I wouldn’t mind if parts had there own plock relationships to patterns, it just seems rather difficult to implement with the current design of the unit. Go ahead and feature request if you’d like, I’ll take it if they could work it out.
Since plocks are stored in the pattern, it seems you would need something like 4 pattern variations per actual pattern, one for each part.
If one part is selected and the sequencer is running through plocks, somehow the device would need to know when you changed parts to not use those plocks and possibly use other ones. Since plocks run through different values per step, they have to be associated with the moving sequencer pattern and not just a single value in the part itself. So there would need to be 4 available pattern variations within each pattern or a more drastic redesign of how the machine operates.
This stuff has to be thought about since we’re dealing with a unit that’s been out for awhile, coded a certain way, and is probably low on available memory and not in a state to have drastic code revamps done to the firmware.(At least with mk1, and very likely mk2)
Currently we just link a part to another pattern to do this, it does use another pattern and in some cases the patterns must be very similar with only minimal changes to achieve things, but we have 256 patterns in our 16 banks of 16 patterns each with 4 parts, and there’s always more projects. You can set pattern change to change pattern/part down to one step.
The functionality you would like currently exists in a paradigm where you need to copy and adjust patterns, and have your part switch after 1 sequencer step instead of instantly.
I’ll add here that I don’t think many OT users switch parts in the middle of a pattern, I’ve been reading this forum for years and nobody ever mentions this. All my part switches are quantized with pattern change…
Most folks set the OT up so a bank has patterns 1-4 set to part one, 5-9 set to part two, etc.
You could set the OT up so a bank has pattern 1=part 1, pattern 2=part 2, pattern 3=part 3, pattern 4=part 4,and then repeat with pattern 5=part 1, pattern 6=part 2, etc…
This would organize your banks into 4 main patterns(1,5,9,13) each with 4 part variations with their own plocks(2-4, 6-8, 10-12, 14-16).
Another thing one can do is have a scene or two pre-selected with the part to be loaded that overrides the plocks affecting the first part. It can only be set to one value per parameter and not move with the sequencer, but you can override the parameters you had plocked to a new stationary value that works with the part.
The last thing is that some users have probably programmed parts in ways that when you change them mid pattern, the plocks affect other machines in ways they like, and this will no longer work for them. Doesn’t seem like a common thing to do but over seven years of OT programming I’m sure some folks have projects like this…
Honestly it seems like a pretty deep thing for them to change and I seriously wouldn’t get your hopes up, but I support your request and good luck!