I've heard a few calls from people to remove the motorbike, which I can understand, but to me the motorbike still fits in a really important niche in the game: it's portability is unparalleled because you can pick it up. This, in turn, brought me to think about a simple solution: what if there was a way to pick up extremely small vessels to store them in your inventory. I mean... you can make a minimalistic HV off a pair of repulsors, a seat, a small generator, and a small tank. I don't think anything else is necessary to make this combination work. Could either just be an inherent property of super-small craft (anything under a certain volume/mass) or might require a block be added to the craft to represent some mechanical way of packing/unpacking the craft. Either way, if tiny craft were able to be picked up and placed down, it would legitimately remove the need for the motorbike for my purposes. Also, I have a certain quantity of personal amusement on the idea of somebody plopping down a SV that consists of 1 small thruster on the back, a seat, fuel tank, generator, and an RCS to be able to actually control the direction you're going. A true crotch rocket. Zooming through the atomosphere to crash into the ground somewhere, following by picking it up and walking off.
Playing with mass / volume, we shouldn't be able to carry even the motorbike in our inventory, so I guess the same could apply to "small vessels". Of course it's a game, and we don't need realism to kill the fun, but regarding "portability" : - the "motorbike" is a bit like the "instant blueprints" that many players find un-immersive ( "factory should have employees on strike"...) - making a small ship and multi-tooling it back to pieces is closer to this mindset that we're carrying a "kit" and we have to put it together when we need it, instead of spawning it like a magic trick. But don't get me wrong : I like "kits" ! In fact I see all kinds of "kits" in game ( models models models...) that perform all kinds of tasks, but the problem is that the whole system was thought on a " 1 on 1 "basis : 1 block = 1 function. That in turns forces the inventory to inflate, and it makes it virtually impossible to make, say, a "tent" that can serve as sleeping place and also as a container : the moment the player tries to put something in his tent, he falls asleep... The cool side of this is that we can make a "sleeping trap" in a scenario... haha.
The game lets me carry around several 2x2x2 meter chunks of concrete. Each of those cubes has mass of about 1200 kg with modern concrete, I think we're all willing to sacrifice a little bit of carry weight realism. In the end, I don't want to lose access to have a faster form of transportation that can be picked up and put down so when my craft loses it's cockpit or I get killed I can get out there without having a full second craft that I've gotta get back to base without doing weird things like docking an SV on top of another SV that clearly isn't designed for it. I can sympathize with people who think that the motorbike is a bit out of place. It's also another vehicle to worry about the physics on and debug (including another potential blockade to having all physics working inside of moving craft <3). I don't care about the motorbike personally and in the long term, this seems like it's actually a simpler solution to a portable vehicle than the motorbike.
I often keep a very simple "throwaway" hv/sv in my blueprints that take nearly no resources that I can spawn if I am ever in that bad a jam.
I also created an "escape pod" after finding myself trapped in the lower bowels of an abandoned factory with no apparent way out except to blast thru the upper floors & roof. I fits thru a 1x1 block opening. It's also armed with a Gatling gun just in case. However, in lieu of the portable vessel, we could have a T2 jetpack with real flying time. I imagine there will be resistance to this for one reason or another, but it's a thought worth considering.
To expound a bit: one of the first things I do in a play through is start feeding the factory. I, of course, am aiming at building specific things, but I always try to keep extra in there for “oh no” moments. It really doesn’t take much to build a small SV or HV that is little more than a cockpit and thrusters. I also keep a few of the small fuel packs on hand, just in case as well.
The motorbike removes the need for an early HV, even if the bike is terrible to steer. It also doesn't consume any fuel and you can fit it into your pocket. It might have had a reason to exist in the past but now it's just distracting from the game and removing reasons for you to actually build a vehicle yourself. We can make Level 1 hover vessels. Heck, we are even given a hover bike at the start of the game. There's no reason for the motorcycle.
I disagree. I started a game with the hover bike nearby. It was of no use without fuel and there NO FUEL to be had! I found fuel eventually, but I had to cover quite a diastance to find it. Now, I may have just selected the wrong direction to start my exploration. Nevertheless, without the bike, for all its shortcomings, the journey would have been longer and more dangerous, particularly with the limited weapons at the start of the game. Also, the motorbike doesn't "remove the need" to build an early HV. It does help you to find the resources to build that HV more quickly. I don't think you can dismiss the motorbike out of hand without some kind of portable replacement. Perhaps a "Back to the Future" style hoverboard? My preference is a flyable jetpack.
Fuel is literally one of the easiest things to come by in the early game. Pick some plant fibers, shoot down a tree with the survival tool and boom...biofuel. One of the top "early game recommendations" in every thread I have seen has been "Put down a portable constructor, add wood and start it churning out biofuel." Both the initial broken down hoverbike and damaged UCH Dart are there to give players experience in building components and getting vehicles going. I get it, the early game and the tutorial are somewhat lacking. But in every vanilla start, and every easy-medium RE start I have tried there is an Iron/Silicon/Copper deposit within 1-300 meters from the general landing area, trees, and rocks. This is everything needed to build a starter HV/SV. When you add on the titanium that can be salvaged from the Heidelberg, as well as all of the other salvagable steel, then resources are not an issue.
Yes, that's by design. The Crash Site biome always has iron, copper, and silicon deposits plus the scattering of random wreckages. Plus that hover bike. It should also have a scattering of trees and fibre plant equivalents found on the type of your starting world if there are any, so you should have the start always covered. I *do* get that the motorcycle is *convenient*. I just think that it needlessly takes away the problem of early movement you'd otherwise have to solve. If you absolutely have to have the motorbike then at least make it consume biofuel. Preferably at a higher rate so you'd *want* to build an HV quickly...
I have to assume you forgot that biofuel is a perfectly acceptable vehicle fuel? Find a tree. Find some plant fibre. Make biofuel. Level 1 hoverbikes are fairly easy to produce and fuel just requires a tree. It's also important to note that this whole thread assumes that the current factory mechanic is there as a placeholder until a better mechanic gets implemented. If it's the intent of the devs for us to be able to just create a tier 1 hovercraft/speeder bike and just keep a few of them sitting in the factory for our convenience... well then I guess there's little-to-no need for this. I just think it's a weird choice. The ability to pick up a craft seems to make more sense at this junction to me than the hoverbike does.
You can technically pick up a bike...it has your core, so just salvage the blocks, put them back in the factory, and boom, its ready to respawn again.
Note my comment about this whole concept assuming that the current factory implementation is a placeholder for something else in the future.
Gotcha...I personally never minded the bike. I have used it, and I have gone playthroughs never touching it.
The only problem that I have with the jetpack is it's impact on POIs. The platforming aspects of some POIs and having some things that are out of reach if you're wearing heavier armor are probably intentional design decisions. Being able to just jet pack around with impunity would obviously completely negate them.
Yeah, the hoverbike, or any other core based vehicle. Not the motorbike. You use a multi-tool. Right click, top selection on the wheel. If it has a core you placed on it, you will retrieve whole blocks.
