Jacking vs Lifting

Using build 7164 or 0.C-26527-g7420d51 , I can’t remove a swappable storage battery. I may be missing a craftable recipe, but jacking and lifting are not synonymous, so even with a jacking 16 quality I can’t remove a swappable storage battery. The most I could guess is there’s rebalancing going on with tool quality (from axes/saws in particular), but a search does not seem to bring up anyone else having this issue.

Correct, they are different. https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/23094

Storage Batteries, as well as turret-based weapons are the two pieces I’ve noticed require lifting or high strength.

What’s more concerning, in my opinion, is that this change is taking place but I can still bare-hand an engine no problem.

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I noticed the engine thing, I can lift a V6 engine by hand but not a battery. Thanks for the link, at least I know I can start looking for crane stuff or find smaller storage batteries and charge those. Maybe suggesting that prying be linked to lighter vehicle parts vs lifting would be a good suggestion.

Well, I actually like that they’re making lifting relevant. I’ve seen cranes before and thought ‘oh that’s useless’, especially with stats through skills where 15 str is not that hard to obtain long-term.

And bear in mind that Storage batteries aren’t what most people picture. It’s meant to be (if I understand right) a larger, industrial-size battery. They hold 16x the charge of a car battery, so I get why they’re making them unwieldy.

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A quick check, Tesla batteries weight 1200 lbs, while the stones at Coral Castle weight more than 10 TONS. It’s not that big of a deal, especially if they remove using vehicle batteries for use in electric gizmos, but just an odd thing to note.

Then maybe we should lower the lifting capabilities of the game character from 10 kg per 1 strength to 9 or even 8 kg per 1 str. Lifting 100 kg v6 engine by hand (thus requiring at least 10 str) is no good imo.

What if we just added a really simple portable crane thing? Say a 2x4, long rope, and some scrap metal. Makes a “makeshift lifting apparatus” and has like lift 5 or something.

Nerfing strength’s weight bonus across the board because engines are too easy to lift kind of misses the forest for the trees.

If engines are too easy to lift, they should just weigh more.

I’m not a car mechanic (and I’m too lazy to google), so I don’t know if 100 kg is good for a v6 engine. Should it be heavier or lighter?

I believe the crane I saw was like a shopping cart but rather than a basket it had a crane. If that’s not portable I don’t know what is.

And I agree it’s not a matter of retooling strength and weight ratios. Like the batteries, which recently had required strength to remove changed, we should simply change the required strength to pull engines.

I’m pretty sure that’s on the agenda, though, since they retooled the battery requirements.

For the other americans, 100kg = 220lbs. That’s definitely high for an average character (Str 8), is it too high for above average strength (str10)? Hard to say, but it doesn’t seem crazy.

Not sure how reliable it is, but this source https://healthyliving.azcentral.com/average-male-deadlift-15429.html puts average deadlift at 155lbs or 70kg

I think the main issue is that engines are waaay light: https://www.quora.com/How-much-do-most-car-engines-weigh

As for improvised lifting devices, That’s the topic of the issue @TheMurderUnicorn linked. In other words, yes a portable block and tackle or lever based lifting device should be coming soon.

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I want to second the request for a cheap lifting mechanism. Needing mechanics 3 and a special book to make an extremely basic device seems out of whack. I also feel that the telescoping canteliever needs to say what part it installs in the vehicle in its description. I spent a long time confused why it wouldn’t show up in the list while i was trying to install mine.

So even a very strong person would have a hard time getting even a small 4 cylinder engine in and out of a hatchback. Lighter engines can be easily explained by the near-future setting, but even then a standard sized car engine should be pretty much impossible for a normal person to lift.

My suggestions;

Having a companion should cut lifting strength requirements, making it possible to lift small car engines without lifting tools.

Up to a v6 you can use makeshift levers and such. For V8 and V12 engines you would need either an engine crane or to install two forklift arms on a separate, drivable vehicle. Forklift arms just need to require a higher mechanics skill and some additional construction ingredients what to account for the gearing and pulleys and arms and such.

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Deadlifts aren’t a good source of lifting information because the grip area is unrealistically close to the centre of mass in comparison to practical things to lift, like engines. Even 20kg becomes very unwieldly when it’s in the form of a box that’s half a metre to a side.

Homophobe’s suggestion of having NPC’s to assist with lifting akin to assisting with crafting is a good idea. Maybe for the strength check, make the checked number actually the total of all strength scores nearby summed (like that video of a crowd tipping a train to free a passenger).

Even having just more than 1 person on a very bulky item can help, as it eliminates the need to also counteract the moment when lifting large heavy items.

Another thing we could look at is factoring in the volume when it comes to lifting things. Having the volume act as a lifting multiplier could work for vehicles, although I don’t know if you want this sort of snowflake code that only applies to vehicle item interactions.

We could also just increase the prevalence of items with lifting quality. Some sort of engine hoist should be pretty much guaranteed at every commercial garage. Although come to think of it, every car is supposed to have a jack and a spare as well, so I dunno, Perhaps all that stuff got teleported to ‘china’.

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That’s valid, it’s also pretty simple in that whatever the strength-based lifting capacity of each character is, we can just add them together.

You need t be more specific. Is that, “you need a big lever on a stable pivot” or, “you need a crowbar and some two by fours”?
The first is roughly what we have now, the second doesn’t make much sense.

That assumes you can’t get a grip on a protrusion. For a featureless box it’s definitely a problem, but engines are far from featureless.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that ‘lifting an engine’ isn’t the only issue here. I saw this TV show years ago, where they had to rebuild a car in competition with another team or some such nonsense. Their crane thing broke, and the guy crawled on the ground to bench-press the engine into place. He was fit-ish, but he was shaking like crazy. Additionally, he needed a second person to secure the engine, because he was completely occupied with holding it up.

It’s not just ‘can you lift it’, it’s ‘how do you lift it with one hand while you also get your wrench out and line it up and secure it in place with the other?’

Can confirm, even pretty small engines are still fucking heavy.

Doing a youtube search for ‘makeshift engine lift’ I see that these are really popular:

It’s basically a wooden frame built out of what looks to me like a dozen two-by-fours. It would have to be a construction menu project I think, but not exactly hard to build.

Make the first level of construction just this with a long rope for lift 1, and then make a second level where you reinforce it with some scrap metal and use a steel chain for lift 3.

Currently we have a constant named TOOL_LIFT_FACTOR which equals to 500 kg. Heaviest vehicle part I found so far is V12 diesel engine (310 kg). The formula for lifting equipment level is mass_of_part/TOOL_LIFT_FACTOR. Thus for now we need only first level of lifting equipment for each and every vehicle part despite boom crane supports up to forth level i.e. 2 tonnes.
So although I like the idea of makeshift crane you proposed, we don’t need 3 levels of it. Or we may need to decrease TOOL_LIFT_FACTOR somewhat to allow for several levels of makeshift cranes.