Option for custom resources to be "granular" & transferrable in discrete quantities

[sumghai]

An exceptionally minor suggestion, but one which may be useful in the future:

Currently, most resources in KSP are defined as fluids (liquids/gases) that can be transferred via pumps. What I'd also like to see someday is the ability to specify resources that are transferred in cardinal amounts per unit time.

For instance:

RESOURCE_DEFINITION
{
  name = SomeLifeSupportMod_CrewProvisions
  density = 0.5
  flowMode = STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH
  transfer = [B]DISCRETE    // New option for existing "transfer = " parameter; DISCRETE means to transfer at the fixed rate specified in "transferRate = "
  transferRate = 5[/B]        [B]//[/B] [B]New[/B][B] parameter; units of resource to transfer per secound (i.e. 5 SomeLifeSupportMod_CrewProvisions[/B] [B]will be[/B][B] transferred per second)[/B] 
}

or

RESOURCE_DEFINITION
{
  name = SomeScienceMod_RockSamples
  density = 0.125
  flowMode = STACK_PRIORITY_SEARCH
  transfer = [B]DISCRETE    // You can't have 3.14 rock samples, for instance
  transferRate = 8[/B]        [B]//[/B] [B]8 rock samples transferred per second[/B]
}

[Majiir]

The current resource system doesn't lend itself well to discretization because everything is done in timesteps determined by the caller, not the resource system itself. I can imagine a few schemes that would be trivial for Squad to implement, but they're unlikely to work well with existing modules that produce or consume resources. You'd need to build a new set of modules that make resource requests in batches instead of the typical calling every frame with a TimeWarp.fixedDeltaTime factor on the request amount.

In other words, I think discrete resources would be fantastic, but the solution requires additional thought.

[sumghai]

The current resource system doesn't lend itself well to discretization because everything is done in timesteps determined by the caller, not the resource system itself. I can imagine a few schemes that would be trivial for Squad to implement, but they're unlikely to work well with existing modules that produce or consume resources. You'd need to build a new set of modules that make resource requests in batches instead of the typical calling every frame with a TimeWarp.fixedDeltaTime factor on the request amount.

In other words, I think discrete resources would be fantastic, but the solution requires additional thought.

Wise words indeed.

Incidentally, is such a feature feasible in add-ons, or would I be dependent on SQUAD to implement this in the core code?