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[Q][BST] Soliciting mech designs for the next race in The Tinker's Daughter
Post:
"The Tinker's Daughter" is my in-progress and eventually-to-publish novel about a rational fantasy world in which a girl and her friend, who happens to be the world's first sapient golem, are struggling to survive on the streets after their father is murdered.
People here seem to have enjoyed the mech race from chapter 2 quite a bit. I'm going to have another of those in the next few chapters, and I thought I'd solicit body designs for potential competitors. (NB: 'mech' is this world's term for a magitek robot, and a 'golem' is a humanoid mech.)
Think "Junkyard Wars" or any other show in which people build real-life robots to fight and/or race each other. I'm looking for what the robot's shape might be and what it uses to move around. From the chapter linked above:
- A 10-segment caterpillar that could walk, but also stacked itself vertically and then toppled forward to get an initial jump out the gate or to cross gaps
- A four-legged hopping thing
- A wedge-shaped wheeled thing that had a kickplate underneath so it could bounce over obstacles
- A narrow slab with four monster-truck wheels so that it could function rightside up or upside down
- A sea-anemone thing with lots of retractable / extendable spikes that allowed it to roll in any directions
The course on which they race is a very large warehouse floor with a ton of junk (scrap metal, wire, wooden palettes, etc) dropped randomly in it to make things difficult. Your mech design needs to have some way of getting over obstacles.
Comments:
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u/twanvl:
Does the mech have to stay in one piece? The rules from chapter 2 don't seem to require it. And the win condition is to 'touch' the far wall, and any single piece would suffice for that. So you could have a cannon that launches a small part if itself towards the target, over all the obstacles. Or a mech that splits into multiple fragments, each trying a different route. -
u/Lugnut1206:
a tank literally a tank with treads i mean, they designed those treads so they could climb mounds of things, so it might do okay in the situation. i don't know what you'd give it for armament, i don't think projectiles like a normal turret and cannon would work, but maybe they would? it would probably just roll as-the-crow-flies to get over to the destination, shooting things with it's amazing magic auto-reloading cannon second idea is a buggy built for speed, with little bumper things underneath it. the bumpers have high pressure piston things which cause the bumpers to shoot downward (or at a diagonal) at high speed to cause the vehicle to fly through the air if necessary. give the thing an extensible sensor array so it knows what the field is like, plot the optimal route for going SUPER FAST and MINIMAL JUMPING and rob has to throw something or maybe the tank will take it out, or else it'll just zip to the end line right off the bat -
u/xamueljones:
1. A slinky! You need a slinky for this race. If nothing else someone would have invented just for the hell of it. It moves around like how you'd expect a slinky to move and it can jump over tall obstacles by compressing itself before firing itself at it's destination. It's too funny not to try! 2. A tiny transformer-style mech that can change between a ball to a cube to a circle and some other basic shapes. 3. A mech with a grappling hook that it constantly shoots at a particular destination, pulls itself as it retracts, and repeat. This is more of an accessory than a single mech idea, but you get what I'm trying to suggest. 4. A self-directed arrow-mech where it aims itself at the goal. Think ridiculously high-tech action movie-style heat seeking missiles that could bend it's flight path as much as it wanted to get to the goal. -
u/hoja_nasredin:
I have not read your story so maybe my ideas are no applicable. 1. Wheels inside wheel. Like Mecanum wheels from alocholic stepfather https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXTo16KKm8Q 2. Drills. Ancient russian prototype. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=relPtvgZDEg 3. a robot that from outside is a giant ball of steel. Mechanisms inside allow it to roll. 4. A purcupine that shots the needles as harpoons and when they are embeded in earth pulls on them to move around.-
u/eaglejarl:
That drill thing is ridiculously cool. Thank you for the link -- I need to use it. -
u/hoja_nasredin:
if you don't know who the Alchoholic Stepfather is here is a link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL8SCdK-7Fc
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