Disconnect Bridge From Lever

Question

How can I disconnect a bridge from a lever? I've decided I'd rather have my two bridges operating independently of each other.

Answer 1

It is necessary to deconstruct one of the devices in the set. Generally you would then rebuild it.

When you deconstruct either a bridge or a lever in a pair that are connected, the connection is broken. The connecting mechanism stays in the remaining device (and is wasted unless you deconstruct it also), but you get all the mechanisms back that were in the deconstructed device.

In the situation you describe you have one lever with three mechanisms in it (one to make the lever and one for each device it is attached to), and two bridges, each with one mechanism. Your options are:

• Deconstruct the lever and build two new levers. Then attach both new levers to bridges.

• Deconstruct one of the bridges and build a new lever to attach the bridge to after you rebuild it.

The advantage of the former is that you don't have to deal with having one of the bridges be gone for a while. The advantage of the later is that you end up using one fewer mechanism.

There is a third option, however which may be even better: Just build two new levers and attach one bridge to each. Then if you need to close both at once, you can hit the current lever, and if you want to close just one you can use the appropriate new lever.

This is doable because not only may one lever be attached to many devices, but one device may be attached to many levers.

The downside of this third approach is that you have to keep track of the lever states. If you have closed the bridge using the lever attached to both, and then you hit the lever attached to one, it could be in a state to tell it to close again, rather than opening. Or say that you had closed the bridges with the lever attached to both, then opened them individually with the levers attached to just one. Then an invasion arrives. You would need to hit the lever attached to both twice before the bridges would close and keep away the invaders.

The third option gives more flexibility, but requires more awareness of machine state. For your purposes, demolishing and rebuilding a bridge to break the connection is probably the simplest answer.