Crawler | |
---|---|
Wonder in Beyond Earth | |
Cost | 1250 |
Maintenance | None |
Requires | 5 Floatstone Mechatronics |
Specialist slots | None |
Effect | +5 Diplomatic Capital |
Notes | +25% Production for Buildings and Wonders in this City. |
The Crawler is a land only wonder. It will permanently tie up 5 Floatstone resources.
Quote[]
"John Henry smiled at the Crawler and he said: 'Sure, you can move a lot of dirt, but let's see who gets to the Mohorovicic discontinuity first.' And he picked up his shovel and waited for the starting gun." - The Uncle Nevercloned Stories
History[]
The rich mineral wealth of the new planets allowed engineers to attempt construction of a scale that would have been unthinkable pre-Earth, and it is this titanic scale of construction that best defines the optimism of that age. But even in an age of renewed interest in heroic infrastructure, few engineering works command the awe and respect that the Crawler evoke.
The Crawler was a tool for building, yes, but its brilliance was that it was a tool that could re-make itself for any given engineering task at hand. The Chassis-Platform that formed the heart of the Crawler housed super-efficient metallurgical furnaces, heavy robotic machining shops, triaxial precision tooling works, and the crew quarters. The superstructure was festooned with gantries, platforms, booms, cranes, excavators, and drilling rigs, most of which were built within the Crawler itself. Watching a timelapse holo of the Crawler in action evokes the feeling of seeing a great beast grazing on the planet itself, growing and retracting massive spines and plates of steel from its duralumin carapace.
The projects undertaken by the Crawler and its list of records are most impressive. The Crawler laid the foundation for the Xenomalleum, bored the deepest and most efficient geothermal wells (many of which are still in operation today), and laid the Camino Paracoastal by itself in under a year. It marched to the front lines during the Toshe Station War to turn out cavalry units which were sent to a combat front less than six clicks away. Crews reported that they could still feel the forge heat in the metal as they drove into combat.
We know much of the history of the Crawler because its datalogs were preserved with incredible care by the engineers who worked on it through its history. Consequently, Crawler-dating has become a method whereby simply seeing the Crawler in a given configuration in the background of a still or video file is enough to corroborate the date of the events depicted.
The Crawler's last act was to disassemble itself for recycling. The Gupta-Harrison Medal of the Guild of Engineers for exceptional contribution to humanity is struck from sections of a tungsten carbide strut that formed part of the Chassis-Platform, as a reminder to the Engineer of the great accomplishments of his craft.
Images[]
Civilization: Beyond Earth Wonders |
---|
Wonders |
Abyssal Mirror • Ansible • Archimedes Lever • Armasail • Benthic Auger • Bytegeist • Crawler • Cynosure • Daedalus Ladder • Deep Memory • Drone Sphere • Ectogenesis Pod • Euphotic Strand • Faraday Gyre • Gene Vault • Guo Pu Yaolan • Holon Chamber • Human Hive • Markov Eclipse • Mass Driver • Master Control • Memetwork • Nanothermite • New Terran Myth • Panopticon • Precog Project • Promethean • Quantum Computer • Resurrection Device • Stellar Codex • Tectonic Anvil • The Akkorokamui • Xenodrome • Xenomalleum • Xenonova |
National Wonders |
Projects |
Emancipation Gate • Exodus Gate • Mind Flower • Transcendental Equation • Decode Signal • Beacon |
Artifact Wonders |
Tessellation Foundry • Machine-Assisted Free Will • Dimension Folding Complex • Quantum Politics • Temporal Calculus • Relativistic Data Bank |
|