On Sun, May 08, 2016 at 11:44:40AM -0400, Jeffrey Schwartz wrote:
> Considering the potential visual spectrums of different races, it's
> entirely possible the wires are color coded. ..  ... in a way the
> players can't see.

Possible, but pretty unlikely.  One reason why most species don't have
massively multichromatic vision is that the benefits become negligible
pretty quickly.  Pigments that differ in their reflection of one
frequency of light usually differ somewhat across most of them.  So
once you have three colour receptors, you can distinguish most colours
in varying conditions of lighting.  Two will often be enough, but
somewhat less reliably.  Distinctions not visible with three colour
receptors probably won't be distinguishable with four, five, or ten
except in very unusual situations (such as co-evolution of insect
vision with some parts of certain species of flowers).

Such finer distinctions usually show up when colours are intended to
look identical, but to someone with different vision they do not.
This happens even in ordinary circumstances when lighting conditions
change, e.g. incandescent vs fluorescent vs LED vs sunlight.  This
could cause problems under emergency lighting for example, so orange
wiring with a thin blue stripe going into the wall in engineering
comes out looking yellow & green at an panel elsewhere under unsual
lighting.

However, some species might use some other attribute than
colour to distinguish wiring.  Chemical variations that they
taste/smell/whatever with their manipulatory appendages, for example.
Perhaps different surface textures, polarizations, sonar-like
reflection properties, or magnetic field patterns.

- Tim