[quote=@Senor Herp]
It's funny you should mention long-lost precursors, actually. One of the four systems controlled by the saurian client state was going to have significant though mostly technologically devoid archaeological findings in the same style as older findings on the capital death world, raising forced evolution theories and all. Sort of hard to get natural radioactive heavy worlders otherwise. Might it be the very same ones between the Sarmakth and the Claw, maybe? Considering their completely inverted views on humanity- the Sarmakth despise them, while the Claw are fascinated by their peculiar hidden vitality, have copied the Arcturan court model and melded human ideas of valor through service above the call of duty and their own martial ideas to create a cult of suicidal heroism- it'd make for an interesting foundation for confrontation and dialogue. Further, as one of the Captain's brainchildren, the Claw have a two man vertically-stretched disc or spinning top type hexapod walker as a trench cleaning vehicle, which they might have themselves made as a rationalized derivation of the Precursor tripod in the same fashion as the Martian reproduction.
[/quote]Martian Tripods are made out of both ideological and practical reasons. The basic idea is to have a giant version of their "god" or at least their legendary precursors while the tripod-like movement was also simpler to accomplish than the way the Sarmaktsh travel while it's still familiar enough for the pilots to control well. It goes without saying that the Sarmakth never invented wheel and they refuse use such thing for propulsion or even as mechanical aid (ie: cogwheels).

And yeah, a potential clash between the two could be fun.