How many wheels do you put on your death cycle/tricycle/car/truck?
Also anyone know where to find military composite plating or strategies to find it? I have one piece afyer clearing a crash site but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a military vehicle in the game. Keep searching towns? In my 2nd year and I’ve cleated 2 but only ambulances and RV’s so far.
An APC is your best bet, followed by Military Truck or a Humvee. The Mil truck is common on roadblocks but is usually guarded by rather nasty critters of the robotic variety so be warned. APCs I’ve mostly found in towns, Hummers usually on backwood roads. YMMV due to RNG.
Dovla has it right. You’ve got to mainly Find APC’s and Armored trucks. Just stick the the roads and you’ll come across them soon enough. One of the great ways to quickly figure out if a vehicle has any armor on it period is to look at it’s windshield. If the windshield is the armored graphic and not the plain kind, that vehicle has some sort of armor. (Either steel plating, or MCP)
EDIT: Oh, and I usually have 32 armored wheels on my death machine and 7 drum rollers on the front, the drum rollers allow me to safely pass through minefields as they take the hits and barely get scratched, and they also kill the living frick out of everything I run into. And as a added bonus they help my push cars lightly out of the way.
Personally I have 4 (armored) Wheels on my Car as that seems to be enough
There was a chicken walker close to my base, and sure enough it was protecting a military truck with the plating O required. Though I did have to sacrifice an M-Law on the fowl robot.
Is there any gameplay effect on more wheels besides tge obvious that having 4+ means losing one or two won’t give you the “lacks wheels” status I’ve only ever built small light things until now so I’m unsure of the effects of larger vehicles.
Wheel surface negatively impacts speed due to increased traction, as I understand it, so unless you’re roleplaying a mobile fortress pilot it’s best to keep the number down to a safe minimum. I usually roll with four armoured wheels pulled off an APC.
I wrote this recently in another thread.
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Wheel size matters.
http://www.wiki.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?title=Vehicles (note the links to more articles in upper right corner)
http://www.wiki.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?title=Making_a_Supercar:_Guide
http://www.wiki.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?title=Vehicle_parts
From “Vehicle Parts” above:
[i]Ideal wheel configuration depends mostly on the vehicle’s mass. When trying to maximize safe speed, total wheel area should be ~1.58 sqrt( mass ). Here “sqrt” means square root and mass is in kilograms.
Increasing the wheel area above that may increase acceleration, but it will decrease safe speed and thus also maximum speed and fuel economy.
For example, a 2500 kg (5512 lbs) truck should have a total wheel area of around 79. This can be achieved by installing just a single maximum sized armored wheel (20 width * 36 diameter / 9 = 80 area). The truck still needs more than one wheel to move, but the second wheel can be just a set of casters.[/i]
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When I install and take away wheels the “K friction” measurement (and top speed, acceleration) in the vehicle UI will change. I believe closer to 100% is better.