Ah, but tracks. They have always been a problem. They were only included in the sets I could never convince people to buy me as a kid (the largest set I was gifted with was 6984 Galactic Mediator) ... I once tried to stretch a thin tire over two small wheel axles... that didn't turn out well. But dammit, now I WANT to build a Lego Panzer V. I also could make a good 20mm Vulcan cannon out of long rods and several thin pulleys. Properly adapted it could mate to the small motor and even turn!

The Crystal Reaper even has some other Technic pieces - pins, gears, liftarms and even old-style studded beams, plus oddities like the three-axle bush. It's got a lot of spacey pieces as well, but it's surprisingly close to being a Mislabeled Technic Parts Pack. If you can get it for 20% off or something, do not hesitate.

(I've given tread-link shopping its own post, now. You can get links and drive wheels surprisingly cheaply on BrickLink!)

I think I'll use a yellow one :-).

Something like this is a step in the right direction, combining the strength of both Technic paradigms.

I agree with #2, there is definitely still a place for the studded Technic beams. The current system is great for specialized things like this, but I think it'd be much more difficult for a kid to come up with a functional creation of his/her own. And of course, a mixed Technic/solid model with parts like this is very difficult to achieve. Like the pneumatic/linear actuator situation, I think there's an important place for both, and I hope there are future Technic kits that are studded-beam-focused.

Although I do miss the old studded brick. It made some things easier due to the fact that you could just stack them, plus it was easier to visualize what you were building.

Now if I could just lay my hands on a radio control box and a wireless webcam with decent bandwidth, so I could make my telepresent crawler bot idea work

:D