Spidertron speed buff

[NotRexButCaesar]

The spidertron is currently slower than the player, and much slower than a train. The equipment grid is also too small to add more than a few exoskeletons. This means that if the player wants to travel a long distance, they have an incentive not to use the spidertron. If the spidertron was faster (could add more legs in the recipe), the player exoskeletons affected the speed, or the equipment grid was larger, this annoyance would disappear.

[valneq]

Why do you want to travel long distance with the spidertron? What stops you from loading spidertron into a cargo wagon and go by train?

[NotRexButCaesar]

Why do you want to travel long distance with the spidertron? What stops you from loading spidertron into a cargo wagon and go by train?

A full inventory of stuff and a spidertron full of stuff. Am I expected to keep it empty?

[Qon]

Because it needs speed to not be annoying to sit in when walking over you factory. If going around the long way is still faster with PAMKII then taking the short route with spidertron then yes I can exit it and redeploy it later. But why redeploy it when it makes me slower?

Why do you want to travel long distance with the spidertron? What stops you from loading spidertron into a cargo wagon and go by train?

It's not that I can't take trains for long distance rides. It's that once I exit the train it's slower than PAMKII so I can just skip the spider.
It doesn't need to be as fast as a nuclear train at 300km/h, but spidertron 40-50km/h is about half the speed of the car on wood. And PAMKII makes you go like about 100 km/h with two fusions and 6 legs. And and you have more spare slots still with the 10x10 grid. And you could use less fusion reactors and insert more legs if you want to compare it to spider with more than 3 legs.

3 legs is all you can fit if you have a fusion reactor and then you are at the 70-80km/h speed.

With solar panels and batteries (and sacrificing roboport, shields, laser equipment, modded logistics equipment etc) you can have 4 and drain slowly during the day, or 5 if you only go for short walks with it. And it is only 100km/h and can only go for short trips during the day. But more than 3 legs in spidertron is not viable.

It needs to be 80km/h without equipment and 152 with 3 legs or something. Then it would be a speed upgrade to PAMKII and you could choose to fill it with roboports and shields and lasers and while using fusion reactors instead of being limited to 1 port, 1 shield and 1 laser because fusion, 2 batteries and 3 legs takes all the other space.

[ptx0]

[...]

sounds perfectly moddable, your problem doesn't seem to happen on my maps. maybe i just have different needs. either way, mod it!

[Qon]

[...]

sounds perfectly moddable, your problem doesn't seem to happen on my maps. maybe i just have different needs. either way, mod it!

Except spidertron prototype is missing the speed property, that's something I think I've read somewhere. And the MK3 God spider mod doesn't make them faster, only gives more grid slots and hp and shooting speed and stuff.

[ptx0]

[...]

sounds perfectly moddable, your problem doesn't seem to happen on my maps. maybe i just have different needs. either way, mod it!

Except spidertron prototype is missing the speed property, that's something I think I've read somewhere. And the MK3 God spider mod doesn't make them faster, only gives more grid slots and hp and shooting speed and stuff.

fair enough this is in balancing not mod interface requests, perhaps should move there.

[Khagan]

The spidertron is currently slower than the player, and much slower than a train.

A fairer comparison is with the tank. I'd expected the spidertron to be faster, but you need two exoskeletons just to match the speed of a tank with rocket fuel.

[NotRexButCaesar]

[...]

sounds perfectly moddable, your problem doesn't seem to happen on my maps. maybe i just have different needs. either way, mod it!

Except spidertron prototype is missing the speed property, that's something I think I've read somewhere. And the MK3 God spider mod doesn't make them faster, only gives more grid slots and hp and shooting speed and stuff.

fair enough this is in balancing not mod interface requests, perhaps should move there.

1. A lot of people like to play vanilla.
2. If the game has a “problem,” people shouldn’t have to fix it with a mod.
3. I think this does belong in balancing: the most late game/advanced item should be an improvement, not a downgrade.

[SirSmuggler]

Given the many abilities of the spider, I don't think a relative lack of speed is a problem. It has so many uses, it doesn't need to outclass every other means of transportation.

[Hannu]

Given the many abilities of the spider, I don't think a relative lack of speed is a problem. It has so many uses, it doesn't need to outclass every other means of transportation.

There is a competition between game balance, in which only in game resources are taken int account, and megabase build efficiency, where the bottleneck resources are player's time and computer performance. There will not be a single solution which fits to all. I have no problem with mods and commands, but maybe there could be gamemode options to choose mode balanced for combat focused or competitive multiplayer games and mode balanced for very efficient megabase building so that biters would be mainly resource sink but actual combat and its logistics (like vehicle and running speeds) would be very overpowered. Later mode would give very fast ways to build huge structures (with pavement), move or clear biters intended to save player's real time. Endgame building robots could be something like fastest Bob's tier, fusion reactors could have very high powered tier to feed hundreds of superfast bots, exoskeletons and spidertron could have extremely fast running mode (I use commands to give about 200 m/s, when player can usually run through obstacles) for transport between separate factories. Such boring basic things can take hundred hours in long game. It is very much time for nothing for most working people with family.

[NotRexButCaesar]

[...]

The thing is: all of these can be worked around. Nukes allow for fast biter clearing. Not using personal roboports allow for more bots and faster building. Each of those problems can be mostly lived with.

What I am saying is that the spidertron is not really useful because it is so slow. It is the most endgame thing, but most(or at least many) won’t be able to use it.

[Hannu]

The thing is: all of these can be worked around. Nukes allow for fast biter clearing. Not using personal roboports allow for more bots and faster building. Each of those problems can be mostly lived with.

Yes, but this is what I meant with combat or competitive mode. It is more interesting if you have many options with pros and cons and can use all of them. But it is tedious and time consuming if you are building megabase. Then it would be better to have single very powerful solution for all building and combat operations to reduce real time needed to build something. In that phase interesting challenge of biters should be production and logistic of ammunition and repair equipment instead of combat against them. There are solid defense lines which are impenetrable as long as logistic works.

What I am saying is that the spidertron is not really useful because it is so slow. It is the most endgame thing, but most(or at least many) won’t be able to use it.

I agree that speed is the worst issue.

[micromario]

[...]

sounds perfectly moddable, your problem doesn't seem to happen on my maps. maybe i just have different needs. either way, mod it!

Except spidertron prototype is missing the speed property, that's something I think I've read somewhere. And the MK3 God spider mod doesn't make them faster, only gives more grid slots and hp and shooting speed and stuff.

You can modify spidertron speed
I'm the author of Tarantulator and I was able to make it slower than Spidertron
All you need to do is increase the initial_movement_speed and movement_acceleration properties for the spidertron leg prototypes

[ptx0]

1. A lot of people like to play vanilla.
2. If the game has a “problem”, people shouldn’t have to fix it with a mod.
3. I think this does belong in balancing: the most late game/advanced item should be an improvement, not a downgrade.

it's not a problem to me, i like the balance how it is. if you like to play vanilla, play vanilla. don't come here to complain about balancing decisions you can take care with a mod?

[ptx0]

Given the many abilities of the spider, I don't think a relative lack of speed is a problem. It has so many uses, it doesn't need to outclass every other means of transportation.

There is a competition between game balance, in which only in game resources are taken int account, and megabase build efficiency, where the bottleneck resources are player's time and computer performance. There will not be a single solution which fits to all. I have no problem with mods and commands, but maybe there could be gamemode options to choose mode balanced for combat focused or competitive multiplayer games and mode balanced for very efficient megabase building so that biters would be mainly resource sink but actual combat and its logistics (like vehicle and running speeds) would be very overpowered. Later mode would give very fast ways to build huge structures (with pavement), move or clear biters intended to save player's real time. Endgame building robots could be something like fastest Bob's tier, fusion reactors could have very high powered tier to feed hundreds of superfast bots, exoskeletons and spidertron could have extremely fast running mode (I use commands to give about 200 m/s, when player can usually run through obstacles) for transport between separate factories. Such boring basic things can take hundred hours in long game. It is very much time for nothing for most working people with family.

this sounds like a perfect solution for the mods that you don't have a problem with. you should try TagToTeleport mod, and just stop walking around the map altogether.

[ptx0]

What I am saying is that the spidertron is not really useful because it is so slow. It is the most endgame thing, but most(or at least many) won’t be able to use it.

spidertron's strength is in numbers and the fact they are remote controllable.

make a group of them, outfit a few with lasers, some with rockets, some energy shields, roboports and repair packs. send them out. they don't even need exoskeletons, because they'll make it there eventually.

saying that end-game people won't use it is kinda weird because there's a whole military tech tree that is basically ignored by most megabase builders. a lot of people don't use combat robots, spidertron will probably be another one of those.

[NotRexButCaesar]

1. A lot of people like to play vanilla.
2. If the game has a “problem”, people shouldn’t have to fix it with a mod.
3. I think this does belong in balancing: the most late game/advanced item should be an improvement, not a downgrade.

it's not a problem to me, i like the balance how it is. if you like to play vanilla, play vanilla. don't come here to complain about balancing decisions you can take care with a mod?

Not complaining, but suggesting.

[NotRexButCaesar]

What I am saying is that the spidertron is not really useful because it is so slow. It is the most endgame thing, but most(or at least many) won’t be able to use it.

spidertron's strength is in numbers and the fact they are remote controllable.

make a group of them, outfit a few with lasers, some with rockets, some energy shields, roboports and repair packs. send them out. they don't even need exoskeletons, because they'll make it there eventually.

saying that end-game people won't use it is kinda weird because there's a whole military tech tree that is basically ignored by most megabase builders. a lot of people don't use combat robots, spidertron will probably be another one of those.

but what about people who want to ride in it?

[Qon]

You can modify spidertron speed
I'm the author of Tarantulator and I was able to make it slower than Spidertron
All you need to do is increase the initial_movement_speed and movement_acceleration properties for the spidertron leg prototypes

I tried it, doesn't really work.
It doesn't become faster really. Just makes the animaton wonky.

spidertron's strength is in numbers and the fact they are remote controllable.

make a group of them, outfit a few with lasers, some with rockets, some energy shields, roboports and repair packs. send them out. they don't even need exoskeletons, because they'll make it there eventually.

saying that end-game people won't use it is kinda weird because there's a whole military tech tree that is basically ignored by most megabase builders. a lot of people don't use combat robots, spidertron will probably be another one of those.

Irrelevant.
It's strong in combat, yes. But it's weak as a base building tool or power armor upgrade. Tha fact that it's only useful for combat when it has so much potential is sad. We are here to boost it's speed to make it useful in more areas. We want it to not be ignored, by balancing it so it isn't underpowered.

You missed the point of the thread.