Entities, such as Stations, Ships, Facilities, and Plots, have state values attached to them to help players automate tasks based on some logical rules. Each entity has a dictionary of key/value pairs that are attached to them. Jobs can can be run that wait for state variables to be set. These basic constructs are intended to allow players to synchronize automation tasks across the empire. In the future, jobs within facilities will even be able to read or write values to entities they are connected to, logistically.
The most basic function of Entity State is to allow ships to automate their navigation, resource collection, docking, and cargo transferring jobs.
Any facility can queue an Entity State job. These jobs can be configured to assign values or wait for values on a specific entity to match certain criteria. An entity can have any number of state variables (key), and each state variable can have any string value up to 255 characters long. Entity State allows for the use of the concept of tags, which treat the value of the entity state as a set of unique, case insensitive words. Adding a tag will append the word to the string if it does not exist. Removing a tag will remove the word from the string if it exists.
An Entity State Interaction job set to Wait for or Wait for tags will block the job queue for that job group (see Job Management) until the entity state's value matches the specified value for the specified variable (the key). When specifiying Wait for, the two values must be an exact, case sensitive match. When specifying Wait for tags, the entity state's value must contain all of the words listed in the job's specified value.
An Entity State Interaction Job can wait for a specific condition on the facility that is running the job, the plot that contains the facility (if owned by the player), or the base (ship or station) that the facility is within (if owned by the player). This allows multiple facilities on a single ship or station to share state.
Future Plans: Entity State Interactions enable automation, which becomes a resource more precious than any in game item in the game (It saves players time). Later, the game may require in-game resources for each job that is run. Those resources may only be created through acquiring a premium subscription. The resources may be able to be traded to other players, but the limited amount of these premium resources should result in an economic cost for any automation that is enabled.