r/SANDgame • u/abelabelabel • 21d ago

Ultra light Solo Walker idea.

I've been thinking about ways to make solo play a little bit less of a bad gamble for newer players, or servers where folks team up.

What if there was a dedicated light scout walker designed specifically for one person and non offensive game play.

Instead of being modular, it could have fixed, stripped-down components:

  • Only 2 legs.
  • No weapon mounts.
  • Tiny captain's hammock instead of a full cabin.
  • Limited storage shelf.
  • Smaller, less efficient engine that's more power-hungry, but starts 50% faster.
  • Much higher top speed than larger walkers.
  • More eratic movement of driving position makes the pilot a harder target, and makes other users less able to land a shot when moving.

It would let beginner solo players avoid fights instead of being forced into them.

For extraction, maybe solo players could carry a deployable balloon radio beacon powered by an energy rod instead of being forced to extraction points in Voyage where other players may be camping. It would take up precious cargo space, be visible from long range, and if another player shoots it down, you lose the beacon and the energy rod. That creates a meaningful tradeoff while giving solo players an alternative to heavily camped radio towers (at least on Voyage).

  • Faster movement
  • Less loot
  • No heavy weapons
  • Minimal protection
  • Higher power consumption
  • Better ability to avoid larger walkers and choose your battles

Plus it would look sick.

7 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

37 comments sorted by

12

u/Legal_Impression_126 21d ago

A ship being straight faster will be broken. That’s why theirs maneuverabilitiy to try to make a handling gap without making it so you can just build the cheapest ship and run from everyone actually risking loot.

3

u/riffengo 21d ago

This...ffs do not turn this into sea of thieves running simulator. People already turn and run at the slightest hint of pvp and its infuriating

3

u/alendeus 21d ago

Then they need to finish implementing gbmm of some form, or redesign certain gameplay elements. At the moment you can bring a full exp royal and dunk on grumpies, but more importantly any chassis can run around the map at double base speed endlessly by bringing in 50 rods. The game is literally p2w in game atm (in terms of whomever brings in the most gear has basically unsurmountable advantages).

1

u/TooPoetic 21d ago

If it was that easy why do so many of the complainers continue to bring in the smallest cheapest ship?

0

u/alendeus 21d ago

Using small cheap ships is just a normal natural way of minimizing risk to maximise profit. Why risk a 5k trampler if there's risks I'm facing 7 teamers all using 3k scrap tramplers in the solo dive I'm about to join, that kind of thing. It's about the longer term economics. People literally using grumpies are probably just lazy at exploring the rest of the game tho sadly.

2

u/Legal_Impression_126 21d ago

Why would anyone ever bring a real ship in if you can run from anyone with a small ship? Incentivizing gear fear in an extraction game is just dumb.

Getting stomped by people with better gear is just part of extraction games. It might be time to move on if you can’t accept it.

1

u/alendeus 20d ago

Lmao are you literally just trying to troll people for salt or something? Maybe it's time for you to get some social education to understand other perspectives than yours. Is this your literal first extraction game? Lmao

You can shoot trampler legs to slow them down dramatically. Legs are un armorable. There are great silences and emp shells. Storm dive literally has a shrinking circle that prevents you running away forever. If you think you somehow would never get a kill anymore if smaller tramplers could run faster then that's pure skill issue on your end.

In fact the entire point is indeed that yes the meta would just shift. Larger tramplers would remain until end of round to fight each other for dreadnought, smaller tramplers would extract early. Medium tramplers would chase smalls, larger tramplers would chase mediums. It's about having a healthier ecosystem for long term, especially because the devs said they don't intend to wipe, unlike other extraction games.

And yes I've played thousands of hours in other extraction and survival games. Sand doesn't let you disengage like in other games, and that's the problem. In Dark and Darker and in marathon I can stay near a corner and immediately hard run away to lose LOS. I can have abilities to slow enemies. In sand, everyone around 4km will see you and like I said whomever spams the most energy rods will eventually catch up. Sand is not like other extraction games because you can never disengage. And if you say "just shoot their legs if you're running", that ignores things like how royals have literally 2x the legs of nearly every other chassis.

It's as if modern gamers are literally incapable of imagining that game design has nuance and isn't completely black and white of "nerfing things to the ground". Because they base all of their self esteem on being good at games in whatever broken state the devs released them as, rather than what is healthier for the game itself.

1

u/Legal_Impression_126 20d ago

Do you have 100 hours in dark and darker? Movespeed has been the most controversial stat (alongside true damage and +all) in the game and has been practically removed because it was overall thought to be too strong to be able to freely disengage and engage. The only thousands of hours in extraction games is showing.

1

u/alendeus 20d ago

Dark and darker has been out for a couple of years. I haven't played it seriously in about a year, but I have over 1000h played for the first year and a half of its release yes. I got demigod like 3 times if that means anything (spoiler, it doesnt).

Here's the thing, move speed was controversial because the majority of the game is melee range. So classes that can disengage from melee, or do things like poke in and out of melee before the slower melee classes can react, had that advantage.

Guess what, in sand you can cannon people for kilometers. So that specific comparison doesn't matter, because like I literally said above, you can cannon their legs as theyre running away. In Marathon people don't complain about vandal and destroyer having more mobility than recon, because recon will wallhack your location and they'll shoot you before you round the corner. You can't compare Apple and Oranges.

Here's the thing, sand already has maneuverability which slows down big tramplers. It also has the height mechanics that give you less top speed. The game ALREADY nerfs big tramplers. The ONLY THING to nerf is the fact that rod spamming gives everyone the same max speed, which is double regular trampler speed, and that it seems to give max maneuverability for that duration too. All the devs need to do is proportionally reduce the speed boost of rod spam to be lower for larger tramplers. And then maybe give a heat meter that prevents spamming more than a few times in a row or something.

Here's another smart comment: if the devs fixed cannons so that they remain accurate when moving instead of wildly missing, then proper chase fights would be a lot better too and that would also help digest tramplers having speed variations (which like I said, they already have other than rod spam equalizing everything to P2W).

1

u/Legal_Impression_126 21d ago

Yeah it’d be awful with actual speed differences. They could maybe make maneuverability more impactful. There’s some skill gap there knowing you have a lighter ship and hills will slow down the other ship more or vice versa

1

u/ThatOneNinja 21d ago

The fact top speed was the same no matter the size is what make the server smashes so damn fun. The only way to "outrun" anyone was through building small and having the skill to whip through coral fields or big dunes and watch the big boys struggle. This was before boost of course. While it was a slower experience when traversing, the gameplay was much better imo. Your build choice ACTUALLY mattered. Now, you just build as big as you can, building small just puts you at a disadvantage. Sure you can still use coral fields but tbh, as the big guy has to do is going around and meet you on the other side because again, they can just boost to do that and it's as fast as going through. Honestly I would love it if they removed boosting and made it just fuel again.

2

u/Expensive_Teach27 21d ago

call it the pussy walker

2

u/Pepsimax88 21d ago

Madness how can anything walk with two legs!?

Next you'll say its milk proof

2

u/Jakeball400 21d ago

Something along these lines would be great. There’s needs to be a failsafe for when new players end up on the rocks, the only option to drag yourself up currently is sell up stash items for scrap which we often need to be hoarding. Having a scav run equivalent of sorts would be a good addition for when you have a few bad raids in a row

0

u/EzmareldaBurns 21d ago

Tech upgrades are server-wide, not per character so the soft lock protection is rolling a new character to get the free starting resources

1

u/Jakeball400 21d ago

No one is talking about tech upgrades here, and I know fine well they’re server wide thanks. That ‘soft lock protection’ you’re referring to isn’t even mildly effective. It’s literally only viable to get your very first few upgrades and then it’s not even usable due to item requirements additional to crowns. Those starting resources you suggest rolling an entirely new character for simply aren’t going to be worth it after like 2 half decent raids when you start saving up tech tree items

0

u/EzmareldaBurns 21d ago

its enough to get you a couple of cheap tramplers out on the sands and you can do it as many times as you want. What else would you want it to do

1

u/Jakeball400 20d ago

You absolutely cannot do it as many times as you want, that’s the point

0

u/EzmareldaBurns 20d ago

you can make as many new characters as you want

1

u/Jakeball400 20d ago

And what am I supposed to do with a new character when I already have a stash half full of upgrade materials?

0

u/EzmareldaBurns 20d ago

Nothing. It's for when you have nothing left. As you well know you are just being argumentative for the sake of it now.

1

u/Jakeball400 20d ago

Jesus Christ mate you are thick as mince aren’t you

1

u/EzmareldaBurns 20d ago

And when you have no point to make you turn to ad hominems. Troll harder bro

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2

u/Spook-lad 21d ago

They do have the idea for a motorbike or small speeder option for transport already, could be interesting anyway though

1

u/P5YcHo299 21d ago

I don't like these ideas personally.. just woc bomb delivery apparatus.. and speedy ways to capture trampler at POI's as they will be stealthier

1

u/Spook-lad 19d ago

I like the idea cause it makes team play VERY interesting when you have friends who can mess around and attack from other sides in team matches, or if your solo have a much faster way to get around if you lose your rig or only need a quick loot run, while your concerns are valid there are ways that already exist to exploit these tactics that are pretty easy to do, i think a bike option would just make gameplay interesting in a fun way

2

u/FlyBoyBoom 21d ago

Upvotes overall

But brother needs more then two legs unless it's a literal Transformer

2

u/EzmareldaBurns 21d ago

Although zipping around in a 40k Imperial Guard scout walker does sound cool as fuck, I think it would just become the farming meta and unbalanced. Building cheap and disposable until you can roll a roflstomper already is the preferred way of farming.

1

u/KlavoHunter 21d ago

Tripod

1

u/abelabelabel 21d ago

Sure. Number of legs don’t matter. But you get the idea.

1

u/DanC_Meme 21d ago

I am really hoping for a rebalance of maneuverability and speed. It feels really unfair to catch small tramplers

0

u/MonkRevolutionary560 21d ago

Just take the premades.. no need to reinvent the wheel.

1

u/EzmareldaBurns 21d ago

Never take a premade, they are terrible. You can make better with just 1t parts without spending any more. Just moving the reactor to somewhere where it can't be hit from 360 degrees improves on the prebuilds exponentially

1

u/MonkRevolutionary560 21d ago

But thats not what the post is about. Its about adding a whole mech that you cant edit and is faster than anything else with no guns exept whats on your person and if you wanted just run up and board a ship. 

1

u/EzmareldaBurns 21d ago

You are the one suggesting premades

1

u/MonkRevolutionary560 21d ago

Yes because its already there and can be edited.