Car wont drive

I updated my game a few times since i last drove my car and did some upgrading to it and now when i tried to drive the car it drives perfectly the first time i use it but the second time i try to drive it the game wont let it accelerate. Was there a patch that would have made it do that?
I have removed engines, controls, wheels, reactor, welding rig, foodco, kitchen unit and a bunch of other stuff in testing it and nothing has seemed to help. Is there a way to quickly remake a car using debug menu so i dont have to fully disassemble to just re-assemble it?

One thing that comes to mind: Gasoline/Diesel. You never stated what kind of engine you’re using, but you might be simply out of gas.

Another possibility is that your batteries aren’t full enough. A car needs a certain percentage of power inside the batteries, which seems to depend on the Engine used. I believe I saw reports of 2 5% car batteries not being enough to start a car, so I recommend at least 15% ; could be even more, as I said, seems to depend on the Engine in use.

If you want to have a new car, there are several options:

a) You could spawn one. The debug menu has the option to spawn >any< vehicle from the jsons, from small unicycles to trucks. (and all the modded stuff too.). Those cars also have full gas and power, as far as I remember.

b) Build a new one: For that, you preferably mutate you first - theres an option in the debug menu for that. search for ‘debug’ and you find several mutations which will negate hunger/thirst, smell, you can be invisible, and there is one which lets you build stuff without the need for tools or ingredients - so you can build whatever you want.
If you don’t want to be indestructible while building, just use the spawn-menu and spawn the parts you need and start building.

I am using enhanced electric engine and it has full charge. It allows me to drive it one time but after that it bugs out. I know about those options in the debug menu but was hoping there was something like a clone vehicle option in there because sorting the loot again is a pain. I backed up that save last night and started rebuilding the car but the process is annoying even with the debug mutations.

I have the original save from before i started messing with the car if anyone has any ideas on how to fix it

If i let go of the controls i believe i was able to come back and drive it but if i turned it off it wouldn’t work. I debugged in regular electric and gas vehicles and they worked fine so it was something with my vehicle in particular. I did not go and find an already spawned working vehicle to test out if those would work properly or not.

If you can start the car but you can’t accelerate it then maybe your car is overloaded, too heavy.
If you can’t start the car, is there any message why it is not started?

The car is only about 8400 lbs with the loot in it so an enhanced electric engine can move it pretty easily. It is starting up but wont accelerate. Hitting forward will not change the speed it is trying to reach at all it will just stay at 0. I will post my save once i get back home so if someone wants to try and figure it out they can.

The fact that it will start and run properly one time and then it fails makes no sense to me. It is not an issue with just the equiped engine because i have swapped to a different electric engine and it still fails. I have not tried swapping to a gas engine yet but i will be trying that when i get back.

Here is a link to my save if anyone would want to take a look at it to be able to reproduce the error and not rely on my less than ideal description of it. http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=93284779159604826404

Using this version of the game
0.C-20471-gb21f607 (tiles)

Okay i just figured out how to fix the issue that i am having with the car. I had an empty aisle going up the middle of the vehicle to pull my shopping cart in to unload the stuff easier and it doesnt seem to like that being there for some reason.

Did it think you had insufficient wheels?
Long gaps can have issues that way, I’d probably slap some more wheels on it if you really want said empty aisle.

I tried adding more wheels on it and it didnt work
I also spawned in a rv or two and cut out the middle of them going like 3-4 spaces in and it would make it so they didnt work. Once i mostly fill in the aisle in the center my vehicle will then run properly. I tried this on both my original vehicle and my replica i had built of it and it has been consistent throughout all testing i did. Maybe there is something that my vehicle and both types of rvs have in common that is different from your vehicle.

If a vehicle doesnt have enough wheels the engine would still be able to start which isnt happeneing in this case. You can download the save and test it for yourself if you would like.

[quote=“gakm4, post:9, topic:13241”]I tried adding more wheels on it and it didnt work
I also spawned in a rv or two and cut out the middle of them going like 3-4 spaces in and it would make it so they didnt work. Once i mostly fill in the aisle in the center my vehicle will then run properly. I tried this on both my original vehicle and my replica i had built of it and it has been consistent throughout all testing i did. Maybe there is something that my vehicle and both types of rvs have in common that is different from your vehicle.

If a vehicle doesnt have enough wheels the engine would still be able to start which isnt happeneing in this case. You can download the save and test it for yourself if you would like.[/quote]
That’s kind of interesting, I’ll probably do some tests and see how that goes.

So as far as I can tell, you have to almost completely bisect a vehicle before this issue shows up, it’s related to the ratio of length to width to an extent, some vehicles can be attached by only a single square at the front, but longer vehicles need a bit more connection.

To reproduce vehicles refusing to even try to start their engines I had to cut such a large line into them that I imagine moving is guaranteed to split it in half, so I can’t really call this a bug or anything.

Trying this on an RV, I cut 6 squares into it and it still started up fine, (another square and I’d be taking out the engine).
An ice cream truck works even with only a single square attached.
A SWAT truck works with 2 squares attached, but stopped working with only one.

Seems fine to me, maybe there’s an issue with the version you’re using (I’m using a relatively recent experimental).

[quote=“Weyrling, post:11, topic:13241”]So as far as I can tell, you have to almost completely bisect a vehicle before this issue shows up, it’s related to the ratio of length to width to an extent, some vehicles can be attached by only a single square at the front, but longer vehicles need a bit more connection.

To reproduce vehicles refusing to even try to start their engines I had to cut such a large line into them that I imagine moving is guaranteed to split it in half, so I can’t really call this a bug or anything.

Trying this on an RV, I cut 6 squares into it and it still started up fine, (another square and I’d be taking out the engine).
An ice cream truck works even with only a single square attached.
A SWAT truck works with 2 squares attached, but stopped working with only one.

Seems fine to me, maybe there’s an issue with the version you’re using (I’m using a relatively recent experimental).[/quote]

My vehicle has like 4 tiles connected. I took like 4 or 5 pieces out of the rv and it would drive one time but after that drive it wouldnt even try to start but if i put even empty frames back into those spots it would take off and run again. I am running the latest experimental version as of yesterday when testing this and i would absolutely consider this a bug.

Can you give a step by step sequence on how to reproduce this issue?

I wasn’t having problems until I nearly bisected a vehicle, even when I jumped in and out of the controls and moved around a bit, but maybe you’re doing something I didn’t test.

I spawn in either type of RV with the debug command. Working from back to front of the vehicle i remove everything from 4 center tiles. I then get in the vehicle and drive it for a short distance. I bring the vehicle to a stop and I stop driving. I get out of the vehicle and then re enter it and when i try to start the engine nothing happens. I do not get an error message or anything. The only message I get is “You take control of the RV.” If i hit and of the buttons used for driving while behind the wheel i get “You regain control of the RV.”

I have done this in both of my current game saves with the same result every time. I just tested this out in a fresh world with no mods enabled and i will disable the vehicle every time for me. This same process works for the Schoolbus and the Military Cargo Truck also. I have not tested it out on any other vehicles besides those four and my own personal vehicle.

I retested this on the newest version of the game and now it is giving the the error saying “The (insert vehicle name) is too heavy for its engines(s)”

If i add frames back into the spaces that i had removed from the vehicle the game will let it drive properly even if i stop driving. At least we are getting error messages about why the vehicles wont run even if they aren’t always accurate.

I meet this bug, too.

I had a 3x1 motorbike with gasoline engine in 6060. It drove normally. Then I added a trunk, and it became a 4x1 motorbike, and I moved the hinder wheel to the new tile. And it drove normally. Then I removed the trunk and moved the hinder wheel to its old place. Then it didn’t drive.

Now I updated to 6135, the latest experimental. It said it’s too heavy for its engine(s). And I add a handle to its tail, and then it drives!

Similar issue - I had a luxury RV that I took the back few squares off once I found a cargo dimension and no longer needed the storage back there, and now it refuses to accelerate. Since I had moved the wheels around while doing that, and given §k’s experience, it seems like it’s something with not correctly recalculating wheels when the size, particularly the length, of the vehicle changes.

Version 0.C-20357-gaaed32d.

Edit: Adding an extra-light frame to the center-rear spot allows it to accelerate again. Not entirely sure why that helped. Removing that frame (even with other frames present) prevents acceleration.

I had the same problem with a modified quad bike. Strangely enough, debugging in a new one and rebuilding it exactly the same made it work just fine.

Well, we can all agree that the current vehicle building has a bunch of problems.

I’m going out on a limb here and assume that nobody of you guys opened an issue on github yet, right? So I decided to open one - considering that the bug remained for quite a while this seemed to be the best course of action.

Link to the Issue, if someone is interested:

https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/20039