Tree Crusher Machine.

[ProfPocket]

We already have the speedy little car and the mighty tank, but neither of which do a decent job of clearing trees early on in the game.
I usually shoot for the flamethrower just to thin them out a bit before the construction bots and what not later on. Though some maps I generate have wonderful resources abound, but ridiculous amounts of trees blocking access. If the car is available early on, and the tank quite a bit further down, how about something in the middle that doesn't require as many resources like elec engines and red circuts. Say, 250x steel, 250x iron plate, 500x gears, 50x engines, and 100 green circuits. Have it be a 4x6 size (4 wide, 6 long) and a rather slow movement speed. But efficient enough to crush trees and not get the resources. Much the same way burning them might do.

It would be fun to mow down paths through some dense forest areas with something like this

[MalcolmCooks]

+1
especially since fire spread (which is a great mechanic) makes it more problematic to use the flamethrower to clear trees. currently I use the bulldozer mod for tree clearing but I think something similar should be in vanilla

[Grimakar]

I abuse the tank as a wood crusher. For clearing I also use grenades, cluster grenades and poison capsules. On one map, I had the robots doing this and bringing the wood to a chest for the boilers.
But I really like your idea

[ProfPocket]

Oh cool! Glad to see some people like my idea! I edited my post to include basic engines in the resources, since I forgot to mention those. They might be useful in propelling such a large vehicle.

I play vanilla Factorio. I'm tempted to get into using mods, but I don't feel I've gotten to a point with vanilla where I'm ready to mod.

I've launched a few hundred rockets across many different games, and I always feel like the starting areas with craploads of trees are a deterrent. Many a time have I restarted the map upon generation to get one with very few trees despite there being bountiful resources. That's the source of my thinking about the tree crusher.

[ssilk]

Moved from General to Suggestions.
Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=17734 New types of vehicles (train, tank, car, plane, ship...)

[BraveSteelDragon]

This has gotten my attention...

Since outright crushing trees would be a waste, maybe a machine that tries to recover some of the trees' wood?

Most certainly it wouldn't be as efficient as a chopping trees manually, but still better than just throwing away all that wood.

[ProfPocket]

This has gotten my attention...

Since outright crushing trees would be a waste, maybe a machine that tries to recover some of the trees' wood?

Most certainly it wouldn't be as efficient as a chopping trees manually, but still better than just throwing away all that wood.

If crushing trees is a waste, how is setting them ablaze any different? The machine that I proposed would not only be accessible before flamethrowers and and construction bots, but would allow you to clear larger areas quicker than what's doable manually before you have those options, specifically without retrieving the fallen trees. I was looking for an alternative to the currently available methods of clearing trees that fit within the aesthetic theme of Factorio as well as ease of operation and usefulness. If such a machine recovered trees as well as crushing them, it'd have to be more expensive to build and by nature would have to move more slowly. Perhaps such a machine can be introduced later? Something as simple as a larger, slower tank with specific use for clearing trees doesn't seem like a daunting task for the Factorio team. However a machine that harvests as well would be more difficult to create. Maybe if you posted a picture of a machine that does what you're describing would help?

The reason I made this post in the first place... I had fallen into the YouTube pit of giant industrial machines, and thought while I was watching this behemoth easily mow down trees I was reminded how much of a pain it is to clear dense forests in Factorio before you have the flamethrower/bots.