Not everything has to be built in. For long distances there is the rover, for cargo there are crates, and a whole range of devices can be dragged to wherever they are needed. This article introduces them – with what the game data says about them.
The Rover MkI
The Rover MkI is the only vehicle you build yourself the regular way. It has:
- two seats, driver and passenger,
- three battery slots,
- according to the slot list, two connections for containers and four for gas tanks.
In logic it knows On and Power, plus Charge and ChargeRatio per battery slot. The game code gives 7.8 as the top speed value (Rover.MaxSpeed).
How it is made:
- Print the Kit (Rover Mk I) in the tier 2 electronics printer: 15 copper, 80 steel, 10 electrum, 5 constantan (90 s, 2,000 J).
- Place the kit – the frame appears on the large grid.
- Attach 5 plastic sheets with the wrench.
- Attach 5 steel sheets with the welding torch.
The finished vehicle measures about 2.7 × 1.8 × 3.7 m. Plan the garage and door accordingly.
Energy
A worked example for the batteries: according to the game data a Battery Cell (Large) stores 288,000 J. Three of them give 864,000 J. With three Battery Cell (Nuclear) at 2,304,000 J each it is 6,912,000 J, eight times as much. How long that lasts depends on the consumption while driving, which the extracted data does not give as a fixed value. So keep an eye on ChargeRatio.
Lander and shuttle
The Lander is a large cargo carrier (about 6.6 × 4.0 × 6.6 m) with seven slots for crates and two for portable devices. The Lander Mk II is narrower and taller and has seven crate slots and four for portable devices. For neither is there a kit, recipe or trader offer.
You do meet the Mk II, though: in the standard starts on every world the game drops it once per new world, loaded with crates for construction, power, airlock, survival and hydroponics plus gas tanks. The "Brutal" start has only one crate instead. The old lander does not appear in any start condition or scenario. Both take no lava damage; weather damage depends on the difficulty – none on Creative and Easy, single on Normal, double on Stationeer.
The ShuttlecraftMkII is a two-seat shuttle without a display name and also without a way to build it. The game code contains flight values such as Shuttle.MaxSpeed 50 and Shuttle.EnginePower 10,000. It is a drivable vehicle like the rover, but it appears in no start condition, no scenario, no recipe and with no trader.
Crates
| Crate | Slots | Kit |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic Crate | 10 | 10 iron, autolathe |
| Crate Mk II | 10 | 10 iron, 5 gold, tier 2 |
Crates have slot type Crate. They fit the lander's crate slots and the crate mount, which fixes a crate in place. Ten slots mean ten stacks: with iron ore at 50 per stack that is up to 500 ore.
Portable devices
| Device | Slots | Kit |
|---|---|---|
| Portable Gas Tank | 1 | 20 iron (pipe bender) |
| Portable Generator | gas canister, battery | 15 gold, 20 steel, 5 solder |
| Portable Air Scrubber | 3 | 5 gold, 20 steel, 5 invar, 5 solder |
| Portable Air Conditioner | 2 | 5 gold, 20 steel, 5 silver, 5 solder |
| Portable Hydroponics | 4 plants, canister | 5 copper, 20 steel |
| Portable Composter | battery, canister, 2 | 15 copper, 10 steel |
The portable gas tank holds 790 litres and can be set up to 10,132.5 kPa. A worked example: full at 20 °C (293 K) it holds n = 10,132.5 · 790 ÷ (8.3144 · 293) ≈ 3,290 mol. A room of four cells needs about 1,330 mol for normal pressure – so one full tank fills it almost two and a half times.
Portable tanks connect to the pipe network through the Portables Connector: one slot for portable devices, one gas and one liquid connection, 10 W. The pipe bender makes the kit from 5 iron.
The AIMeE bot
The AIMeE bot is a special case: a driving robot with a battery slot, a slot for an IC10 chip and eight ore slots. Its modes include Follow, MoveToTarget, Roam, Unload and StorageFull. The kit is expensive: tier 2 electronics printer with, among other things, 10 astroloy, 22 steel and 15 electrum.
Next steps
- Distributing cargo by chute: Chutes and logistics: basics, inputs and outputs
- What awaits you on the worlds: Mars: starting world with thin CO2 air, Moon: vacuum, full sun and solar storms
- Rockets instead of wheels: Rockets: structure, fuel, launch
- Charging batteries and planning power: Power grid basics