Auto-drive speed hickups - why?

I’ve asked about this on reddit group, but so far nobody was able to provide solution or answer, I’m going to try my luck on Discourse:

“When I’m autodriving in a heavily-loaded humvee, the speed constantly jumps from 19km\h to 6km\h, mostly trying to stay at 6km\h. Why isn’t speed kept constant? Is it because of fuel consumption going up at 19km\h ? Happens even on the roads with no obstacles. Any way to make it stop stuttering?
note: playing exeperimental”

Additional info: Happens during daylight or night time. Visibility out of the car is good - unmodified Humvee. On clear road or grass/offroad, with or without obstacles, with or without monster or animals or fungals near the car or visibility radius. Sometimes the speed is kept at 19km/h as intended, even with monsters and obstacles, but sometimes it oscillates constantly from 6 to 19. Does not matter if there are bends in the road or if it’s a straight stretch. Happens with driving skill of any level - from 0 to 7.
Not asking to fix it, just want to know why this happens. Been happening for at least past 2-3 months of experimental releases, probably longer.

P.S. This ‘new’ version of Auto-drive is Really-Really good, despite hickups, Big thank you for whoever created it!

It’s been a thing for a while.

I am not sure if it has to do with the acceleration speed not being “high enough” to go from 6 to 19 in one tick. I know that happens when the vehicle is too heavy, the engine is not || or if the “offroad %” is too low.

The “fuel consumption” doesn’t go up that much between constant 6 and constant 19 (usually less than 0.1% regardless). The “major” consumption happens when the vehicle is trying to reach the target speed but isn’t there yet, for example:

Say you want to travel at 24 but your vehicle is only at 6, and its acceleration rate is 6 per “turn”, meaning that until it reaches the target speed (24), it will take 3 turns to go from 6 to 24. During those three turns, the fuel consumption will be something like (for example) 10 or 20% per hour, but it stabilizes once you reach the target speed (back to 0.1 or 0.2%).

The “hickups” actually make it so that you waste a TON more fuel than you normally would, and the game seems to struggle (for whatever reason) when it is forced to do a right or left turn or a diagonal drive, going from 19 to 6 until there’s a straight line for it to pick up the speed again.

My suggestion for that is that you only use auto-drive in straight lines, do the turns yourself and then ensure that your vehicle is back at the 19 mark before you re-use the feature. If you are going through rough terrain (grass/empty fields) you may need to do this more frequently.

I’d also suggest to ensure you have a stupid amount of wheels on your vehicle for better handling and locomotion.
Because as we all know: if your 5 tile wide 7 tile long car has 30 static wheels and 2 steerable wheels, it can climb mountains at max speed! /s

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