[1.1.59] Spiderton follows car/tank too closely, gets damaged by vehicle.

[rusty_howell]

If I set my spiderton to follow my car or tank which my player is currently driving, the spidertron will get too close and it's legs will get in front of the car/tank and be damaged by the impact. This also stops the car or tank as well.

My spidertron has exoskeletons in its grid, so it's speed is enhanced and can overtake the tank.

[Rseding91]

Thanks for the report. Since nobody else has voiced their opinion I'm going to decide that this is not a bug but more of a miss-feature. Spidertron following was originally created to follow other spidertrons but was implemented in a generic 'follow anything' way. So while it may work to follow a tank (or a train) it might also run into issues like you're seeing.

There was never any attempt to prevent them from getting in the way of what they follow because they were always meant to follow other spidertrons which they couldn't ever get in the way of.

Making them follow longer would make the spidertron following case worse and wouldn't guarantee they never get in the way of other vehicles.