(Big) Walking Robot

[Enginarius]

I know, this MUST be an old idea and maybe it's deprecated but here a "little" idea to implement a new user-device like the car or the tank:

An atomar powered (big or maybe huge) walking robot like the immortals in StarCraft2. Four legs and a rotating body in top of them.

I think I got some points to legitimate it's existence:

• A device whitch isn't blockable by biters smaler the the beomoth-size. It could simply walk through them and sqach them by walking over them without takink damage by colision.
• Powering by burning plutonium as fuel in his own itegrated reactor.
• Switching between a moving fightrobot and a mobile reator by using two modes:
  • (move & fight) The robot moves slower than a tank but is able to do it instantly into evry of the 8 directions. He's able to use a overheating but fast fiering laser cannon to fight on distance and is able to swith his weponary into a near field blade-/hamer-/fist-waepon to strike into the mouse direction in a ~30°-45°hitting angle.
  • (park & power) The robot is placeable to use his well powering reactor and fuel-hold to deliver it's power to the near Industrie. He delivers his power by switching this between "on" and "off" to prevent missusing by simply parking him next to anything witch can connect the power to him. In the same time the near field weapon is torned down but the laser cannon stay activ but need's to be used manualy by the person witch is sitting in the Robot. Like a bunker with a gun and a reactor.

I think this would combine a powerful weapon with usefull eploring and mobile usability as a part of the late PvE- and PvP-game.
Whats your thinking about this Robot? Is he simply too OverPowered or would it be a nice featur?

EDIT: Sorry about the thousend EDIT's.

[leoch]

How would you walk through your factory? Or would you need to park it like a tank?

[Enginarius]

I think it's not sensful to say "He got spiderlegs and can move over/through evrything friendly". If you try to move through Building's, Cars, Tanks, Trains or Biters in Behemoth-size you will collide with them. Smaler things like robot arms will be instantly sqashed. Maybe Big Biters could be too great to sqash them. That would be the difference betwen "Big" and "Huge".

So i would say, moving through your Industrie insteat around is your own funny risk.

There are two possible version how I would define "parking":

• Let him standing around like a tank or
• Let him be placed like a building.

My favorite is the first option, like a tank, but maybe the power cable connection demands a positioning like a building. Cause I'm not the modder, I can't see the different points of conflict. However, if you "place" it (switch the mode) he will sit down his hip between the four legs like into the center of the four corners.

Here, I found a pictures from the Warhammer-40k-Universe with a "6-Leg-Model":

In my oppinion the style how the upper part is combined with the hip ist interesting and a good suggestion how I imagine this robot.

EDIT: I lost do define a relativ size (L)x(B)x(H):

• Big: ~(2,5-3)x(2,5-3)x(2,5-3)
• Huge: ~(3,5)x(3,5)x(3-4)

[Koub]

https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-120

[BlackKnight]

Not sure if the Factorio "spidertron idea" is still on the table as it was removed from the dev's future objectives list. Either way Enginarius, I like your idea but especially the ability to morph into a bunker (awesome in its own right) and power remote bases which I don't believe was suggested for the spidertron concept. The portable power gen solution is a niche not yet solved in the vanilla game and something I think quite a few players have been interested in one form or the other. Of course the spider+tank idea is quite likeable too with the *squish* *squish* *squish*.. *pew* *pew* *pewing* (re giant Calvin from Calvin and Hobs).

[bobingabout]

Last I checked, spidertron was still on the to do list for the 1.0 route.

To be honest though, if someone drew a good enough animation, you probably could make a vehicle behave like that, the hard part is would be that vehicles right now have a steering mechanic, and such a vehicle might work best with a more literal control mechanic (like players moving).