Mechs#947

I’ve seen people say that steampunk mechs would be cool, and I always thought it wouldn’t fit the game. But to be fair, it would indeed be really cool and epic, and since vehicles are already planned, I decided to give myself a chance to come up with something. And I did, so here we are.

I imagine mechs to be similar to tanks, almost like an alternative to them. Not superior, but different. So, I recommand reading #575 first to better understand what I’m going to explain next.

Mechs would be slightly faster than tanks on average, but have a lot less health. They would be about as big as tanks too, so they can fit inside garage modules (for example, imagine the size to be similar to the “Mantis” mech from Halo).
Just like in my previous suggestion about tanks, mechs would need to be assembled from 3 parts : chassis, hull and weapons. It works similarly to tanks, with a few differences. Main one being that mechs can have two arms, which means two different weapons (which is also why they have less health). It also means they require more ammo.
(Like tanks, they come with a basic storage, something like 10 slots, where you put coal and ammo for the weapons (I imagine the weapons to use turret ammo))
Mechs also use more coal than tanks, 1 bit every 10 seconds. That’s 6 per minute, and a stack lasts for 3min20s.

However, arms allow for a lot more tools to be used : you could equip mechs with a “hand” arm, that can grab things and punch, and a mining arm that allows you to mine ore from inside the mech. Mechs can do melee, unlike tanks.
I don’t know whether you should be able to change arms after the mech is completed. It might be frustrating to have to build a new one just to change an arm, but it might also make it quite op to be able to change the arms however you like.
Now, just like I did for the tanks, let me explain examples of mech parts :

• Chassis (health and speed)

• Normal chassis (two legs) : normal health, normal speed
• Light chassis (four small legs) : 25% less health, 25% more speed (Same coal consumption)
• Heavy chassis (three big legs) : 25% more health, 25% less speed (Same coal consumption)

• Hull (special)

• Reinforced hull : additional 25% health
• Ventral cannon : the mech has a 3rd weapon slot, which can be activated for 20 seconds and has a 40 seconds cooldown after capacity ended.
• Vertical thrusters : the mech is equipped with thrusters on the back, which can be activated with the cost of 3 coal, last for 3~5 seconds, and make the mech levitate a few meters in the air. While in air, you can still move forwards, backwards and sidewards, although very slowly. After the capacity ends, the mech falls back to the ground dealing severe damage in a small area around it’s landing spot. Capacity has a 30s cooldown after it ended.
• Horizontal thrusters : gives the ability to dash forward at the cost of 1 coal. Has a 5~10 seconds cooldown. If anything happens to be in front of you while dashing, it will take damage.
• Stabiliser : The mech can “crouch”, which makes it unable to move, but gives a 15% damage increase to weapons. crouching and uncrouching takes 2~3 seconds, which makes it hard to dodge shots.
• Explosive : explodes on death, causing huge damage in proximity. Can also detonate manually on a timer.
• Drone carrier : two drones can be bound to the mech, just like to a player or a COG.
• AI : the mech cannot be driven, it follows a player and automatically shoots at enemies.
• Storage : the mech has a chest on the back that adds 15 inventory slots to the mech’s storage for a total of 25, with an additional 10% health
• Worktable : The mech has a worktable on the back for on-field production, with an additional 10% health
• Refinery worktable : The mech has a refinery worktable on the back for on-field refining, with an additional 10% health
• Research worktable : The mech has a research worktable on the back, with an additional 10% health

• Arms (two different arms can be equipped)

• Pistol arm
• Shotgun arm
• SMG arm
• Mortar arm
• Sniper arm
• Gatling arm
• Tesla arm
• Circular saw arm
• And more, when new weapons get added…
• Mining arm (drill to mine ores that go to the mech’s storage)
• “Hand” arm

The “hand” arm is a bit more specific than the others. It allows to punch, but also to grab things (destroyed modules, scrap…)
There’s a lot of other things it could do, like grab and toss COGs, but also maybe grab rocks and launch them. I haven’t thought too much about that, but the possibilites are there.
What I thought of however, is in link to #946, which you need to go read first. If the mech is equipped with a “Hand” arm, it is able to walk up to the shield module, and if a shield is there, grab it and use it as a player would use a normal shield (#9).

Now, that’s pretty much my Mechs suggestion done. But there’s one last thing I want to talk about, which has to do with both Mechs and Tanks : it’s “on foot” gameplay. I’m starting to fear that too much vehicles might make “on foot” gameplay obsolete. Thankfully there’s a few ways to make it still relevant.

• Make vehicles extremely expansive. As said in the tanks post, Mechs and tanks should be very expansive to build AND to run, making them a true achievement when you finally complete one. But this would also mean that you don’t necessarily want to use them whenever you leave the ship, because using them means taking the risk to lose them and having to build a new one. They should also cost a lot of coal to run, so you don’t want to use them all the time. This might make it so that you save them for big missions like lava sources and flagship destruction, and remain on foot for things like going to loot a refinery ship.
• Making some places accessible only on foot. This could work really well using trees to make dense forests that cannot be traversed by tanks or mechs, requiring you to be on foot to access whetever is in or beyond the forest. But there are also possibilities in caves, like very tiny openings that can only be traversed by a crouching player. This will also obviously work for mines and villages’ sewer systems.

Thinking about giving more limitations to mechs to make tanks still relevant, what do you think about making players unable to leave mechs outside of garage modules ? That would make it less of a vehicle and more of a tool, as opposed to a real vehicle, which would be the tank.

Another idea would be to make the mechs uncraftable in some way, meaning you have to explore/raid in order to get one. It’s a different method of acquisition, most likely harder, but it means you can’t just infinitely pump them out. I originally thought there would be some kind of “mech schematic”, just like a “tank schematic”, but both could be researched freely. If we want to limit this, there’s 3 ways to go about it :

• The “Mech schematics” require parts that can only be obtained from COGs, so you have to work hard in order to unlock the ability to craft them, as opposed to tanks which would be available without having to raid/explore, or at least a lot less.
• The mech parts can only be looted, meaning that you are dependant on what you find to build a mech. (But I can see this being annoying when you want a specific mech with specific tracks, hull and weapons.)
• You have to steal/repurpose a COG mech somehow. Again, this could be annoying when you want specific things equipped on your mech, but this could be fixed by allowing you to modify your mech once you have acquired it.