Strain Spans
Anchoring a line instead of hanging it
A wire hung on a relay is carried by it and continues past it: the pull of the line runs straight through the structure. A §lDead-End§r does the opposite. The insulator lies along the pull, and the structure takes the whole tension of the wire instead of passing it on. That is what real lines put at every angle, every crossing, and at each side of a span with nothing standing in the middle of it.<np>
Immersive Engineering measures every span against one number and stops there. Alternating Flux adds one exception to that, and only one: with a dead-end at §lboth§r ends, an AF line may run twice as far.<br><br>§oOrdinary span:§r <config;i;af_max_length> blocks<br>§oBetween two dead-ends:§r <config;i;af_strain_length> blocks<np>
<&coil>One dead-end is not enough. A wire pulls at each end equally, so anchoring one side has only halved the problem; the coil refuses the span and says which of the two numbers it is working to, rather than reporting it as simply too far. Relays, insulator strings and busbars carry no tension and are refused past the ordinary span however they are arranged.<np>
The extra length is paid for in clearance. The slack is unchanged, so a span of twice the distance hangs about twice as deep. Leave room under it, and remember that an AF line is live for its whole length.<np>
Alternating Flux ships no strain hardware of its own. What counts as a dead-end is the block tag §oalternatingflux:strain_anchors§r, which any add-on may add its own hardware to; with nothing in it, AF wire reaches exactly as far as it always has.<br><br>While a link is held, the coil prints the distance and the reach it is actually working to, and turns that line red past it. Immersive Engineering's own readout below it measures the wire rather than the coil, so it reddens at the ordinary span even when the connection will be made. The reach line is the one to read.
