Both are good ;)

@Massacror why thank you. I assume you are talking about the small grid version?
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1684137476

OMG i found your crane ! she is cute =D

Thanks for the offer. I'll bare that in mind!

So Piston raids eh?! That's got to be the best reason I've ever heard for raiding someone in a video game... I mean it's an actual real life reason & not just "Oh, he's blue - we don't like blues!" That's pretty cool!

I see a franchising opportunity there... PistonBusters! You'd turn up, sirens blaring at someones base in a spaceship that looked like Ecto 1; and 4 of you jump out & shoot at the offending piston with modded plasma weapons, then stuff the remains in a small container & cart it away for disposal in your piston containment unit! Your LCD logo splash would be a "No pistons allowed" sign of course! Oh man - I would pay to see a well made video of that!

Turns out I was premature in getting excited for the update. I've spent all of today thinking it was Thursday when it's still only Wednesday!

Yeah, totally true. Been in many servers where someone goes crazy with pistons...many of raids I've done just to get rid of people's pistons so I can play lag free!!!
Well, besides your bad connection, my server, "Karmana Sector" is always open to you to play.
I can pass along IP info as well.
Good luck building, I'm going to try some wrecking work with this crane the next couple days. I even thought about making a tow truck with the wheel lift platforms.

I have quite a bit of work re doing a few of my respawn ships for the new update. I'm going to go crazy and suprise my players with the earth planet at 500km diameter..don't know what will happen but should be interesting!

In fact I may make this my first large vehicle build in a new survival world. I always end up wanting a mobile crane early on & this will be ideal!

Yeah, Rotors & Pistons have always been like that with servers. Heaps of calculations going on with them normally but keeping all that synced to multiple clients on different continents must be a royal nightmare! One person with a poor connection builds something with a rotor & everyone chokes.
I think some servers ban them outright just because they're known to lag everyone out.
My connection is abysmal, hence I couldn't play MP even if I wanted to - let alone in a server. I'd probably get lynched just for pinging at one!

Have yet to test it for myself. Kind of got distracted. Sorry about that! As soon as todays update downloads though, I'm diving into SE head first, so will be sure to give it a good playing with!

Both with and without outriggers*

We recently tested on my multiplayer server. Had the usual warnings due to the numerous rotors and pistons (as well as graphic issues) but it performed well. Both with and without grids. Still going to do more testing.
I've noticed that too many rotors or pistons lag the server considerably. We had about 16 rotors within 4km radius and the game wouldn't paste subgrids of blueprints or show modded blocks in g menu. Very weird. But only within like 5km or so.

Changed the pistons, added some more apperance blocks, will do more for the swing arm. Spent some time to add an arm to my contractor truck. Seems to be ok.

Nice! The pistons look really strong in that shot. I would've expected them to be bending under the weight.

With the current outriggers it's done pretty good, I posted a picture in my screenshots of this one lifting another one of it's earlier versions. The thought of a using just using one did cross my mind. I'd love to keep the balance factor...but it does get crazy, I'll have to have some friends give it a whirl.

Yeah, locking stuff like this to the voxel while it's lifting things is pretty much a must, since it can just as easily tip forward / backward as sideways & you'd otherwise need a set of stabilisers / outriggers on every side.
If you wanted to keep the looks clean & not have ugly landing gear visible for the feet, you could always put one in the centre & have "false" stabilisers on the corners just for looks - or maybe even do a cool bit of multi-gridding for the stabilisers & use small grid landing gear. Wouldn't be as strong of course but might be good enough.

Syncing the hook rotation with the lift could be fun, since you've got a piston powering the lift instead of a rotor. Bit of trial & error and you'll get there though. The alternative might be some kind of twin-boom cantilever type thing, though god only knows how that'd behave with pistons as the arms! Could make for a good weapon! Hehe!

Ah yes ! I forgot about those. Yeah. Still need to rename a few things and adjust the "hook". It's pretty wobbly, I want to try and set it to turn with the lift. Was going to try and piston/landing gear timing for the outriggers, that way it would be so solid it won't tip.

I see what you're going for there! Reminds me of the old Broderson they had where I used to work. 20+ years old & those things still sell for the best part of £100k! So useful though. Wish I had a spare 100k - I'd buy myself a late xmas present!

Will give it a play with later today & see how it does.