[Krsqk]

Sometimes called a dimensional component. Take each tech requirement, and it's one dimension to the matrix. Two requirements generates a "square" component, three requirements generates a "cube" component, etc. This would be useful, for example, to create missiles with separate tech levels which affect range, damage, and speed. Here's a sample 2-dimensional component with "sides" of "size" 3; the numbers represent tech levels.

code:

---

Damage:  1     2     3

Range:

  1     1/1 | 1/2 | 1/3

  2     2/1 | 2/2 | 2/3

  3     3/1 | 3/2 | 3/3

---

Notice that instead of 3 component levels, there are nine. With a three dimensional component, there would be 27:

code:

---

Speed:         1           ||           2           ||           3

     1/1/1 | 1/1/2 | 1/1/3 || 2/1/1 | 2/1/2 | 2/1/3 || 3/1/1 | 3/1/2 | 3/1/3

     1/2/1 | 1/2/2 | 1/2/3 || 2/2/1 | 2/2/2 | 2/2/3 || 3/2/1 | 3/2/2 | 3/2/3

     1/3/1 | 1/3/2 | 1/3/3 || 2/3/1 | 2/3/2 | 2/3/3 || 3/3/1 | 3/3/2 | 3/3/3

                           ||                       ||

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As you can probably imagine, this gets very cumbersome to hand-code, as well as being very error-prone. These issues grow exponentially with every additional dimension or "size" increase.

[ January 04, 2003, 04:42: Message edited by: Krsqk ]