanical nature of what is going on. Or the restubes could have some kind of magnetic repulse/attract process to move the metal along.) On the other hand, instead of the power/restubes connecting to buildings in a series fashion, the cabling/restubes could go from the powernodes/RT's into cableways for into the ducts (or socketing into any/all non-accessible spaces in each map.) As for the alien team, "sustenance veins" would run through or be part of the infestation, linking at cysts and buildings. (I'm assuming that for sanity's sake, there's more than metal coming out of the harvesters, or the dev's ought to throw a "marines as kharra food" mechanic into the game...onos eats marines, goes to hive, pukes marines out into the hive, hive feeds the rest of the aliens? Yes devs, that is a GREAT idea. Hmm...
So here's some links that should help illustrate the restube thing...

<a href="http://www.conveyor-manufacturers.co.uk/clients/magnetic-vertical-transfer-conveyor.html" target="_blank">Magnetic conveyor</a>

<a href="http://www.diytrade.com/china/pd/7438124/Flexible_Screw_Conveyor.html" target="_blank">Flexible screw conveyor</a>

AurOn2

interesting suggestion, it's in the railboat, but not yet, they need to do the cysts before the power nodes. and that wont be for a while yet. :P