Cyclopes Auton

People sometimes ask why we named the series 'Cyclopes', and it's really simple. It only takes a remedial level of mythology studies and looking at one. Being almost twice the size of the average person, they are giants. Being simply made, they didn't have faces, they just had a big optic sensor in the middle of their head. Cyclops, and then the manufacturers made that the thing's name. They defaulted to the plural form of cyclops, since the plural form is a relatively obscure word.

Without the cyclopes, the first arcologies would have never been built, and the the megacities wouldn't have survived the second dark age.

Appearance

The Cyclopes Auton is the largest regular production auton built. There are certainly a handful of larger models, but those were specialty built, or were built for record holding purposes. The Cyclopes is a large and heavy industrial and construction machine. It is humanoid, with two arms, and two legs, and a large barrel shaped torso. The limbs and joints are especially robust, and an the chassis of the robot is reinforced to almost ridiculous levels.

Cyclopes? They were built out of scrap metal and trash, the girders of ruined buildings and the hulls of busted ships. Okay so that's an exaggeration, but still, they are made out of really big chunks of metal. They grind, they make weird noses, and they can smoke when they get to running too hard. If they weren't cheap, we would have dumped them all decades ago.

Deadlift, Lockjaw, Loader, Ripley's power loader. Faceplate has a single multi-lense oculus, hence the name, Cyclops

Origins

The Cyclopes was engineered and built in the Great Lakes Republic, where it was originally intended to be a piece of military hardware. Larger and stronger than a power armor suit, it was expected that cyclopes would serve as heavy mobile support for the mobile teams. The auton failed in this roll, being a massive target, and relatively slow. Most military cyclopes were either destroyed in service, or were retired and sent to scrap. The Cyclopes remained a groundbreaking application of technology, as it would eventually spearhead into successful large scale mecha projects, the creation of the avatar oversized power armor suit, and improvements in combat cortices, power armor manufacture, and anti-suit warfare.

The Cosmic Era was built on the backs of cyclopes and hardsuits. With the economic weakness and population contraction of the Second Dark Age, labor intensive things like construction, mining, industrial applications and security jobs were increasingly handled by machines. The cyclopes was quickly changed from military use to fill in this vacant market.

Force Multiplier

The Cyclopes auton is a prime example of a force multiplier. A single cyclops can do the same amount of work as half a dozen or more smaller construction autons, or the same amount of menial work as several men working in hardsuits. This comes with the advantage of being expendable, requiring fewer charging stations, and requiring less droid drovers to keep the autons on task. On a major job site like an arcology being constructed, a construction cruiser will handle the major lifting (components weighing over 100 tons or more) while construction mecha handle the smaller pieces. The cyclopes assist the mecha with finer control that some of the giant machines can manage, and in turn themselves are assisted and guided by hardsuit builders and smaller conventional construction autons.

Cyclopes also have a place in underground operations, since it is usually impractical to try and use mecha underground. They are typically the biggest ambulatory machines in a geofront, if they are present after the excavations are complete. In space the cyclopes are also used for other industrial purposes, such as mining operations, the routine operation of factories and refineries, and operating as heavy labor on industrial ships like the large ships that consume asteroids and turn them into usable raw materials.