Can’t escape from a damn thing on a bike. Problems in simulation include ridiculously slow acceleration and massive stamina drain. A reasonably fit individual can ride several hours at once. Neither should it take more than a few turns (literally, turns of the foot crank) to get up to speed. Stamina drain should be in the acceleration - cruising at a constant speed takes relatively little effort. Why does it take a minute or more for my character to accelerate through an intersection?
So a reasonably fit person riding a homemade bike laden with 2x his bodyweight in loot should be able to ride a bike over uneven terrain safely for hours; even with quick turning and accerations/decelerations? May I ask what the cruising speed of the average irl biker is, and the bike’s total weight?
I should qualify this by saying I havent used foot cranks since stamina made the scene
It may be worth buffing those. I usually don’t bother with bikes due to how expensive (in food) is it to maintain one and how low is their acceleration.
They should keep their low safe and max speed, but their acceleration should be high enough to make them reach safe speed in 3 turns or so.
pisskop has a good point though, there’s a big difference between acceleration of an unloaded road bike and the overloaded monstrosity of gear a typical survivor is wearing, not to mention if the bike has cargo space of its own. There is definitely a point where a laden cargo bike is not going to be able to outrun a zombie.
That having been said, we need a repeatable example of what you think is a problem, if it’s, “I’m hardly carrying anything and can’t outrun a zombie when I’m riding a bike”, that’s a problem, but if it’s, “I’m carrying 300lbs of gear and can’t outrun a zombie when I’m on a bike”, that’s just fine.
Pertinent parts are size of bike (if it’s an unmodified standard type just give that info), the amount of weight the bike is carrying, character strength, total character inventory weight, and rough numbers on acceleration.
I’m pretty sure our vehicles don’t properly add passenger’s inventory weight yet:
if (part_flag(i,VPFLAG_BOARDABLE) && parts[i].has_flag(vehicle_part::passenger_flag)) {
m += 81500; // TODO: get real weight
}
That magical constant there is the weight of a medium creature with no weight modifiers (ie. made of flesh).
Adding gear weight here wouldn’t be hard, although it could get slow if not cached.
As for a typical use case:
[ul][li]Start game with 10/10/10/10 “just above average” dude[/li]
[li]Strip down to bare minimum of clothing (currently naked works just fine)[/li]
[li]Spawn the default bicycle[/li]
[li]Note the current time (spawning a pocket watch helps here)[/li]
[li]Accelerate to 2 tiles/turn. I think this translates to 32 km/h[/li]
[li]Note the current time[/li][/ul]
Now we have a value to compare with real life one.
But then, the value of vehicle speed doesn’t mesh well with running speed: 32 km/h is the running speed of an unencumbered survivor. This is closer to an average person sprinting than just-above-jog we’d expect the survivor to keep up for more than a minute.
[quote=“pisskop, post:2, topic:11243”]So a reasonably fit person riding a homemade bike laden with 2x his bodyweight in loot should be able to ride a bike over uneven terrain safely for hours; even with quick turning and accerations/decelerations? May I ask what the cruising speed of the average irl biker is, and the bike’s total weight?
I should qualify this by saying I havent used foot cranks since stamina made the scene[/quote]
That is not at all the situation I described. That is called a strawman argument.
That said, towing a trailer full of camping crap on a paved road on flat land, I have sustained speeds above 40km/h for a prolonged duration, even on a single-speed roadbike. Inertia helps tremendously with this. With a shifter and a loaded messenger bag, a courier can outpace city traffic. Mind you, that is city traffic. Within a ~5km, I have beaten cars traveling to the same location.
I don’t think that strength has much to do with it either. I’m not well-built. Fit, maybe, but certainly not strong.
20 turns, BTW, to get up to the “unsafe speed” of 32km/h, and stamina is already at |||. 10/10/10/10 survivor, fresh out of EVAC. 21 torso enc., 5 leg.
A strawman arguement is making it into someting easily attackable. Im not attacking you. But youre atteacking me.
You said that stamina drain is too heavy. Im pointing out that this inst ideal conditions and even your level of encumbrance on you body would affect your ablity.
So are we to assume that in every scenario the player is loaded with gear? Terrain penalties for vehicles are already a thing I believe, now a way to check for player weight would allow realistic bicycle use while not changing the vehicle itself and expanding tot other vehicles.
Just adding this to the mix…
[quote=“pisskop, post:7, topic:11243”]A strawman arguement is making it into someting easily attackable. Im not attacking you. But youre atteacking me.
You said that stamina drain is too heavy. Im pointing out that this inst ideal conditions and even your level of encumbrance on you body would affect your ablity.[/quote]
But ! Look ! Even in “ideal” conditions the simulation fails. Further, I have pointed to a real-life example where my situation was roughly equivalent to that of our fictional post-apocalyptic hero. 300lbs of stuff? No. But certainly more than an average commuter haul.
Its a process, and when we talk like this it gets bugfixed.
I dont mean to offend if I have. If I ever got 2 bike wheels together before endgame Id use folding bikes more often
Ah, well, gave me impetus to do that basic testing, anyway.
I’d just like to add, that it seems to be way to dependent on the Strength value. With the Hydraulic Muscles augmentation I can reach speeds of 114 km/h easy.
I know that costs power, but I get the feeling that shouldn’t be do-able with a bike.
Either way, (with or without Hydraulic Muscles), it seems that we are missing momentum, or that momentum is lost way to quickly. Also, current momentum isn’t accounted for when you try to maintain a specific speed. I see this more as a quirk of bicycles being vehicles that operate similarly to gas powered and electric motorcycles. It’s more like stamina is the same as fuel, and then your alertness level is taken after that.
Like if you bike for an hour or so, you go from being awake with no indicator, to being dead tired. But don’t worry. You can somehow magically fix that by drinking coffee. = /
My latest survivor found a bike on day 4/5. Proceeded to ride it back (or rather, drag it back due to the rapid stamina drain). I think I actually biked for half an hour or slightly less before giving up due to stamina getting very low. Acceleration is also very slow - accelerating to 16 km/h took four turns.
As a fairly fresh survivor, she was not loaded with stuff and the bike was the pregenned one, with the basket empty.
Str 7 (I think our “average” stat is 8)
Only thing I’ll add to this discussion at the moment is that we need to additionally ensure that the player can’t outrun a zombie while burdened down to the same extent.
Or to highlight it from the correct direction, if a player is strong enough to carry a shitton of material and still outrun a zombie, they shouldn’t suddenly become a snail upon trying to bike away.
Maybe we should make biking take into account the current sprint status of the operator? So if you’re set to walk, you accelerate at roughly what the speeds are as the game is currently, but use only as much stamina as it takes to walk normally (so riding the bike is essentially as easy going as walking with how the game currently uses speeds), but when sprinting, makes the bike accelerations and speeds significantly faster, but eats away at your stamina just as fast? Maybe also have stamina be a function in how much you can accelerate the bike overall, as well (though, less debuffing than normal running per stamina level, perhaps).
i remember when i had bike with 3 full cargo carriers and i was still able to maintain 30 km/h, this was so op
Remember that time I biked across the country towing my support vehicle? 
Well, for reference, carrying ~5kg in backpack + ~3-4kg in clothing + ~20kg bicycle + ~70kg myself, i usually outpace city traffic (my speeds being around 20-30 km/h and much lower in steep grads) with a ‘mountain bike’ (with shifter). I could carry another ~5kg without problems, but beyond this i’d be straining myself in prolonged cycling. Of note is also that my city is not flat and i frequently have to cycle up/down gradients of 10-25 (even 45 at some places, :’( )
Now, i’m certainly not strong or large (only 1.68cm tall) and my fitness level is mediocre…
How about setting a total weight level as a benchmark?
Under this level, stamina drain is minimal for maintaining speeds under 30km/h. Beyond this, it is derived as a function of strength, driving skill (bike skill implied) and weight carried. Acceleration should always cost more than just speed maintaining.
PS. I too haven’t used bicycles recently within cata. I hate the fact that i always calculate wrong and fall down + shopping carts are more convenient as i take them everywhere with me.
There’s another angle here where it doesn’t matter how strong you are, you can’t safely ride the two wheeled monstrosity you welded together at 115km/h.