Rovers for planetary exploration

[Gliese-832-c]

I really wish there would be rovers so you can explore planets, because walking or flying is kinda boring.

My idea is that there would be 2 sizes, a small one which can be used by one player and a has a storage equivalent to a standart Minecraft chest, and a big one which 2 players can board, but only one can pilot. It would have the a storage the size of a standard Minecraft double chest (or possibly a 9x9 field of storage?).

There would be two ways to fuel the rovers. You have to decide which one you will use in crafting, because you will either use a battery or a pressurized tank to craft them. If you decide to make an electric rover, it will have a small storage where electricity (RF) is stored, and a special slot which can be filled with any battery (Thermal Expansion flux capacitors/energy cells, Mekanism energy cubes/energy tablets, matter overdrive batteries, I think you get what I mean) to increase the storage capacity. If you use a pressurized tank to craft the rover, you will need to fill it up with rocket fuel.

The way the rovers would be charged is either you drop in a battery or a bucket/tank into a slot inside the rover inventory (the same key which is used for opening the rocket inventory could be used to access it), or you drive the rover on a multiblock structure (possibly some kind of 3x3 (maybe a bigger 4x4 version for the large rover) pad, similar to the gas charge pad, or the Mekanism charge pad).

Inside the rover inventory, there also could be some slots for upgrades like fuel efficiency, speed, etc.

The rover should also be able to climb up 1 block high "walls", else it wouldn't really make sense.

If the rover comes into contact with any kind of liquid (a whitelist could possibly be added into the config) for more than a second or two, particles should start come out and after 5-10 seconds the rover will explode.

If anyone else has good ideas, just comment them and maybe I will add them to my post.

[Trip-kun]

I like it

[voidsong-dragonfly]

There's already the hovercraft in development for this, I believe. @zmaster587 may be able to say.

[Gliese-832-c]

@Silfryi The hovercraft is too technologically advanced though. I want the rover to actually be a 4 or 6 wheeled vehicle which you can drive, not fly.

[zmaster587]

I can confirm this is a planned feature, it's likely going to be a bit since it's a bit lower priority compared to the navigation overhaul that I promised over a year ago.

The rationale for the hovercraft flying is that it's more meant to allow players to travel at high speed, unfortunately in a blocky minecraft world it would look kinda funky to seemingly teleport up small ledges.

Rovers wouldn't have this same issue since they'd be far slower and would be planned for early to early mid-game, so they would be wheeled.

When rovers are added to the game, they'll probably come with another planet overhaul. Technology for high pressure and very hot planets will probably get moved to later game so that rovers have a real use behind them: to substitute players in extremely hostile environments earlier game so you can still interact with those planets, but you'd have the trade-off of controlling the rover instead of the player. It'd also require some more logistic thinking since items the rover picks up won't appear in your inventory. You'd need to send them back up from the surface.