Despite the medieval theme, Minecraft seems to have some machinery: pistons, controllable mine carts, levers, automatic doors, ...
It'd be awesome if, using blocks, you could build mining machinery that can mine multiple blocks at once, or do other stuff. This would be rolling steam machinery that you can build out of blocks and drive.
My suggestion supports building anything on top of caterpillar tracks, with full freedom to use any block you want, fully controllable, anything goes, and with machine parts to perform tasks like mining and plowing. If you want to build a complete house on top of your mining machine and make it move together with it: possible. For large contraptions you'll need to burn lots of coal though.
There are several new blocks involved:
Caterpillar track: you need to place this on the whole base of your machine (not only the sides). All connected caterpillar track blocks form a platform which lets the game know that all blocks on top of this are connected and will move together. The block is oriented either NS or WE. It allows driving and rotating. A machine must be at least 2x2 in size to work, smaller does nothing.
Crusher: if the machine moves and this touches a block, the block gets mined and the product falls 1 block behind into the machine, or if that cube is filled, goes 1 cube higher until open space is reached. There are crushers of different materials that you can make: wood, stone, metal, diamond. They can mine the same blocks as the respective pickaxes (e.g. you can only mine obsidian with diamond crushers). There is no difference in mining speed, since that is determined by the moving speed of the machine.
Plough: If this touches the correct type of ground while the machine moves, the ground is plowed into farmland.
Boiler: this burns coal and provides the mechanical energy required to move caterpillar tracks, crushers and ploughs. Each boiler supports up to 16 blocks (E.g. to have a 4x4 big machine, with 4x4 crushers on the front, you need two boilers and make sure they get fed with coal). Bigger machines need more boilers and hence more coal. Each boiler uses up 1 coal or charcoal per minute.
Gears: Use gears to connect boiler blocks to caterpillar tracks, crushers and other mechinical blocks, if the boiler block is farther away. You can also put boiler blocks directly next to the consumer blocks. Consumer blocks touching each other also work as gears, that is, if you put a boiler on a 4x4 caterpillar track grid, all caterpillars move and no gears are needed. Gears also have another function: to determine the height of your machine. Only blocks as high as the highest gears or other functional block (like crushers) will move together with the machine (otherwise the game wouldn't know what is part of your machine and what not). A stupid, but I guess hart to work around, result of this is that if your machine is 4 high, and you'd drive under a gears block (or crusher block or other) that is at height 5, stop driving there, and then start again, then the gears block will become automatically attached to the machine.
Conveyor belt: if stuff being mined, or any other item, falls onto this, it moves in the direction of this belt. If it touches a chest, it goes automatically in this chest. Conveyor belt blocks can also be placed on normal landscape to be used for stationary machines. Can be turned on/off using redstone, switches, ... A series of conveyor belt blocks touching each other only need one block enabled to drive them all. Similar speed as water. If a chest is full, the material just stays on the conveyor belt instead. You can also just create a dump on your machine and collect it manually there. You get the energy of conveyor belts for free, these don't require boiler blocks and coal, they use the redstone type of infinite energy instead.
Forward Control Block: If it received restone power (or just put a switch next to it for each usage), it makes boiler blocks start burning their coal and let the whole machine move. If not placed directly next to a boiler block, must be connected to it using Gears blocks.
Steer Left Block: If it receives a restone pulse (signal going from off to on), and the machine isn't already busy rotating, this makes the machine rotate 90 degrees left. Must be connected to the caterpillar tracks it controls, directly or with gears. You can just stick a button to it to make it easy to use manually, or control it with advanced redstone circuitry.
Steer Right Block: If it receives a restone pulse (signal going from off to on), and the machine isn't already busy rotating, this makes the machine rotate 90 degrees right. Must be connected to the caterpillar tracks it controls, directly or with gears. You can just stick a button to it to make it easy to use manually, or control it with advanced redstone circuitry.
Any other block: For the rest, any other block, no matter if it is dirt, wood, obsidian, water or lava, can be attached to the machine. Do not let lava touch any caterpillar track or other mechanical part, see further what happens then. Lava is only safe if in a safe container like stone.
How the the machine works:
-moving forward goes at 2m/s when driving in the open, 0.5m/s when mining anything.
-the machine is able to drive upwards to a level of 1 block higher, but only if there are enough flat tiles available before and after that. E.g. a machine with is 4 cubes long, can only drive uphill on slopes which increase 1 cubes per 4 cubes length.
-same for driving downwards. It'll just stop if the slope down is too steep.
-the caterpillar tracks, and with that the whole machine, falls down like sand if the complete underside of it is open air. So no flying with this.
-underwater, the machine doesn't work. It sinks and stays there. The boiler will not work. The only way to get your machine back, is to mine it manually into blocks piece by piece.
-in lava, all mechanical parts break down and other blocks attached to it dissolve as well. If you end up with your machine in lava, watch all blocks of your machine dissolve in the lava, followed by yourself.
-any action block which is directly above a caterpillar track, will do its action for the block below as well. E.g. a crusher on top of a caterpillar block, will make that caterpillar block crush as well. Otherwise it would be impossible to mine: the bottom layer, which has to be caterpillar track, wouldn't be mined and the machine would have to go uphill on a slope it couldn't! Same for plowing, which takes place on the lowest layer only.
-if you've got crushers in front, then driving upwards is no longer an issue, the machine goes straight ahead, and crushes all blocks in front.
-rotation supports rotating 90 degrees left or right. Such a rotation takes a while, with a rotation animation. During the rotation the machine can't do anything until it's done, after which it can move forward in this new direction.
-if the machine is 4 high, and you've not got the full front of the machine at every level covered with crushers, then it won't be able to move forward through blocks since that one place where it didn't crush prevents you from moving.
As for the ingredients to make these machine blocks: I don't really know any specific recipes. But it involves iron and gold. The gold is to give this resource more purpose, similar to the powered train tracks, and to make the machines not too easy to build early on. The gold is for anything motion related like gears, crushes and caterpillar tracks. Maybe some redstone here and there, especially for the control blocks.
Of course this idea is extensible, other block types controlled with boilers and gears can be imagined.
-crushers and ploughs break down after a while, just like tools. They have some multiple of the amount of uses of a hand tool with the corresponding material, though. I'm not sure if the game supports remembering such values with blocks though.
-for that reason, crushers and ploughs don't require gold in their construction.
-when you drive into another machine with its base at the same height, you don't mine it, your movement stops but the boiler keeps running. If you rotate, you can still move away. However if both machines stop their engines, they become regular Minecraft blocks, and hence, since their bases are now connected, are joined together to form one large machine.
-To separate two machines, the only option is to manually mine a section off of both.
-Only when all blocks in the base of the machine are caterpillar tracks facint the same direction, it'll work.
-To rotate, the machine needs more space than its size, enough to contain its shape in a circle. So if you're doing stuff underground with it and want to rotate, it might be necessary to manually mine blocks around it.
-If the machine gets too far away from the player (e.g. so far that it enters sectors that aren't really in memory of the game), it just stops until the player is closer. Of course if a machine is left running and the player exits it, it won't get far anyway usually due to water, lava, boilers running out of coal, steep terrain, ...
-To avoid them being used as too easy transportation, conveyor belts are very slow, and the length of a continuous running piece is limited to some amount.
-If a machine is standing still, its blocks are just like normal minecraft world blocks. It's impossible to have a vine of a tree in the same location as a block of this machine, and such.
-If the machine runs over grass, redstone wire, train tracks, vines, etc..., they break down and become (if applicable) their item form instead.
I agree with this, however i think you need to add something... Maybe a way to repair crushers and plows?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
It has been since time immemorial that man has looked to the stars in wonder, so I ask you, how can going to them be anything but an extension of a will older than any of us? It is our very nature to discover, and to lust for knowledge, you accept this but doubt the nobility of working to the stars?
Better idea: make dispensers be able to use tools, and have all redstone stuff be able to be pushed and pulled by pistons. That way, you could make a mining truck by using your brain.
It'd be awesome if, using blocks, you could build mining machinery that can mine multiple blocks at once, or do other stuff. This would be rolling steam machinery that you can build out of blocks and drive.
My suggestion supports building anything on top of caterpillar tracks, with full freedom to use any block you want, fully controllable, anything goes, and with machine parts to perform tasks like mining and plowing. If you want to build a complete house on top of your mining machine and make it move together with it: possible. For large contraptions you'll need to burn lots of coal though.
There are several new blocks involved:
Caterpillar track: you need to place this on the whole base of your machine (not only the sides). All connected caterpillar track blocks form a platform which lets the game know that all blocks on top of this are connected and will move together. The block is oriented either NS or WE. It allows driving and rotating. A machine must be at least 2x2 in size to work, smaller does nothing.
Crusher: if the machine moves and this touches a block, the block gets mined and the product falls 1 block behind into the machine, or if that cube is filled, goes 1 cube higher until open space is reached. There are crushers of different materials that you can make: wood, stone, metal, diamond. They can mine the same blocks as the respective pickaxes (e.g. you can only mine obsidian with diamond crushers). There is no difference in mining speed, since that is determined by the moving speed of the machine.
Plough: If this touches the correct type of ground while the machine moves, the ground is plowed into farmland.
Boiler: this burns coal and provides the mechanical energy required to move caterpillar tracks, crushers and ploughs. Each boiler supports up to 16 blocks (E.g. to have a 4x4 big machine, with 4x4 crushers on the front, you need two boilers and make sure they get fed with coal). Bigger machines need more boilers and hence more coal. Each boiler uses up 1 coal or charcoal per minute.
Gears: Use gears to connect boiler blocks to caterpillar tracks, crushers and other mechinical blocks, if the boiler block is farther away. You can also put boiler blocks directly next to the consumer blocks. Consumer blocks touching each other also work as gears, that is, if you put a boiler on a 4x4 caterpillar track grid, all caterpillars move and no gears are needed. Gears also have another function: to determine the height of your machine. Only blocks as high as the highest gears or other functional block (like crushers) will move together with the machine (otherwise the game wouldn't know what is part of your machine and what not). A stupid, but I guess hart to work around, result of this is that if your machine is 4 high, and you'd drive under a gears block (or crusher block or other) that is at height 5, stop driving there, and then start again, then the gears block will become automatically attached to the machine.
Conveyor belt: if stuff being mined, or any other item, falls onto this, it moves in the direction of this belt. If it touches a chest, it goes automatically in this chest. Conveyor belt blocks can also be placed on normal landscape to be used for stationary machines. Can be turned on/off using redstone, switches, ... A series of conveyor belt blocks touching each other only need one block enabled to drive them all. Similar speed as water. If a chest is full, the material just stays on the conveyor belt instead. You can also just create a dump on your machine and collect it manually there. You get the energy of conveyor belts for free, these don't require boiler blocks and coal, they use the redstone type of infinite energy instead.
Forward Control Block: If it received restone power (or just put a switch next to it for each usage), it makes boiler blocks start burning their coal and let the whole machine move. If not placed directly next to a boiler block, must be connected to it using Gears blocks.
Steer Left Block: If it receives a restone pulse (signal going from off to on), and the machine isn't already busy rotating, this makes the machine rotate 90 degrees left. Must be connected to the caterpillar tracks it controls, directly or with gears. You can just stick a button to it to make it easy to use manually, or control it with advanced redstone circuitry.
Steer Right Block: If it receives a restone pulse (signal going from off to on), and the machine isn't already busy rotating, this makes the machine rotate 90 degrees right. Must be connected to the caterpillar tracks it controls, directly or with gears. You can just stick a button to it to make it easy to use manually, or control it with advanced redstone circuitry.
Any other block: For the rest, any other block, no matter if it is dirt, wood, obsidian, water or lava, can be attached to the machine. Do not let lava touch any caterpillar track or other mechanical part, see further what happens then. Lava is only safe if in a safe container like stone.
How the the machine works:
-moving forward goes at 2m/s when driving in the open, 0.5m/s when mining anything.
-the machine is able to drive upwards to a level of 1 block higher, but only if there are enough flat tiles available before and after that. E.g. a machine with is 4 cubes long, can only drive uphill on slopes which increase 1 cubes per 4 cubes length.
-same for driving downwards. It'll just stop if the slope down is too steep.
-the caterpillar tracks, and with that the whole machine, falls down like sand if the complete underside of it is open air. So no flying with this.
-underwater, the machine doesn't work. It sinks and stays there. The boiler will not work. The only way to get your machine back, is to mine it manually into blocks piece by piece.
-in lava, all mechanical parts break down and other blocks attached to it dissolve as well. If you end up with your machine in lava, watch all blocks of your machine dissolve in the lava, followed by yourself.
-any action block which is directly above a caterpillar track, will do its action for the block below as well. E.g. a crusher on top of a caterpillar block, will make that caterpillar block crush as well. Otherwise it would be impossible to mine: the bottom layer, which has to be caterpillar track, wouldn't be mined and the machine would have to go uphill on a slope it couldn't! Same for plowing, which takes place on the lowest layer only.
-if you've got crushers in front, then driving upwards is no longer an issue, the machine goes straight ahead, and crushes all blocks in front.
-rotation supports rotating 90 degrees left or right. Such a rotation takes a while, with a rotation animation. During the rotation the machine can't do anything until it's done, after which it can move forward in this new direction.
-if the machine is 4 high, and you've not got the full front of the machine at every level covered with crushers, then it won't be able to move forward through blocks since that one place where it didn't crush prevents you from moving.
As for the ingredients to make these machine blocks: I don't really know any specific recipes. But it involves iron and gold. The gold is to give this resource more purpose, similar to the powered train tracks, and to make the machines not too easy to build early on. The gold is for anything motion related like gears, crushes and caterpillar tracks. Maybe some redstone here and there, especially for the control blocks.
Of course this idea is extensible, other block types controlled with boilers and gears can be imagined.
-crushers and ploughs break down after a while, just like tools. They have some multiple of the amount of uses of a hand tool with the corresponding material, though. I'm not sure if the game supports remembering such values with blocks though.
-for that reason, crushers and ploughs don't require gold in their construction.
-when you drive into another machine with its base at the same height, you don't mine it, your movement stops but the boiler keeps running. If you rotate, you can still move away. However if both machines stop their engines, they become regular Minecraft blocks, and hence, since their bases are now connected, are joined together to form one large machine.
-To separate two machines, the only option is to manually mine a section off of both.
-Only when all blocks in the base of the machine are caterpillar tracks facint the same direction, it'll work.
-To rotate, the machine needs more space than its size, enough to contain its shape in a circle. So if you're doing stuff underground with it and want to rotate, it might be necessary to manually mine blocks around it.
-If the machine gets too far away from the player (e.g. so far that it enters sectors that aren't really in memory of the game), it just stops until the player is closer. Of course if a machine is left running and the player exits it, it won't get far anyway usually due to water, lava, boilers running out of coal, steep terrain, ...
-To avoid them being used as too easy transportation, conveyor belts are very slow, and the length of a continuous running piece is limited to some amount.
-If a machine is standing still, its blocks are just like normal minecraft world blocks. It's impossible to have a vine of a tree in the same location as a block of this machine, and such.
-If the machine runs over grass, redstone wire, train tracks, vines, etc..., they break down and become (if applicable) their item form instead.
Same way as repairing broken tools: take two broken ones of the same type to the crafting bench, and craft them together.