"Heavy Equipment" button

[joebill]

So, what does the "Add heavy equipment" button do, if anything, right now?

If it's as useless as I suspect, what will it do?

[TheCynicalRust]

In the original X-Com there were little tanks you could have go out with your crew. My guess is it'll be something like that, or maybe a reprogrammed bloodspider.
---
lol sig

[Troberg]

Somewhat off topic, but cool researchable technology idea:

It would be cool if the drop tanks on the phoenix could be replaced with bloodspider pods, which directly upon landing, released reprogrammed bloodspiders (maybe two or three per pod) that fight on your side. These would be in addition to your troops and would not affect troop count. The downside would be that they could not be built, only made from repaired bloodspiders that you have killed, and they would be under AI control, not player control.

Great for automatic scouting out enemies, but uncontrollable. Likely to be lost, as they'll not be as smart as a player and will likely rush into groups of aliens, and difficult to aquire, so you save them for those really hard missions.

[shevegen]

maybe a reprogrammed bloodspider.

Whoa cool, didnt think of that!

I was aware of the original "tank"-support and I liked it, especially when i didnt want to risk
my soldiers... but a reprogrammed alien sounds kinda cooler

[Sophisanmus]

The UFOpedia already contains entries for "AWG"s (or something, I hope I remembered the correct acronym) which, from the profile picture in-game, appear much like armored fighting vehicles.  The descriptions, however, are empty, containing only <TO-DO>.  I believe it has been confirmed that they will be unmanned combat units.  I don't know if there are any plans for reprogramming of enemy mechanical units, and "coolness" aside it seems difficult and impractical.  More likely, research of the components and design of Bloodspiders could lead to more advanced AWG technology, or something of that sort.

[Chriswriter90]

http://www.xcomufo.com/x1ufopaedia/hwps.html
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Heavy_Weapons_Platforms

The tanks would be moved around and ordered to fire just like normal soldiers,
Except, they couldn't be healed in the field and would be auto-repaired back at base.
New Toolkits would solve that y'know Medkits to be used tanks.

Maybe in UFO:AI workers and medics could be taken to the field,
medics could get more healing per Medkit use
and workers could get more repairing per Toolkit use.

[Sophisanmus]

I don't much like the "Toolkit" idea...  While the "HP" of a soldier reflects injury (vital damage, blood loss, and other factors which would lead to a human's death), the "HP" of the UVG tends to reflect its armor status.  Considering alien weaponry, I find it unrealistic that a toolkit will be sufficient to fabricate armor panels to replace those which have been melted, vaporized, exploded, or otherwise destroyed by alien fire.  The only potential use for a toolkit I can think of would be for bringing a UVG destroyed back to "life" with a minimal amount of HP remaining (i.e. made a field repair as to whatever system was damaged to "kill" the UVG, though each consecutive "revival" would have a decreasing chance of success). 

[Nevasith]

personally as a commander I would NEVER send into combat a unit that I can not control. Think about it- your reprogrammed bloodspider got an error and it starts killing your soldiers just after they go out of the transport ship.
Also- sending such a unit while having lasers, plasma and particle canons makes no sense. I'd much sooner send a heavy armoured vehicle with a minigun/grenade launcher/more advenced weapons than a meele fighting "thing"
It would be nice if these small tanks were upgradable- and I dont mean to change the weapon, but some sort of module construction- like aircrafts
weapon, some electronics, armour upgrades effective against different weapons.
To balance things out I think, that a destroyed tank would not be repairable- and should explode violently,  possibly killing everyone standing next to it, to avoid using tank as a shield for wounded.