To help block out, here is the list of various civilian heavy equipment that currently exists:
- Backhoe - use this or a variant of it for Excavators
- Bulldozer - allow a variant of this to serve as a grader blade? Or to serve as a drum roller/Compactor? Or a wheel tractor/scraper?
- Cargo Bays (different types: solid, dry, liquid, cryogenic, etc) - use these for the tank of an asphalt paver, or the water tank of a dust suppression vehicle, etc.
- Chainsaw - for when you need to cut relatively soft material (i.e. trees)
- Combine - this can serve as the base mass for all sorts of farming equipment (i.e. the auto-planting setup to make sure all the seeds are the correct distance deep and apart)
- Dual Saw (basically a heavier and more damaging Chainsaw)
- Fluid Pumps/Vehicle Flamers/Sprayers - for when you need to move a lot of liquid rapidly
- Lift Hoist - a variant of this to represent the unloader arm (and equipment to unload) of a combine, or a modified forklift
- Mining Drill - for when you want to do narrow and deep damage to a hard surface (i.e. rock/metal)
- Pile Driver - use a variant of this to serve as a compactor to flatten a chunk of terrain (i.e. the clay underneath what will be a road)
- Rock Cutter - for when you want to deal wide and shallow damage to a hard surface (i.e. rock/metal)
- Salvage Arm - use to temporarily lift items, not as flexible as a Mech's hand, but more flexible than a Lift Hoist
- Spot Welder - for when you need to precisely cut or weld together two pieces of metal
- Wrecking Ball - for when you need to break something and need it to hold still
The fun is that the above categories can handle a lot of varying civilian equipment. For example a cherry-picker/Boom Lift or a Scissor Lift could be simulated with a wheeled vehicle and a single Lift Hoist.
A large scale drag shovel could be simulated with a Bulldozer blade mounted on the Front or Turret, with Quirks mentioning that the Bulldozer can only be used when the vehicle is still, but can operate on a 360 arc around the mounting vehicle.
Hydraulic Mining shovels would be a combination of Bulldozer blade and Backhoe
Telehandlers are basically a much larger forklift
Asphalt Pavers would be a combination of Bulldozer blade, Fluid Pump, and 'liquid' storage.
Truck Crane would be a Lift Hoist, but needing rules to divide lifting capacity by height you wish it brought up to. I.e. a vehicle might be able to lift 30 tons via its Lift Hoist, but if you want it going up to level 4 then it can only lift 7.5 tons.
Pile Boring Machines = Mining Drill pointed vertically
Pile Driving Machine = Pile Driver on a vehicle
Feller/Buncher - for when you need to cut down a lot of trees and put them together in a single pile, use a Chainsaw and a Lift Hoist on the same vehicle
Concrete Mixer = cargo (liquid) plus Lift Hoist to reflect the
Garbage Truck = armored side and rear, cargo container, and a Pile Driver to reflect the hydraulic crusher at the rear
Pipe Layer = Multiple Lift Hoists, and a targeting system to make sure the Lift Hoists are synchronized
Trencher - a modified version of the Backhoe or Chainsaw to reflect the equipment used to make a deep/narrow trench
I forget if there is a dumping mechanism in Battletech, for the main hydraulics of a dump truck
For most of the civilian equipment, modifying one of the canon pieces of equipment above could be used to simulate the specific item.
Example items that have been added:
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Mining Laser - I can see this being used to give the IndustrialMech a bit of room from the rock face in case there is trouble. Use it in a low-power mode so an assistant (or the Operator) can see where the beam will do its work, then crank up the power
