Intermediate Vehicle Building Tutorial

[Soyweiser]

Love it!

To clarify:
“Onto cargo, living space and utility placement if you have curtains on all your windows and doors and do not use hatches a reclining seat is as good as a bed if not better as it doesn’t take up extra space and in cabin doors and boards just take up precious space usable for other things, removing a bed and boards etc can sum you 4 extra tiles to use if you use an RV for example.”

This sentence is a bit odd.

Lot of your sentences are very long. And you could use points in a lot of places where you use commas.

[Zorbeltuss]

[quote=“Soyweiser, post:2, topic:9806”]Love it!

To clarify:
“Onto cargo, living space and utility placement if you have curtains on all your windows and doors and do not use hatches a reclining seat is as good as a bed if not better as it doesn’t take up extra space and in cabin doors and boards just take up precious space usable for other things, removing a bed and boards etc can sum you 4 extra tiles to use if you use an RV for example.”

This sentence is a bit odd.

Lot of your sentences are very long. And you could use points in a lot of places where you use commas.[/quote]
Thank you, first fixing of the text has been done also added a few K values to note.

/Zorbeltuss

[BeerBeer]

Thank you! That explained some of the annoyances and anomalies I’ve encountered in the past.

1. Reinforce the front first. Build a bumper layer, or move the engines and precious components to the center or back.
2. Reinforce the rear second. That’s the second most common zombie bump location. Third, the outer windshield tiles. Windshields are so fragile. Would be a shame if anything happened to them.
3. Since cargo carriers require long ropes, gather every last “long string”, “short rope”, and “thread” you come across, since they can be used to craft long ropes. All car seatbelts detach as short ropes, so you might want to detach them as you find abandoned cars. Of course, you might get lucky and outright find a pick-up truck with its cargo carriers, but this is for those whose playstyle or settings do not allow much freedom of movement.
4. There is one other component that holds far more than a cargo carrier, but I’m not sure if it’s part of the Vehicle Additions mod. Also the part’s name escapes me right now… ‘vortex’ something? ‘Dimensional cargo’ something? It’s sci-fi and silly, and I never installed it but I saw it in the vehicle construction list.
5. Relocate headlights away from corners. They can reside where your windshield is.
6. Always repair the most delicate parts first. Armor can go all the way to pink, and it’ll still punch a zombie to death. Consider security cameras and headlights as “near-death” as soon as they go from dark green to light green.
7. Security cameras can replace wing mirrors. Preferrably install them further to the back. They don’t even have to extrude outside the vehicle like mirrors, but they’ll get a smaller field of vision, but it should still be fine, or at least better than nothing and more durable than wing mirrors.
8. It might not be apparent but cars actually have roofs. Put solar panels where there’s a roof tile. Don’t put solar panels on the edge tiles.
9. Always install a truck alternator for maximum battery power generation? (I’m cautiously waiting for someone to criticize this advice)
10. Vehicle Additions pack includes shredders, which are absolutely fantastic for ploughing through zombie masses. Don’t drive too fast. Like a tractor through a cornfield. (“Graaaains…”). Shredders are installed like roller drums - outside the vehicle and alone.
11. Note that loot items on bodies are damaged if you run over them with a vehicle.
12. You can shoot from a moving vehicle with your gun. Just keep your door open. Use a pistol.

Headlight placement tutorial:

1. Install headlight just as any other component. (a headlight is just a flashlight btw)
2. When it prompts you to choose a direction, first hit Enter to make the prompt go away.
3. Start moving your directional keys. There’s a cursor but your vehicle might be hiding it, get it outside the vehicle to make it visible. It starts from the tile where you installed the headlight. (it’s possible graphical tilesets hide the cursor)
4. Hit Enter when satisfied. Install headlights at night to see the results immediately. Or set up a surprise for yourself and install them during day.
5. Experiment with “cross-eyed” setups, where your front right headlight actually points 45 degrees to the left, for example, and the left headlight points bit to the right.

Security cameras:

• You’ll likely have to craft one (or two). This requires electronics knowledge. You’ll need high-quality lenses, which can be disassembled from eyebots or normal cameras. Other required components are common, IIRC.
• You’ll also have to craft a camera monitor, which you’ll have to install in the driver’s seat tile. This requires many small LCD displays, so pick up those precious cell phones or deconstruct a bunch of consoles.
• Both require power, which is drawn from the vehicle battery.
• Don’t forget to actually turn on the camera system at the vehicle controls.

[Rhodri]

4. There is one other component that holds far more than a cargo carrier, but I’m not sure if it’s part of the Vehicle Additions mod. Also the part’s name escapes me right now… ‘vortex’ something? ‘Dimensional cargo’ something? It’s sci-fi and silly, and I never installed it

The cargo dimension. Its a portal installed directly into your vehicle that leads to its own pocket dimension, used to store up to 1,000,000 units of volume worth of items.

You need a stabilized portal to install it. I’m not sure where one can find such I thing, but I’m guessing it can be found in labs.

[joxer]

Tips / Tricks / Suggestions

Another set of vehicle controls may be installed to provide (dome) lights & backup controls

Some of the various kinds of doors connect to eachother and will open/close together with the adjacent door tile.
[sup][sup]as one would expect that’s quite handy for when you’ll be moving cargo in and out the vehicle, Mounting them on the sides rather than the rear also earns you style points.[/sup][/sup]

Kmass is the total mass of the vehicle including liquids ( in tanks ) and items inside of cargo spaces
[sup][sup]One thing it defines is your ability to pull the vehicle (G) For example a character with 12 STR will be able to pull around 220kg. I don’t believe the weight you have on you affects that.[/sup][/sup]

Having wheels or casters on your “shopping carts” doesn’t make them any easier to pull around.
[sup][sup]It does prevent them from making as much noise as they otherwise would[/sup][/sup]

Once you have a load of cargo spaces [size=7pt]( Or any storage implements )[/size] on your vehicle, You really should use the advajced inventory managment UI
[sup][sup]Default key “/”[/sup][/sup]

The “,” key when in advanced inventory managment mode will move all the items from the currently selected tile to the other one you have open.
[sup][sup]This feature currently ignores the maximum volume of a container and may cause items to be left on the floor under your vehicle instead - If max volume is exceeded ofc.[/sup][/sup]

Having several engines in your vehicle is nice, However. if you disable one and cause active one to blow up- By speeding for instance
Your vehicle won’t work until you either fix or remove it.

Roller drums deal allot of damage to mobs but they deal even more damage to items on the ground.

It doesn’t matter “Where” you mount your wheels
[sup][sup]both vertically and horizontally wheels may be mounted anywhere including in the middle with no penalties[/sup][/sup]

Having a container of clean water on your vehicle is nice
[sub][sub]- The water may be used in the kitchen unit regardless of where the storage tank is[/sub][/sub]
[sup][sup]- The faucet, likewise. may be attached anywhere in your vehicle. including outside.[/sup][/sup]

[John_the_Gamer]

Well since we’re talking about vehicle construction;

Does anyone know how to charge mounted energy weapons? I’ve got a NX17 Laser cannon mounted on my current vehicle, but no matter what I do it will not fire. Whenever I try to fire it manually it complains about not having ammo.

I’ve tried:

Dropping batteries on it
Dropping a UPS on it (falls through the floor onto the ground)
Building a car battery on the same tile

And it does not seem to work. When I drop batteries on the turret it mentions 'you put your batteriess (yes with double s for some reason) in the car’s mounted NX17" but it does not change the gun’s ammo counter (0/1800).

Does anyone know a solution besides ripping it out and replacing it with a machinegun?

[Zorbeltuss]

[quote=“joxer, post:6, topic:9806”]Kmass is the total mass of the vehicle including liquids ( in tanks ) and items inside of cargo spaces
[sup][sup]One thing it defines is your ability to pull the vehicle (G) For example a character with 12 STR will be able to pull around 220kg. I don’t believe the weight you have on you affects that.[/sup][/sup][/quote]
Do you mean Mass, K Mass is given in percent?

[quote=“joxer, post:6, topic:9806”]It doesn’t matter “Where” you mount your wheels
[sup][sup]both vertically and horizontally wheels may be mounted anywhere including in the middle with no penalties[/sup][/sup][/quote]
This is true for the most part, but you need to space them out on the vehicle or the vehicle will be unbalanced, for example removing all front wheels from an RV and placing them in the back will do this and render the vehicle unusable.

[quote=“John the Gamer, post:7, topic:9806”]Well since we’re talking about vehicle construction;

Does anyone know how to charge mounted energy weapons? I’ve got a NX17 Laser cannon mounted on my current vehicle, but no matter what I do it will not fire. Whenever I try to fire it manually it complains about not having ammo.[/quote]
I do not sadly, but it is supposed to be used with a UPS, was the UPS turned off or maybe the ammunition storage filled with batteries while you tried to place it?

/Zorbeltuss

[joxer]

Do you mean Mass, K Mass is given in percent?

correct, apologies

This is true for the most part, but you need to space them out on the vehicle or the vehicle will be unbalanced, for example removing all front wheels from an RV and placing them in the back will do this and render the vehicle unusable.

Learn something new every day, While it’s true that a 4 wheeled vehicle won’t drive on two rear wheels
You don’t actually need much in terms of wheels to keep driving and stay perfectly balanced and stable.
Testing with a flatbed truck in 0.C, I’ve got a total of three wheels on it covering one quoter of the shape.

HH0HH
HHHHH
HH0H0
HHHHH
HHHHH
HHHHH
H- frame, 0- wheel
It drives as good as it ever did.

In short, Adding wheels to the middle of a standard vehicle will- if worst come to worst, Make it more of a trike if Any two out of four wheels break.
[sup][sup]Except diagonal ofc.[/sup][/sup]

Also may i just say your avatar is hypnotizing. O.Q

[quote=“John the Gamer, post:7, topic:9806”]Well since we’re talking about vehicle construction;

Does anyone know how to charge mounted energy weapons? I’ve got a NX17 Laser cannon mounted on my current vehicle, but no matter what I do it will not fire. Whenever I try to fire it manually it complains about not having ammo.[/quote]
Testing the whole deal, Spawned the NX-17 CHARGE RIFLE and mounted it on the same flatbed truck mentioned above.
With no power sources on the vehicle beside an alternator ( Engine was turned off ) And a truck battery, It fired like a charm.

What version are you playing?

[Zorbeltuss]

[quote=“joxer, post:9, topic:9806”]Learn something new every day, While it’s true that a 4 wheeled vehicle won’t drive on two rear wheels
You don’t actually need much in terms of wheels to keep driving and stay perfectly balanced and stable.
Testing with a flatbed truck in 0.C, I’ve got a total of three wheels on it covering one quoter of the shape.

HH0HH
HHHHH
HH0H0
HHHHH
HHHHH
HHHHH
H- frame, 0- wheel
It drives as good as it ever did.

In short, Adding wheels to the middle of a standard vehicle will- if worst come to worst, Make it more of a trike if Any two out of four wheels break.
[sup][sup]Except diagonal ofc.[/sup][/sup][/quote]
I tried this with my test RV on my test save, I put a wheel in the middle and remover all other wheels and it worked, while slightly uncontrollable even at minimum speeds even it halved the turning radius, so I tried with a single roller drum, the turning radius went up again as handling went up so it was sadly not the turn on a dime solution I’d hoped.
Since loads of extra mass and single point of failure the mono roller cycle solution is probably not a good thing for a survivor vehicle, but now that I’ve tested it I’m also recommending wheels near the center if others fail.

Also may i just say your avatar is hypnotizing. O.Q

Why thank you, I’ve been meaning to get a cycling avatar though like Rivet and Phtalocy though, but I’ve lost the link for that utility. XP

/Zorbeltuss

[joxer]

I’m unsure what you mean by the turning radius, I’ve assumed all vehicles take 3 “turns” to turn 45 degrees.
[sup][sup] While a single turn- while driving a relatively short vehicle ( About and under 5 tiles, especially the ones that are thin aswell )- Don’t display any changes in their shape but instead offset from the ‘straight’ path every couple turns.[/sup][/sup]

[Zorbeltuss]

[quote=“joxer, post:11, topic:9806”]I’m unsure what you mean by the turning radius, I’ve assumed all vehicles take 3 “turns” to turn 45 degrees.
[sup][sup] While a single turn- while driving a relatively short vehicle ( About and under 5 tiles, especially the ones that are thin aswell )- Don’t display any changes in their shape but instead offset from the ‘straight’ path every couple turns.[/sup][/sup][/quote]
Well that they do, at first I thought that it was a shorter wheelbase that allowed it turn a more narrow way, but when tested with the roller drum and returning i noticed that the average speed of a single wheel that wasn’t a road roller during this turn was around 4 km/h instead of the wanted 16km/h meaning a much smaller turning circle because of the lesser control of the speed.

/Zorbeltuss

[joxer]

interesting, i wasn’t aware the speed was calculated per wheel ( or to what extent ) I’m intrigued!
always thought that the handling was more arcade-like than anything, atleast- that’s what i expected.

abit of theorycrafting
i’m assuming the wheels are checked to cover both the axis ( form a square? ) to validate the “Enough Wheels” condition.
[sup]- As three wheels in a straight line won’t support a wide vehicle -[/sup]

You’ve said that the turning speed per wheel has changed
[sup]At first glance given how many values we’re given on the vehicle creation screen i’d almost expect it to be scaled directly with the amount of wheels

but… It’s also possible that the contrary to what you first expected is true- That the distance ( Or ratio between the axis ) of the farthest wheels define that sort of thing
Instead of a narrower wheelbase providing with a narrower turn radius ( Like it’s in the real world )[/sup]

Or perhaps it’s simply more arcade-y than that, And the “speed of the wheel” is the speed the wheel moved during the last turn ( less if it’s turning ) which is based upon- rather than the defining factor of- the location/speed of the vehicle.

[John_the_Gamer]

[quote=“joxer, post:9, topic:9806”]Testing the whole deal, Spawned the NX-17 CHARGE RIFLE and mounted it on the same flatbed truck mentioned above.
With no power sources on the vehicle beside an alternator ( Engine was turned off ) And a truck battery, It fired like a charm.

What version are you playing?[/quote]

Version 0.C

But after a night of testing and modifying files I’ve figured out the problem. For some unknown reason I added “ups_charges”: 1, to the NX-17 a while back. Removing that seems to have solved the problem.

[lootpack]

Let me throw in one intermediate vehicle trick: a footcrank/pedals engine under the seat adds a little power for free even on heavy vehicles. And it keeps the joint torsion ratchet CBM going for even more free energy.

And in the next edit, putting in alternators apparently lets them tap a shared pool even of electric engine energy, making such a vehicle very efficient indeed.

[Coolthulhu]

Let me throw in one intermediate vehicle trick: a footcrank/pedals engine under the seat adds a little power for free even on heavy vehicles.

Multiple engines have downscaled power. You can see it by turning off the pedals - if your engine is heavy, you’ll notice an increase in safe speed rather than decrease.

[TonicEngine]

The “,” key when in advanced inventory managment mode will move all the items from the currently selected tile to the other one you have open.

This is wonderful. Thank you. It changed my life like learning about batch crafting (press ‘b’ in the crafting menu).

[lootpack]

Multiple engines have downscaled power. You can see it by turning off the pedals - if your engine is heavy, you’ll notice an increase in safe speed rather than decrease.

It’s Intermediate vehicles then My current 5x1 bike has 2 small electric motors and the pedals fit very well there. You’re right on really heavy vehicles the pedals aren’t so useful.

[Dlightfull]

[quote=“joxer, post:6, topic:9806”]The “,” key when in advanced inventory managment mode will move all the items from the currently selected tile to the other one you have open.

This is wonderful. Thank you. It changed my life like learning about batch crafting (press ‘b’ in the crafting menu).[/quote]

You know, in almost every menu you can hit ‘?’ to see all the keybindings for that particular menu, that’s how i learned about them useful buttons after 2 days of playing the game

[kevin.granade]

One minor correction, “enough” wheels is calculated by determining the vehicle center of mas, drawing a bounding box around the wheels, and checking that the center of mass is inside the box. A word of warning though, we will likely make this more strict at some point, so make silly vehicles at your own risk.

[joxer]

One minor correction, “enough” wheels is calculated by determining the vehicle center of mas, drawing a bounding box around the wheels, and checking that the center of mass is inside the box. A word of warning though, we will likely make this more strict at some point, so make silly vehicles at your own risk.

I’m all for realism, Aswell as pushing the boundaries

an easy fix for this would be calculating the 'centre of balance" of the wheels then comparing it to the centre of mass.
would certainly cripple the whole aspect of having wheels near the centre of the vehicle.

asmuch as i’d hate to see this silly mechanic go i’d really love some more advanced functionality steering/static wheels, 4x4(+?) wheel drives & etc

[quote=“joxer, post:9, topic:9806”]Also may i just say your avatar is hypnotizing. O.Q

Why thank you, I’ve been meaning to get a cycling avatar though like Rivet and Phtalocy though, but I’ve lost the link for that utility. XP

/Zorbeltuss[/quote]
I’ve stumbled upon it randomly, here you go
http://signavatar.com/