Crane isn't worth the hassle

[Pahbi]

I was so excited when I finally got the materials together to build the crane, drill head and a vehicle to put it on.

The crane is slow, clunky, doesn't really reach that far, and doesn't pick up stuff nearly as fast as the terrain tool with a boost/wide mod loaded into it.

- P

[Tajin]

Well, it used to be required for mining very hard rock, since the terrain tool couldn't handle that.

But I'm not sure if that is still a thing in the current version, as some things apparently got dumbed down a bit.

[Pahbi]

I haven't run into anything the terrain tool couldn't bust through using the right mods.

- P

[Wade The Scrapper]

To me the crane always seemed it would only be good in multiplayer the seat swapping makes it not much use in single player

[Zarinthal]

crane is for extreme dirt famring, when you want to fill more than a bacpack worth of canisters and you dont want to dig out all the caves near your base to do it. before scrap/shredders, I used to build full 4 large rover trains full of large/medium storages of canisters. that is what the crane is for. after they nerfed the extractor and added shredders/scrap, you wont need that 4 car dirt train much anymore, but if you do the 2 shredder rover train like I do, its easy to convert dirt to shredder trains

[GD]

I had the feeling the crane always have a tad higher yield than hand-drill at least that was my impression from seen both over and over again.

Currently there seems to be a bug, vehicle mounted drills produce no soil. Not if directly mounted and not on the crane, provided you have empty soil cannisters on board.

Due to the Soil Bug I currently rarely use the Crane, but in times that it worked it had great benefits even on Singleplayer.

Auto Storage - The crane pumps mined resources directly in any Medium Storage on the same rover, even when doubled with Large Storage. I always use a Larger Rover, with the Crane, a Large Storage and 4 Medium Storages on him. Another two Medium Storages in the back. Energy and driving on the front. That way I can fill up 6 medium storages before I need to manually intervene and move medium storage to another connected rover. When you return to the base you just shuffle the medium storages around ... very efficient.

Immense Storage capacity - Because you can connect rovers you can immensly increase the amount to haule before return to base. It is of course much more difficult the control everything with 2 or even 3 larger rovers in a row, but can be worth if the terrain is not too rough.

Higher Reach - The crane has a much larger reach than hand drill, it can dig deeper and larger holes.

Less Energy issues - The crane does not use energy from the backpack, is uses rovers energy, which can be provided by a second rover connected.

Digging Strength / Speed - Much more digging strength than the Hand Drill. More Volume faster.

Drawbacks

Seat change - You need to leave and re-enter the rover/crane anytime you want to switch. Would be cool if you can just press 1, 2, 3 and so on to switch seats on the vehicle.

Bad sight/darkness - It's very dark sometimes. Players have a Flashlight the drill has nothing and because the holes are larger/deeper it even more difficult. I wish it had an additional small attachment point at the tip or on the joint to install an Work Light

Sliding / Rolling - This ia actually more a general vehicles problem. When you leave a vehicles the hand brakes are engaged, but when you sit in ANY of the seat they are released and the rover starts sliding and rolling all over the place. You need to flatten / prepare the ground and/or find a good parking spot so the rover does not slide downhill or even in the hole you digged. I really wished they would release the hand brakes only when someone is in a drivers seat not the crane. And a hotkey for manually enage/disengage brakes while in a seat would be helpfull for all vehicles in general.

No Augments - The drill of the crane cannot be modded like the hand version. Would be cool we could attach one or two augments to the crane tip for the drill to the players liking.

All in all for flat terrain the crane is nice (besides the current bug with the soil), but for caves (now better than in EA because the caves have more plain platteus) or rough terrain it's much more difficult to use than hand drilling.

[Pahbi]

I strongly disagree with the digging speed/strength and storage capacity claims.

With the wide + boost mod, the terrain tool can clear out huge caverns of dirt in 1/3 the time the crane takes. The speed differences are staggering.

Storage capacity isn't any greater, if anything its worse with a crane, because the crane takes up a spot that would otherwise be used by a large storage unit.

The crane doesn't fill up canisters with dirt, at least it didn't for me, I don't know if this is a bug or its intended.

- P

[Fezyz]

Originally posted by GD:

Seat change - You need to leave and re-enter the rover/crane anytime you want to switch. Would be cool if you can just press 1, 2, 3 and so on to switch seats on the vehicle.

Bad sight/darkness - It's very dark sometimes. Players have a Flashlight the drill has nothing and because the holes are larger/deeper it even more difficult. I wish it had an additional small attachment point at the tip or on the joint to install an Work Light

Sliding / Rolling - This ia actually more a general vehicles problem. When you leave a vehicles the hand brakes are engaged, but when you sit in ANY of the seat they are released and the rover starts sliding and rolling all over the place. You need to flatten / prepare the ground and/or find a good parking spot so the rover does not slide downhill or even in the hole you digged. I really wished they would release the hand brakes only when someone is in a drivers seat not the crane. And a hotkey for manually enage/disengage brakes while in a seat would be helpfull for all vehicles in general.

No Augments - The drill of the crane cannot be modded like the hand version. Would be cool we could attach one or two augments to the crane tip for the drill to the players liking.

Really good suggestions, send them to forum.systemera.net