Lifting, that's a Good Trick - Scrapyard Survival #7 

Remember to add a light on the end of the crane :)

You should setup a small little recharge spot for the forklift next to the warehouse foreman's office so he can properly log the equipment hours on it.

From a licensed forklift driver, trying to unreasonably compare your creation to reallife counterbalance truck: Hinges would be the first, at the base of the mast, not last in subgrid chain. Pistons definitely with gap between. While we rarely have clang in our trucks, we still need to see what is in front. That's where gap comes handy. (You could try reducing both impulse forces on one of the pistons so it fights less, just in case. Inertia tensors? I hate to use it, but sometimes its a must.) Counterbalance in real trucks is made of huge solid chunk of metal hanging beyond rear wheels. I'd suggest trying couple 1x1 cargos filled with iron ingot, or gravel (we're happy to provide conversion with our assembler). This would make it potentially much heavier than batteries. And let you keep most of the weight close to the ground, use two baby batteries under the seat, making entire thing less prone to tipping. Forklifts are typically using rear wheel steering - helps manoeuvring around tight places with load in front. Also rear wheel have near 90 degree turn range, so maybe it would be worth trying a subgrid wheel? There was some scripts designed for this type of steering. Another thing with real forklifts is no travel on suspension - tyres are solid and suspension is rigid. You do not want wobble or your load to squish your suspension unevenly. Try look up "variable reach forklift" for some alternate design idea that may or may not serve you better. Or at least give some inspiration. I dropped pic in discord as well. Hopefully you can take something useful from those examples. If not, i am still excited to see more of spinning ballet ;) And you made me do completely new sound when you've launched yourself with hinge limits. 10/10 xD

Watching you pass by the marker you were looking for 1km away, as it was on your screen for like a solid 3 to 5 minutes while you explained your tow truck idea, then being VERY confused ending up at Zarders base was pretty amusing.

I am still of the opinion that the helicopter should be put on top of your base as a kind of signpost from afar for your little scrapyard!

knocks the heck out of unweld wind tower with the crane, "how is that unattached?" LOL also, the way he doesn't align the red lights really get to me every time, I was even a bit relieve when he knocked it down

I, too, built a forklift for scrapyard work. Nine small-grid small batteries at the rear, front wheels are 3x3 short with no steering, rear wheels are 1x1 short with 45 deg steering (it pivots on the inside front wheel/turns in its own length). Speed limit very low, Suspension very tight (full strength), adjusted wheel height of front wheels to keep level forklift, power very low, charging port on the back. Some design considerations: I have plenty of base power and am never going on a road trip with the forklift, so 9 tiny batteries is way overkill (used only 1 percent energy after an hour of use). I deposit all my deliveries on the deck, not the terrain, so the forklift never leaves the warehouse and construction yard. It's a forklift, not a mini crane truck, so dual parallel pistons conjoined at the heads are all I need, and they lead down to only 1 landing gear to avoid the near occasion of Cklang. The part between the pistons is a blast door block. If I need to lift parts higher than a few meters, I have a separate tool for that. Comes with bells AND whistles AND lights. Regarding your longliner trailer truck: The real engineer in me cringes every time you jump down the "let's overcomplicate boiling water" rabbit hole, but something about the thrill of impending disaster is addicting. Small grid mag plates are ridiculously cheap and fast to build, so I just scatter them about on my flatbed and move them as needed. Point and shoot with BuildVision to lock. I've got the PARK script loaded on my truck, but setting it up is a pain, so I move everything manually with BV. If I wanted to automate everything I'd play Factorio.

Just wanted to drop another comment saying how much I'm loving this mod, it really has brought the game back to it's roots of on-the-fly engineering for me, makes it feel like the early days but better. Currently I'm having a blast welding up a space-hulk station out of a bunch of space-wrecks. Also love that power sources are either absent or rare - gives me a reason to go back down to the planet to lift up some solars.

A 300m body launch must be some kind of world record. From standing still no less.

55:38 Another Clang possesion, your scrapyard is haunted!!!

Now presenting the Spin a Lift. Randomly begins to spin without any reason. 🤣😂🤣👍 Awesome! Funny!

Splitsie community! I love to see a community with so many ideas and passion. Splitsie is great, a community so engaged is just a bonus

For the forklift, try bringing the center of mass down as low as possible, put the back wheels 1-2 blocks behind where they currently are. Use the batteries as counterweight, just abowe the back wheels, or put them just slightly behind. 1 collumn of pistons are more than enough. Maybe even using just the one battery will be fine, as long as you don't forget putting a charging port on it.

A suggestion for the flatbed mag plates, maybe colour code each 'group' so its obvious which group a mag plate is in. Also you may wish to lower the ride height of the forklift so it is as low to the ground as possible.

Forklift suggestions. flip your batteries and attach them end to end. giving a 2 tall, 3 wide, 6 long base of the Forklift, wheels under batteries, everything else on top of them, a 1 block gap for double pistons. this should give you a Forklift that is only 1 block bigger(1 longer then your current, 'from your gyros to piston base'. but same wheel width) also a lower center of mass. also, a Helm cockpit might give a better look, similar to a pallet jack/dolley, kind you can stand on the back of and drive around in warehouses.

This episode had me giggling hysterically! Your confusion, coupled with one of the best Splitsie deaths in a while - perfection! I truly loved the break dancing forklift. I kind of don't want you to change it... Seriously though, take a look at Manny from your SI series, he worked real good and looked pretty neat too. Building something a little similar to him I think will work great.

Ahh, Splitsie doing the pistondance.. This rare dance has not been seen since survival unlikely when Capac first did it. :)

Spilts do us a favor, put all your best funny moments in a huge compliation, u made laugh so hard when ur FLT was going clang. Happy Eatern!

5 engineering suggestions: A For increasing the wheelbase of your flatbed truck, you could have split it down the middle and made the body wider (instead of just letting the wheels stick out of the body more). B For your groups of 2x2 magplates, I'd color code those with the buttons. C 36:08 You'll also want one of those colored light with short falloff at one end of that attachment hinge. It will be less important to be able to judge distances when connecting the trailer than when manipulating the crane arm, but it's an easy addition. D On the topic of connecting the hitch arm, I'd use the hinge on the flatbed's hood to push itself up from the crane truck (with the hinge on the back of the crane truck being the free pitch articulation). Using the hinge on the crane truck to lift the front of the flatbed could potentially lift the front of the crane segment into the air (you would loose traction on your steering wheels). You would probably need to keep the crane attached to the flatbed's hood when not in use (yes, it won't look as nice/realistic as keeping it on the crane truck when disconnected, but it will also stop looking nice if you flip it due to poor handling). [edit: The lifting action could also be done by replacing that hinge on the flatbed truck with a piston. It will be hard to get the angle that you were looking for, unless you use 1:2 slopes to your advantage, but it will stop the bounciness.] E Did you add a hotbar function to turn the friction of the steering wheels of the flatbed down to zero when connected, right? You don't want the flatbed to exert unexpected sideways forces when you go over a hump or when you load it up too much.

A bit of a different suggestion for the forklift: add a light to the FRONT of it so you can actually see the stuff you're trying to pick up at night.

I would also split those batteries on the forklift, put them flat in line, then reset the cockpit back on top. here in the states most of our forklift steer from the rear wheels and our front wheels are larger to accommodate the weight. You’re possibly at a point in your play through where you don’t need to take the crane truck out, you could just take what we call a Moffit and truck.

This series has inspired me to make a game. Thanks splitsie! (Also for the forklift if you ever pick up something too heavy lower the back suspension)

For the forklift; aside from obviously spacing the pistons a block or two apart, you're really going to want to try and get the centre of mass down as low as you can. Very tricky with two batteries, so I would just get rid of one and move the cockpit in it's place. It's not like this thing is going to be massively power hungry, or have to drive around for a great length of time. You can always just build a dedicated charging port to park it when not in use, so I can't see power being an issue. If you're dead set on the two batteries however; you could at least try having one battery remain where it is, detach the other and put a cockpit in it's place. Then weld the detached battery onto the back of the whole thing where the gyros currently are (they can be moved wherever.) That would get you a low centre of mass, and a little more counterweight in the back to help guard against tipping. The other alternative is just hanging the cockpit off to one side of the batteries as is. Either way, since you're obviously going to have to separate the pistons; I'd recommend putting some lights set to low radius between the hinges, to aid with reckoning the proximity in third person. Indeed it might be worth having proxy lights all around the vehicle given you're going to be using it at night a lot, and I suspect it'll be a while before the base's lighting in a state where that won't be a concern. Whether you want the thing to have an even or odd number of blocks widthways really depends on the design of your pallets (and visa-versa.) For the pallets themselves; I might be inclined to try blast door blocks for easier ground clearance, smaller collisions boxes, and tougher in case of accidents. Granted, that does make attaching the battery, mag locks, buttons etc a little tricky; but at the same time presents more compact options if you intend to merge block them onto a larger racking system, without said blocks sticking out away from the other surfaces. If you want to be really fancy you could place a green light on each side, controlled by an EC set to watch whether to cargo maglocks are locked or not. Just so you can tell at a glace which pallets are free and which have something attached. Not a bid deal if you're just going to store them on the ground, but useful if you want them on some kind of racking system. Finally; it can be a bit janky, but one thing I've done in the past is group together the wheels down one side, then put a toggle on the hotbar to reverse their direction, and another to disable steering for all four. That should give you the ability to (carefully!) spin in place, tank control style. Useful for getting into or out of tight spots. You'll probably have to fiddle with the wheel settings to get the power/friction balance right.

Silly idea, but having a rover race with the others could be fun collaborative event.

An entertaining, if unexpected 'Splatsie' moment, there! Enjoyed the gyro tilt control on the dearly ... well, nearly departed forklift - can't say I'm surprised that Lord C***g took an interest in proceedings when you tried to get the lift to full extension, but it was fun to watch. Seems that UfoL has got you covered for re-design suggestions - look forward to seeing how you implement those 👍 Your comment about the 'site office' and the base in general really resonated with me - that role-play element certainly impacts where I choose to site bases, as well as the build itself. I too, find myself getting more out of sandbox games like SE as a result. :)

I just built a scrap forklift 2 days ago in the scrapyard scenario. I must say it's one of the best experiences SE offered me so far, I'm having a lot of fun! So the forklift.. Used one centered large battery and hydrogen engine as counterweight and built the frame around these, also added O2H2gen with cargo on top of that for extra countering weight if I ever need it. The thing has long wheelbase which makes it stable enough to carry large grid batteries around. Also went with rotor instead of hinge at the end of the fork - so that I could displace and orient heavy blocks with a single vehicle. Oh and jack stands to attach the forklift to the ground while rotating heavy stuff work great.

Forklift steering on the "rear" wheels only so that when carrying a load, the pivot point of the steering is center mass, including the load.

I really like the maglifts that are in the Frostbite scenario; they fall into that sweet spot of being very functional but still have room for player improvement. They have a full-size connector on the back that can be loaded up with ballast and double as a charging connection. Their wheel base is also a bit longer. You might be able to get away with 1x1 wheels with such a short wheel base. That would make it less prone to tipping. It's not like you're going to be driving this thing across the desert. You just need to be able to get over the hump at the top of your ramps.

The forklift decided to pursue its dreams of becoming a breakdancer.

Okay, a nice comedy episode today, I feel, thank you: Firstly, was looking at the wind turbine in the background while you were unloading, trying to figure out why it wasn't spinning, what's wrong with it? Why doesn't it spin - the others do... (I think you might have got pranked.) For the truck hitch - how about putting a piston to extend/retract it, so it's not quite so in the way when you're not towing. Also, if you adjust it so it lays more flat, it probably won't get in the way of your third-person camera so much. Now the fork-lift - I don't know what type of lift that's supposed to be, it doesn't have a counter-balance, so it can't be one of them, maybe it's a Klang-Balance? I've found that two pistons pushing the same sub-grid can generate phantom forces if the sim-speed drops; one piston gets processed, the other doesn't. The crane probably has this problem but is heavy enough that you don't notice. Taking it down to a single piston on an odd-width base is probably your best bet, having the lifting 'forks' only being one hinge rather than two will also be safer. You could make a tilting-mast by putting the hinge on the bottom of the lifting pistons, but the weights might be an issue, meaning you may need a piston to help. Adding more weight to the back will also help - your Mannie from SI is a perfect example. I have started to make a counter-balance forklift in SE that I thought you could use - it's far too big for the warehouse, though. If you're interested, I'll put it on the workshop for you, it uses the PARK script, as that's just easier.

30:26, Paint the Magplates so it'd be easier to identify the Groups by looking at the bed. Match the buttons to the colour of the Magplates

Hey Splitsie! Great video! That rotor limit fiasco was amazing. I was thinking of an idea for the pallets, you could make them small grid, and put mag plates on the side of them, so you could use the forklift to raise them up to a particular height, and then lock them to the wall of the warehouse. That way you could "stack" the pallets. Then you could even put some shelves in the middle of the warehouse using vertical armor plates and then you could stack more pallets there too, as long as you leave room for your forklift to go in between!

Should consider using your plushies as hood ornaments or to decorate your living quarters.

@Splitsie nice job on the forklift 😂👍 (forklift mechanic myself for 22 years now.) though I would go for a lower frame with one battery (or both) on the back as counter weight. As most suggested I would split the pistons and maybe add a bridge bar on the first set of piston heads. As for tilting you could go for 2 options: 1. Lower or rise your back suspension. 2. Put a hinge between the forklift frame and mast (as option: pistons between frame an mast for tilting. Most forklift brands has the tilt pistons just above the front wheels. Though there is one brand that has the tilt pistons on the roof)

Hey there really big fan of this series. I might suggest for the forklift moving your cockpit forward between your batteries and lifter. Do a base level of light armour blocks. Gyros. Then cockpit to make it less top heavy. I’m not sure about the pistons I’ve never used them in that way before. I also have a suggestion for your new truck. You could potentially move your crane to the roof of the cab and convert your current crane into a cargo hauler. I’m really excited to watch you move and air craft hanger 😁😁

For the forklift splitsie. Set the batteries further back, so that they are mostly, if not wholly behind the rear wheels to allow it to be less flip happy and allow you to pick up heavier loads with it, widen the the wheel base a bit like you said to allow for either one piston or a bit more space. And depending on how you want it to handle you might want to consider locking the steering on the front wheels and increasing the turning angle in the rear to help it behave more like a forklift 😁

If you had one gyro set to a moderate power override you could probably make the whole forklift feel a lot more stable while being able to overpower it with the other two.

When I was tinkering with forklift/telehandler/skidsteer designs in my solo world before it got corrupted. I was looking at a large bunch of small grid, small cargo containers stuffed full of stone as one form of getting ballast to counter load weight. With small batteries to keep the size down because I wasn't planing on driving it all over the place so figured it didn't need lots of power storage.

Rotor piston hinge on front of flatbed, fixed block to rotor on towing truck. Extend piston to attach retract to lift front wheels Forklift: attach back wheels to pistons so you can extend and retract if needed.

More Splitsie on the Planet of Junk (Transformers reference there 😉)

Suggestions for forklift: - Make lifting pistons at leas 1 block apart - Put the batteries on the back of a forklift as an counterweight and as close to the ground as possible (you can also use cargo filled with gravel etc... and use only small batteries fro driving) - Fork should have an pivot point on the bottom allowing the forks to be tilted up and down, and from that point you should build lifting pistons as well as side ones if you want to move the cargo sideways like left/right. Forks lifting mechanism should looks like this: On the front bottom chassis of the vehicle, slap an hinge pointing forward and limit the hinge for example 5 degrees toward the ground and 10 degrees above the ground. Next, build some blocks from the hinge going few blocks above the hinge pivot, literally on top of the hinge and there you should slap 1 lifting piston pointing up ofc., from the piston, make some blocks going down again on the sides of a piston and then slap 2 more lifting pistons on each side of the first piston. Then you can bring some blocks back nearly at the ground and slap the fork (or mag plate). You can also slap some side pistons before the fork, to make it going left and right for couple of blocks just for fine side adjustments. - When making a fork (mag plate) make it that way for them to look as actual forks and slap the mag plate pointing upwards, it will allow you to lift the actual pallets when you build one, so the fork should fit below the standing pallet and mag plate it once you put the forks below the pallet, you can also use small connectors instead of mag plates, it will allows for pallet controls if you happens to spam an merge blocks to the pallets and it will allow you to merge the pallet while inside the cockpit of an forklift. - Like all of the real forklifts have rear wheel steering of nearly 90 degrees and SE doesn't have the option for that instead using the scripts, don't be afraid to use wider wheel base and 4 wheel steering at max angle for all wheels for steering. Just set the power of the wheels to be somewhat low to prevent flipping etc. Hope it helps somehow or give some ideas for the repair of the forklift :D Keep up great content and channel Splitsie

20:46 It wasn't turning when you bumped it. That wind turbine was never actually connected. It was just resting on the bottom piece. At 14:18 you can see it clearly not working as you approach the base.

Fond memories of Capac's shenanigans with a forklift trying to lift... Kermit the Hulk? Mike Wazowski? with maximum speed on the pistons, biting a chunk out of the big rover and destroying the medbay.

Frostbite had a good little forklift design. One is at the entrance of the mine where the first data container is and another one at the bottom of the mine where the other three data containers are. It used dual pistons that were merged together separated by one block in between. A little bigger than the one you designed, but it might spark some more creative ideas.

To avoid that thunking issue with the magplates & crane and to avoid issues with "magplating to the truck which then gains inertia and launches into space" - added all magplates to group with an autolock on/off and a switchlock for them all as well if so tempted. Also clearly an aussie. Driver's cockpit on the right hand side.

For your forklift when counterbalancing for lifting heavy objects. A lot of people forget there's the mass block. It can add mass to the back of your forklift and will only add mass when powered so it can be toggled on/off.

you could place numbers in between the mag-plates to mark them

I could watch this all day.

I think you should expand the theme of your scrapyard base. Build a fenced-in area with a stationary crane and functioning gate where you store all future military (aka drones) scraps and dangerous scraps you find. Adding a sign that says "Danger Zone: Military Scraps" with a smaller sign strapped beneath it that says "Beware of Capac".

Love this series❤

For forklift changes: I would replace the cockpit with a Helm, hanging on the back of batteries

For the forklift lay one battery flat with the cockpit on top the other on standing behind the first battery. That's actually pretty close to how real electric forklift are configured. I think i have a better way to do your hitch. There's a special vehicle called a hostler (sometimes yard dog) which lifts the front of semi trailers so you don't have to raise the landing. You could copy it with your normal hitch system, with a piston that pushes the whole hitch system up. Move the hinge part to the bumper of the truck. That way it will kinda look like a winch.

Whenever pistons are attached to hinges you want to try share inertial tensor on the pistons. It’s less likely to induce phantom forces that way.

For grinding batteries, grind and watch the control panel, It will turn from red to yellow just before the cells are ground.

You have to put a connector on the back of the forklift and one on the floor so you can lie down to sleep and charge.

For the forklift...maybe use the batteries in a lay down "L"(rotated anticlockwise) giving you a similar length and width but keeping the center of mass as low to the ground as possible and to the rear

I know youre mostly sticking with keepong things painted as you found them, but if at some point in the future you decide to change that, I think the flatbed would look great painted red with a white pinstripe on the cab. Great work as always!

You could change the colors of the mag plates on your flatbed so it’s easier to see which group is which. Also, a telehandler style of lift might suit your needs better.

@Splitsie You should change the slop blocks infront of the doors to a lesser slop it will help you in getting in without misshaps.

I like this new series. I haven’t played SE in a few years, mostly because it is too easy and I had a hard time coming up with something to do. It’s cool to see what new blocks they’ve added.

I'd love to see a future Space Engineers collaboration between you and one of my other favorite RU-vidrs (Beeblebum). I can only imagine the builds the two of you would come up with.

A helicopter tower rising above and attached to the side of the warehouse building would be awesome.

Maybe using a helm on the back of the fort lift would work better? Also, maybe a ramp on the end of the flatbed could be a worthwhile investment if you are ever thinking of moving vehicles on the truck?

Well thats my afternoon done.

A suggestion is to move the piston to the back of it with black gap and make it come over the cab and use more pistons for more control like the one on your main rover while keeping the compact factor

You could color code the buttons and mag plates on your truck/trailer so that it's a lot easier to tell which button goes to which plates.

Behold sparky, the breakdancing forklift.

If you're putting a gap between the two forklift pistons, then perhaps a spotlight of some sort between them on the batteries? Providing better lighting as you're zooming around.

An industrial controls mod would be cool. Something that adds like hydraulic lever styled buttons for the side of your truck and forklift.

53:30 It's soooooo cute. Reminds me of my first atmo miner 😆

I laughed pretty hard at the music when the WPF, or Weird Phantom Forces, were going on.

forklift suggestion: split the batteries with one layer of light plate. this gives you an odd width for a bit more wheelbase stability and allows single piston to not look weird. cockpit can be off-center and gyros can be up on top of batteries next to cockpit. hoping my suggestion helps, beyond that, loving the series! been going back to catch old series while i wait for new uploads. :)

For the magplates regrabbing. I put a locking and power switch next to each other. Once unlocked, turn off the plate and it doesn't regrab.

So sounds like you want to make a dynamic gooseneck trailer truck. I love it. It would be nice if they have a multidirectional pivot block. One that works like a ball hitch instead of having to use 3 different components. I think you might have better luck if you got rid of the pivot on the hood, mount a piston directly to the lower portion of the frame (almost the top of the bumper) to use to lift the front end up

You should build a small scissor lift vehicle for doing repairs and building on the base. Literally a basket with pistons on wheels, so you can sit in it and have it raise up - to weld things like the windmill towers and anything on the wall and roof of the warehouse.

I built a similar crane to yours and placed the offset spotlights on the 2x1 slope blocks just before the hand portion. Adjusting the radius and color of each would give you some great indicators.

i did a really effective forklift with 2 batteries and one truck cockpit in a row. Then i did attach two hinges as far back as possible on each side, pistons all the way to the front and merged them together, it is like a telescope handler that can reach to the ground and really high up.

keep up the good work

An editing tip: 20:46 That looked like a flashback cut back to a past event for a moment. I guess the change of weather/light/scene confused me. Maybe a few short cuts of you placing blocks in gradually changing weather/light conditions could have better conveyed that some amount of time passed in that cut.

On the Forklift, place the batteries behind the wheels in the same height and lower the cockpit to a normal level. and maybe have a gyro override always to account for the battery weight while you dont carry anything, and turn it off with a timer block or event controller (i dont remember if you have any) when you grab something that will then act as counterweight on its own. Also maybe push the rear wheels more on the back to account for the ramps in the Storage Building

And that's a good video!

Idea for the flatbed - what about having it steer with the back wheels so when it hooks up, the front wheels on the flatbed rotate or fold upward rather than lifting it. That way you don't need the extra sub grids in the way of the cockpit and you can just put on a normal trailer hitch.

For the forklift, use only 1 battery and lay it horizontaly instead and subsequently make it wider and with only one piston

I feel like Splitsie just reinvented the 3x3 mag plate

Regarding the forklift. I'd move the wheels to infront and behind the batteries and then move them up a block or two (depending on how much clearance is needed to get over the edge of the block in the door) because this isn't an offroad vehicle and you don't need that much clearance. If you want odd symmetrie instead of even, could also rotate the battery pack 90°

I think it's better to put the hinge on the bumper with horizontal movement, this way you can also eliminate the rotor and keep only the vertical hinge to lift the truck.

The RBLF notes you can Never have too many batteries. Especially Glorious Red Batteries… So of course the heathen Splitsie colours his newest battery Rusty Blue….. May a thousand MDK Robots singing Fun Music infest your dreams!! 😂

58:29, Longer is better than taller.Putting the cockpit in front of the batteries and the Pistons in front of the Cockpit was the right idea. Also, maybe increase the Friction of the wheels and reduce the Speed. Real Forklifts aren't supposed to go beyond 10MPH (16 KMH)

I really love this series. That Mag Plate setup you've got, you should of put two buttons, 1 for Switch Lock and 1 for Enable/Disable Auto Lock, since Auto Lock would be useful when placing stuff.

forklift needs more clang and more subgrids with rotor wheels and hinge steering

mass blocks on the back connected to a piston that you can extend to move the center of gravity back, you need something to keep your front end wanting to flip over, a real forklift, you have the propane, engine, etc in the back to give it that counterbalance when picking stuff up.

More of this series, prease and thank rou.

I recently started my foray into hacking batteries. I did the first three flawlessly! My ego was hugely inflated. 30+ more batteries later….. mostly failures. Ego is back where it belongs

If you only use one battery, you could put it and the cockpit side-by-side to make the forklift not so tall, and then you could add some armour on the other side of the battery to both prevent you from breaking it again, and to make the vehicle an odd width!

One thing I found useful on light enough wheeled stuff is setting friction to 0 to 10% and using the gyros to turn in place. Can spin in place, tend to use arrow keys for finer gyro control.

Keep looking at my kid watching minecraft videos and thinking "Why?" and a while later i get the notification that a new video for this is up and i'm right on it... The irony is not lost 😂

Hi Splitsie, I think for the forklift you should rather go for a "variable reach stacker" design than for a normal forklift. You could even use 3 pistons in a row to gain more reach... So put the 2 batteries flat and behind each other - they should go below the hinge-mounted horizontal piston line... It's hard to explain what I mean, but maybe you can google for some pictures of a "variable reach stacker" to get the idea...

My suggestion for the FLT - I would add heavy armour blocks instead of light, even without the grids, they are still heavier and so will help to stabilize the vehicle. I would also add the heavy armour blocks around the top of the wheels, this will help to protect the batteries and lower the centre of mass. Extend the vehicle by 1 block to the rear, and move the rear wheels back 1 block, again for stability. Lower the height offset of the wheels so you have clearance, but not too much clearance. I like your "forks" tho, better than my idea a few episodes ago, I would have used the small batteries for the forklift instead of the large ones, as 1, you wanted to keep it small, 2, it would help to keep the centre of mass lower, 3, would have enabled you to have a flat base in which to add a cockpit, fork mast, gyros, I would have built it like this start off with a 4x4x1 small heavy armour, just use the steel plates to make them look complete. then add the wheels to the outside edge, this would make the base 4x6x1. add another line of heavy armour blocks to the front and back enclosing the wheels into the base. You now have 4x8x1 base to add onto the top of for the parts. Start at the front, and add 1 piston to either of the centre blocks, the small piston is strong enough to lift an entire vehicle, so 2 pistons is never going to be needed. Behind the piston you add the smaller cockpit, this will leave you a 1 block gap to the sides of the cockpit, and behind the cockpit add 2x2 small batteries, behind the batteries you add your gyros. add a layer of heavy armour to the sides of the cockpit batteries and gyros and add a layer of heavy armour above the batteries and gyros. This will add more weight to the rear and keep the centre of mass low. Add a small connector to the rear somewhere that makes sense and looks good and then build the fork mast the same as you did before, but this time only 1 block wide. And then you are done. should have enough pawer to last 20 minutes or so and then will need charging, but with the power you make, that wont take very long.

i would say, one battery. flip it behind the cockpit. really need to lower the center of gravity. lengthen the wheelbase. regarding phantom forces, no idea. you're the expert in that arena.

you should colour the magnetic plates differently for each group, e.g. alternate between darker and lighter yellows for groups next to each other, so that it is easier to see which plates are in the same group