Suggestion:
- Right click would not delete a belt part, it would store it, the Belt icon would represent it, e.g.: “Belt (5)”
- If you “buy” a belt, you are reusing one of the 5. If you have none, you will purchase one. Classic stuff.
Reasons:
- Expensive/Annoying: I think belts are a tedious task now, not particularly enjoyable to have to repurchase all for a single change.
e.g: You move everything “down” one cell. Meaning deleting belts for the same total arrangement… makes no sense. - Catch 22: When you have negative credit, the only way to avoid slow bankruptcy is if you start a new line or more.
But you can’t, even if you have the unused machines and you just need to chain them together, as you have no “unused” belts (right now). You need just 50 bucks to complete a line but you’re stuck. (Loan is a solution, but taking a huge loan for 50 bucks or a problem?)
Advantages if game mechanics allowed this:
- More enjoyable gameplay, no more annoyance.
- Reward. The player would actually feel rewarded now, as they could solve a problem intelligently, “for free”, by optimizing other, existing lines instead, e.g. looking for ways to reduce belt usage, to use those belt parts elsewhere. (This would be similar to your decision to have fixed machine input/output positions as a puzzle element in the game. This would add to that kind of thinking.)
- More thinking ahead: One could stockpile a few belts for such dire times. You can already keep unused machines, now belts as well. This way you could kill a low profit line to possibly rebuild it to do a different cure even if you have negative money but items in stock. It would be so rewarding!
Alternative:
- Just provide full refund on belts instead… The end result the same, but simpler to implement. It wouldn’t feel the same as above, knowing you have a stock of things.
What do you think?