Vehicular Drill

It makes sense…
I want my drill though.

Why not just heavy duty sonic resonators…

[quote=“i2amroy, post:20, topic:5969”][quote=“GrizzlyAdamz, post:16, topic:5969”]Humbug to realism! How do the graboids tunnel hmm?
Though I wouldn’t push for any more than one tile per tick, so long as it’s automated/the PC can hold down 5 to scoop out a long tunnel.[/quote]
Precisely chosen sonic tones that cause the rock to crumble before them. It’s like the sonic resonator, but because they have the ability to sense the exact tones required they can use less power and quieter notes to make them break.

(Or at least that’s the semi-logical seemingly coherent reason that I just retconned into place. The real reason is because they were added before we really began to focus on realism and have grandfathered their way through any changes up to now.[/quote]

I’d imagined they just ate through the ground; apparently they just shove it out of the way (and can’t dig through rock).

Sonic drills! Where the “drill” itself isn’t even the drilling part, it’s just the part shunting the rubble out of the way…

Sounds like a vehicle-mounted Jillhammer much like any other vehicle-mounted appliance. It uses the vehicle’s power in place of usual means but otherwise functions similarly. Add an otpion to the vehicle to destroy whatever is in front of the drill. If you move at a speed of one tile per use then the vehicle will be able to keep trundling forwards being activated over and over again and bore its way through a mountain. Affix one to the end of a lance on a vehicle then you can step forward a tile, stop, activate, step forward, stop, activate, and drill a hole in a building as deep as your lance+1. Affix one to a shopping trolley to have a draggable, solar-powered building destroyer. Place one behind the seat on a vehicle to create a crude, post-apocalyptic version of the electric chair…

I sentence the to death!
drill rips into dudes skull brutally murdering him

Nice touch if NPC’s get fixed and upgraded.
Catching thieves from your faction, murdering them.

The uses are limitless!

I’m imagining some kind of OP oscillating base design, with drills moving back and forth, destroying all that wanders near.

Lasers.

Because lasers.

Lasers would thermal crack the rock, then it’d crumble into rubble or be dug away by a drill.

If you want super digging science someone came up with this concept a few decades ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subterrene

They supposedly work by melting and then pushing the rock in front of them while building a possibly safe glass tunnel behind them.