Make the gates expandable

As it stands now, a logical gate on its own may have a maximum of three inputs. I suggest that if more than one ore of the same kind are put next to one another, either horizontally or vertically, they should all merge into one and the same gate.

This way one could have an arbitrarily large amount of inputs in a elegant looking row or column of ores, as opposed to the awkward amalgamations of gates and wires that are required to create such a thing now.

[Ijwu]

When wires are placed in directly adjacent tiles they merge. Having two gold ores, for example, merging inputs into two adjacent tiles would have no extra effect, I think.. There would need to be a block in between the gates.

That being said, might it be possible to merge similar logic gates using a combiner block? The combiner block being the 'glue' the prevents wires from merging, but also forcing the gates to share input.

Naturally you'd have to have an odd number of ores; I meant that to be implied. That way the wires would remain independent.

To require there to be an extra sort of block in between is to make things less elegant without cause, I feel.

To more clearly illustrate what I mean I produced a picture:

The idea is that the two would be analogous. It only saves you one block in length, though if you were to have seven inputs you'd of course save two blocks, and so forth. That said, the suggestion isn't so much due to space concerns, rather for simplicity and elegance; I personally think the second variation is much prettier.

The idea of gluing gates together ties in with this suggestion as well.

[CoderCow]

This becomes ugly to process if the blocks extend into a shape instead of just horizontal or vertical though. And just supporting horizontal and vertical extensions seem odd somehow - just like it seems odd that only Gates would have this feature since it would be smart to extend any Port Defining Component with more Ports.

I've been thinking for a special tile type to be used to border all around a given component (only wrapping the component partly in it wouldn't work) and so extend the Ports - where the border could also be thicker than just one block.

This becomes ugly to process if the blocks extend into a shape instead of just horizontal or vertical though.

I don't personally see why you'd ever need to make a gate that isn't straight, but I am sure it is valid concern once you understand what goes on behind the scene, which I certainly don't.

it seems odd that only Gates would have this feature since it would be smart to extend any Port Defining Component with more Ports.

That is a fair point, and there is a reason for why I mention only gates (like in the suggestion about Obsidian): I failed to take the other port defining components into consideration. Naturally such a thing should work for anything that defines ports.

That said, only the ore based components would make themselves look all pretty when joining them!

Edit: Blasted close button. It is right there next to the comment button and I keep hitting it by mistake.