Electrocution?

[Eli Dupree]

Lasercake characters will be messing with electrical connections. Maybe electrocute a robot that touches a live wire?

Pros:
- Make people practice electricity safety
- When children play the game, (possibly?) reduce the risk that they'll play with power cords unsafely IRL

Cons:
- Annoying when you forget

Possible alternatives:
- When you try to touch a live wire, your robot refuses to do so and tells you to go switch the power off.
- All power transmission devices are designed with safety in mind, so you can't touch the dangerous parts, and look very different from IRL electricity stuff.

There should also be lots of indicators for when the power is on (like LEDs built into the cords or something). Although don't want to be unrealistic (like having floating zappy things drawn around powered cords - that would just create "Oh I don't see any zappy things, it must be safe").

If the player is making a lot of robots and only loses one robot when they mess up, they might still not take safety seriously. The penalty could be made more annoying to deal with (like, the dead robot stands around holding the wire forever, and anyone who *touches* the robot to repair/remove it
also gets electrocuted, until you turn the power off.)

- Eli

[Isaac Dupree]

On 08/05/2013 01:41 PM, Eli Dupree wrote:
> Lasercake characters will be messing with electrical connections. Maybe electrocute a robot that touches a live wire?

Hmm, this issue.

Real life: it's kinda hard to get electrocuted unless...
(A) you stick things in electrical sockets
(B) cords/devices fall apart or you damage/modify them
(C) puddles/baths
(D) you go into DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE places

(A) seems unlikely to happen in Lasercake (if power cords are designed
like our household power cords), unless you're playing around with
sticking things in things in the game. Which might happen.
(B) seems quite likely to happen
(C) ditto
(D) ditto... Lasercake will presumably be dealing with a lot of power.

So, yeah, what to do. Make it annoying, or make it be unrealistically
safe, or "don't have electricity" (probably a terrible solution...
mechanical-energy-powered factories killed people too).

-Isaac