Origin: Clankerbots

[openly-retro]

Description

This Mechanical empire is ... primitive. Just barely made it to the stars with their heavy chemical rockets and alarming lack of real space-age advancements. With poor technology, unable to utilize the concepts of shields or beam weapons, these heavy-duty flying piles of alloy do a few things extremely well: Cannons, rockets, and heavy armor. To any enemies, they are sure to be a mechanical menace, but for sufficiently advanced empires, these potentially fearsome Clankerbots may be little but surplus building materials. How will this research-deficient brute-force Clanker-society reach 'escape velocity' and avoid redundancy?

Ideas dump area

Armored Worlds AP: virtually impossible to destroy via bombardment. planet crackers dont work, most colossus weapons dont, except for nanothingy. not even deluge. it just becomes a flooded armored world. planet cannot be bombed to pieces. on "destruction" it becomes a "hollow armored world" which cannot be inhabited until it is terraformed. it can be re-colonized by Clankers
Mega fresnel / Solar Obliterator: Cook worlds with solar power until they're molten
Fusebreaker colossus: hideously effective against Machine worlds and auto-machine worlds. planet generates huge amts of energy ... then bam
War Ring: military version of orbital ring, bristling with guns
scavenger raiding stance, which steals resources from the target empire. on planet destruction it creates debris fields that can be scavenged for resources and tech. planet is converted to tomb world/cracked