I'm coding the tie sharing function now, and I'm having some conceptual issues to contend with.
The present commands seem unrealistically powerful. It uses information about the bots you're tied with and your own levels of a substance. Seems to me you should be required to gather that intel yourself.
And the unlimited amount of a substance you can transfer via a tie in a given cycle also seems a bit odd.
Here's what I propose:
Use the same mechanism for tie feeding and substance sharing. The only benefit to a tie "hardening" is that it changes its physical properties (from stretchy to rigid) and maybe streamlines the transfer of a substance (increased bandwidth).
While we're at it, ties magically hardening all at once seems a bit odd. Maybe ties should slowly harden, becoming increasingly rigid, up to a specific value at around 100 cycles.
I've already removed all the artificial cost benefits to multibots. I think blurring the lines between multibots and parasites could be fun :P
Anyway, back on topic, tie sharing could follow the same rules that tie feeding does. You can only transfer so much of a substance in any given cycle (in the future probably a function of cross sectional area of the tie) and it's possible to kill the donor or yourself if you mismanage your tie transfering.
Also, maybe you can only transfer nrg in an unhardened tie. Transfering shell, body, etc. has to be done in a hard tie (or, if you have gradual hardening, it gradually becomes possible to transfer body and shell). That seems a bit artificial though. Maybe tie feeders should be allowed to feed on body, shell, slime or anything else they want.
As far as the actual commands, I'll probably see if I can streamline the sharing process into either a single sysvar or a new breed of command.
