Automated Vehicle Lifter/Carrier

[fdinst]

One cool thing to have in the late game would be an automated "lifter" aircraft, which operated out of a launchpad structure build in your base, but which had an enormous range. You could be out on foot miles away from your base, and ask your lifter to bring you your tank or your car, and it would lift off, find the vehicle in question, and then power out to deploy it near you as fast as possible.

You could also leave the tank out in the wilderness, and ask the lifter to bring it back.

Essentially, it would work like the logistics robots/slots, but for vehicles, and with a much larger range.

[ssilk]

Hm. I really would like this.

Ideas like "Dune" are going through my head.


I think this should/could be implemented as mod, cause of common reasons. Modders: Attack!

[fdinst]

Yes, just like the Carryall vehicle in Dune 2 Battle for Arrakis.

https://youtu.be/8fkxpT58dRA?t=330

Or the Atlas/Valkyrie lifter aircraft in Total Annihilation.

https://youtu.be/hyl34Ds0J04?t=17

[vipm23]

This would be nice if combined with an RTS setup.

Can we also use it to carry items?

[person3triple0]

If it could be used to carry items, then what would be the point in having trains? There'd need to be a very high cost to building and using one, and when it returns it needs 200 MW to recharge its batteries. Otherwise, assuming you can have it sent automatically, trains would become obsolete.

[ssilk]

It's obviously somthing between Train and Logistic robots.

Like viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7977 Ropeway conveyor above the factory...

[Woodmn]

An idea that could be useful for people that use trains and cars a lot could be a sort of railway attachment that allows you to drive cars both on and off rails (like this but more for general movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road-rail_vehicle ) after aligning yourself with the rails and pressing a key you would snap to the rails and be able to drive along them in a similar fashion to manual trains). Still not as fast as trains but a lot faster than by driving normally (even on concrete). The car would act like a player operated train on your train network while giving you the storage and flexibility of a car. Also would help when an outpost is falling but the train is miles away from where you are. Hop in car, drive to rails, get on rails, speed to outpost's rescue, fix outpost, zoom back to wherever you were working.

[ssilk]

Yes, exactly such ideas.
There is a gap between the belts and railway for continuous transport (robots don't belong into that category) and such ideas close this gap. And the more I think about it, the more I think it would be supercool, if two or three alternative transport methods would be implemented (e.g. Ropeway, Carrier and Monorail...), cause each of them have advantages and disadvantages when we come to the terrain.


Hm. There are one ore two handful of such ideas around, If I have time this evening I can make a list with those.

[person3triple0]

Back to the issue at hand, I think if someone could program in one of those hovercars (I think there's a mod for that) they could probably be able to tell it to locate a vehicle and bring it to the player's location. Maybe one limitation would be that both player and vehicle would have to be in Radar range. Otherwise the Flyer won't be able to navigate (similar to the idea of a drone needing a controller)


I really like that idea of a rail-car!!! Maybe there could be a way to connect it to a wagon or two, but only from the back, so you could bring supplies along if the car isn't enough (I think the car should have less inv space but that's a balancing issue). Of course, that would mean the rail signals would have to be able to detect the car so that no other trains run you over xD

I also like the Ropeway idea. It would be slow, but it can carry slightly more than a belt and is less expensive than dragging belts for several miles (think of all the iron for one belt, then think how many you'd need for high throughput...)