How to create a (huge) forest crushing vehicle?

Game Talk The Bunker
1

I want to create a vehicle to clear through forest terrain (Trees, young trees, shrubs, etc) to make a usable path for travel but I’m unable to get a design of a strong enough vehicle which can clear through hundreds of trees and plants without getting much damage. I’ve got a road roller by now (I had to drive it from a far away zombie flooded city, fitted with a V12 engine because I didn’t have diesel) which is a really heavy and pretty much useless vehicle for ramming forest terrain (I tested it using the debug menu, it smashed to bits after only being able to destroy 3-4 trees) since its too heavy and requires a gasoline engine.

I want to convert that roller into something useful, something than can smash all those trees and strong enough to withstand the force. My question is that: How to go about it? I mean, what type of engine should be there (I want to make it electric since I’ve got a solar power generator, I can make it gas based too as I’ve a number of jerrycans and 30 gallon barrels full of gas)? What type of armor needs to be on the vehicle? What should be the design (to get minimum damage from the terrain as far as possible)? How to actually make it fast enough to destroy a tile of forest without getting destroyed itself.

If its too expensive or troublesome or impossible then there maybe other ways to destroy forest tiles (without using a jackhammer or a sledgehammer or fire based stuff). Are there any other ways to easily and quickly destroy forest tiles without using jackhammer, sledgehammer, fire (I don’t have a fire truck)?

If you’ve any idea about this stuff or have created such vehicles or care to give some suggestions then please reply.

Thanks.

2

Not a fast but save way (for your vehicle):

A ramming portion made with heavy duty frames, armored with military composite armor and a vehicle welding rig. Ram, set back and ram again, but keep an eye on your armor/parts, stop if they get too damaged and use your welding rig to rapair them.

As mentioned it isn’t fast but you will only use gas/power to go through a forest and ofc time and you should ram slowly 16-32 km/h are good (2 times accelerate) so you don’t cause too much damage to your vehicle and keep control over it. I for my part got through 3 forest tiles with my mobile base while only stopping to repair it once.

3

What Darkphoenix said. Leveling a forest using a vehicle isn’t really viable since it’s a slow and tedious process. If your goal is to get from A to B instead of making a huge detour, a quicker option is probably to get a wood axe and chop down the regular trees, then slowly crunch over resulting trunks and saplings. Make a path wider than the vehicle since you’ll be losing control often due to all the collisions.

4

Stay at 32 kmph (20 mph), if you’re engines are strong enough (a V12 is more than adequate) you can just push your way through forests, going any faster only causes unnecessary damage to your vehicle.

I’ll second using a military composite plated ram to take the brunt of the damage if you keep an eye on it/have a ton of it, use hard plating if you don’t.

Please note that I’ve only done this on ludicrously large deathmobiles, so this might not work as well for smaller vehicles.

5

Fire might help. First craft a “Simple flamethrower”, if you can. Start from the back and burn the sides as you retreat and let the fire open up the forest much like a zipper opens a piece of clothing. Your character would be the zipper fly. The game does contain fire extinguishers, so you might be able to contain at least some of the fire. This is all purely theoretical, of course. Start small. See how the fire behaves. And start burning right after a rain, in order to maximize the chance of not being interrupted by rain.

If you’re having trouble with the electrical engine storage battery, install several batteries. Have a separate static solar panel array (which is actually just a vehicle without wheels or engine) in which you recharge vehicle batteries, and switch out the batteries as your vehicle consumes them. A 5x3 array can do a lot of charging… Be sure to salvage solar panels from every electric car you see or at least make a note of their locations. Try to collect like 6 storage batteries as well. Repair before removal, if possible.

6

It’s time to break out the TL:DR text wall.

[size=36pt]A SIMPLE GUIDE TO DEALING WITH HERETICAL FORESTS AND/OR TREES[/size]

First, find your local flamethrower-producer, and proceed to burn the defenseless woodland creature’s homes down.
In case you can not fulfill that, send a battalion of Imperial Guardsmen to clean the fire up.

7

You dont even need a flamethrower. A lighter or matches will do fine. Flamethrower is more fun though, and better for dealing with anything that could be hiding out in the woods. light up the bushes and small trees, if you light them in clumps then the fires get bigger and turn into a raging, fast spreading, inferno. just remember to bring a fire extinguisher.

8

I Think that if you manage to build a massive enough vehicle, you can slowly (9mp/h) crush the forest under its wheels. I remember I did with was basically a gigantic (2 map tiles wide) glass plow. I Dont think any of the reinforced windhields took any damage, either.

This however was around 0.9, its possible that changes to vehicle code have rendered this method impossible.

9

Fixed that for you.

10

[quote=“BeerBeer, post:5, topic:8696”]Fire might help. First craft a “Simple flamethrower”, if you can. Start from the back and burn the sides as you retreat and let the fire open up the forest much like a zipper opens a piece of clothing. Your character would be the zipper fly. The game does contain fire extinguishers, so you might be able to contain at least some of the fire. This is all purely theoretical, of course. Start small. See how the fire behaves. And start burning right after a rain, in order to maximize the chance of not being interrupted by rain.

If you’re having trouble with the electrical engine storage battery, install several batteries. Have a separate static solar panel array (which is actually just a vehicle without wheels or engine) in which you recharge vehicle batteries, and switch out the batteries as your vehicle consumes them. A 5x3 array can do a lot of charging… Be sure to salvage solar panels from every electric car you see or at least make a note of their locations. Try to collect like 6 storage batteries as well. Repair before removal, if possible.[/quote]

Yeah, I’ve a flamethrower and a couple of steel jerrycans and 30 gallon barrels of gasoline (I’ve stored all these since they don’t come of any use as I’ve created/used only electrical vehicles, until now), I think a lighter or the mini-flamethrower cbm will do (its not a “mini-flamethrower”, its a “portable-lighter” running of bionic power). But the main problem is that the fire mechanics in the game cause the fire to spread rapidly, to the point that stopping it would be near-impossible with a fire extinguisher (but I think the thermal dissipation bionic can help somewhat), so I would’ve to start a fire, burn a little bit of forest, stop it and then repeat the entire process. Destroying it with a vehicle is even more tedious, accelerate, smash the forest (get damaged in the process and repair it), reverse and repeat. I’ve noted a couple of military vehicles lying around on the map so I can get the armor but I think creating such vehicle is a waste of time.

I created a (comparatively) big solar power generator some time before but it doesn’t seem to do much work (except recharging my tools and my electric bike); Since my main vehicle has 15 solar panels and upgraded panels installed with lots of storage batteries and it charges quickly and discharges slowly. I created it much early by collecting all of the panels and storage batts I could find (I fitted it with 66 solar panes and upgraded panels + 18 batteries) but it doesn’t do much work. The jumper cables and heavy cables don’t work (or at least they don’t work quickly enough), so I just replace the storage batteries to charge my bike. My vehicle can easily charge due to the number of panels so its not that useful but I’m not saying its not worth it, though in the beginning it took almost a season to charge completely due to the number of batteries it had.

I don’t have a good deathmobile (I’ve a “Compact-Utility-Vehicle” which I’ve fitted with all kinds of stuff like kitchen unit, foodco, onboard lab, turrets, music system, etc and I created it from scratch, so I certainly won’t want to destroy it) and its too small for such purpose (I created it less wide so that I could drive it through towns and stuff).

But what about the road roller I just brought in from other town? Will it work? Though it seems too heavy for such purpose (it goes only 37 or so with a V8), those drums on the front and the back seem useful…

Is there something like a fire truck in the game (so I could stop those “raging fires”) or something like a refillable fire-extinguisher (which uses water or some chemical)?? Right now, only the flamethrower idea seems useful to me, ramming those trees with a vehicle is a too much time-taking and boring work and it’ll eat gasoline which could be much efficiently used with a flamethrower.