Mecha's

[01]

Walking killing machines with nuclear power core.

[whiter2501]

That is what power armor is ^_^

[Fel]

Except it doesn't look as cool.

I think the reason why we don't really have mechs in most of the mods is because the animation for that would weight in the memory quite a bit, where a normal vehicle is much lighter, relying on particle effects (like smoke) and such to mask the lack of detailed animation.

That is also (one of) the reason(s) why not many mods add more enemies and why everyone looks the same in multiplayer.

[01]

http://www.wc3c.net/revolution/gallery/thumbs/goliath_walk2.gif
What's not cool about that? That animation part argument is kind of pulled out of your pooping hatch there, bud, isn't it? But okay. You could convince me with: "Doing animation is a drag", since most of the stuff modders release look kind of crappy, as few bother too much with how stuff looks.
Moders did have trouble doing moving antities before, as far as I can remember, since many have been screaming for turrets on top of the trains long time ago.

Either way, this isn't a mod request.

And power armor is power armor, that has nothing to do with anything. Same logic could be applied to cars or tanks.

[Fel]

"not a mod request" huh?

I think it has been mentionned multiple times, but the suggestion subforums, both here and on the official forums, are really there for exchanging ideas and trying to expand on them until they reach the point of becoming a fully formed concept.

It's not like the devs themselves can't take an idea or two once in a while, but most of the "ideas" they actually integrated were already done as a proof of concept by mods that also doubled as a taste tester to see if said concept actually fits or if it's just an amusing toy at best (that can still be nice for a mod, but not necessarily for the main game).

I mean, there are a whole lot of really nice ideas floating around, after about 5 years of development, a lot of them are more personal wishes than well thought out features that could mesh with the existing game and enhance it in some way.

That is not to say that robots would not be nice and cool, they would even mostly fit thematically (they are little more than the big brothers of what power armour are as far as the theme is concerned, just visually way more impressive), but the amount of work required for them to just look decent would also mean diverting time and resources from what the artists are working on (which should involve higher resolution textures of mostly every entities in the game one would think).


So yes, a lot of modders don't necessarily have great talents in making sprites in the same style as factorio's, and the animation can be a bit off if concepts of key frames are not well understood, but the best way to tell the devs "hey look, this is more than just a random idea, it does integrate really well with the game and really adds to the whole experience" still goes through fleshing out the ideas (including things like balance, tech level, potential recipes and so on), and potentially having a mod (or more) come out of it and show it off, however ropey it is.


In an ideal world, I would definitely want even multiple sizes of mechs, and have them reflect what is equipped on them, and probably similar sized bitters/spitters to have battles between gigantic beings and such.