Just chiming in to say , having companion required / high strength would be detrimental to non-NPC / low strength builds.
I’m sure both those builds still want their deathmobiles!
I’m in favor of craftable cranes / lift tools with relevant high mechanics skill.
I usually only need the boom crane for replacing broken wheels on my mobile base as the vehichle is too heavy for anything else.
Yeah after thinking about it, my makeshift crane idea should only go to lift 2 once reinforced. That way there’s room at the top for the proper boom crane.
For a makeshift engine lift, could you use a pulley system with a chain and hook. Something similar to this.
I doubt that would be easy to make yourself, but just an idea.
This one looks easier to make yourself
I totally agree, for the time being we’re being very generous with this by saying “if you can lift it, you can install it”, the end goal may very well be “what you can lift with one hand” which is dramatically smaller than what you can lift with both arms. I don’t plan on doing that before we have improvised lifting devices very sorted out.
Yes, though it needs some kind of mechanical advantage to make a significant difference. A pulley will do, but there might be something even more improvised that works.
Also roughly what I had in mind, though again it needs a source of mechanical advantage.
I have no intention of having the presence of a NPC compainion or super high player strength be a requirement for engine work. For one thing it doesn’t scale very well, once you hit three people lifting, you run out of places to stand and you really need to switch to a machine of some kind.
This is something to keep in mind, lifts have two use cases, installing or removing vehicle parts, and lifting entire vehicles. Eventually you should be able to move vehicles out of your way with a crane.
I’ve been thinking about how to improvise a pulley, and I think the way that makes the most sense would be to use a pair of vehicle tires with pipes run through them.
That would be awesome, and something I would love to see.
I’ve also wondered about having a NPC help with lifting, which you addressed above, and would really like to see that addition as well.
For an early lifting option, how difficult would it be to create a ‘tow truck’ vehicle and have it just spawn sometimes?
The only concern I have with spawning a tow truck is that people will expect to be able to tow vehicles with it, and they’ll be (justifiably) irritated if it doesn’t work.
Maybe we can add another kind of work truck that has a lift?
https://www.google.com/search?q=work+truck+with+crane
For categories of lifting, how about this:
No tools: You can lift and install/uninstall parts that you can lift with one hand. Turns out there’s a study on the subject http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/637764.pdf tl;dr 30-50lbs, depending on how bulky the object is. We wouldn’t apply this until all the lifting tools are added.
A “easy to install” vehicle flag, that would be applied to the removable storage battery for instance, that allows the installer to use their full strength, so it would use the current 10kg per point of strength the code uses now.
Muscle power tools. This could be as simple as a rope thrown over a tree branch. This doesn’t provide any mechanical advantage, but it lets you lift and then tie off a load so you can position it using your full strength (10kg/point of strength).
Mechanical advantage tools. Pulley, lever-based or manual hydraulic systems. These have varying mechanical advantage, which we can either capture with increasing “lift” qualities, or with another parameter. These would act as a multiplier on the strength of the player. At high multiplication factors they might impose a time penalty.
Hydraulic or electric tools. These powered tools would set their own lifting limits instead of using the strength of the player.
I will admit that I know very little about the system that’s currently in place. I’ve only been playing for a few weeks and so all I have is based on brief observation of changes, not from actually looking into the code.
That said, wouldn’t you want to work within the bounds of the system you’ve already put in place? Why add additional categories or new parameters when you could work within the Lift system you’ve already got?
You could make the ‘no tools’ installation items a very low strength requirement (or lift 1, if it requires you to input a value for both). For the easy to install but awkward, you could simply up the strength requirement to above average or lift 1 (though I think it’s tough because so many people play with Stats through skills, skewing the average). Then for the things that require significant assistance, require lift 2 or an unattainably high strength.
This works within the system you’ve already got in place and presumably would require only a reassessment of strength requirements (though I understand lift 2 doesn’t currently exist). Then you’d add more diversity to items/vehicles that offer lift 1 and 2 and that’d be that.
Unless I’m missing something or way off base (I probably am).
The system as it exists already derives required lift values from weight, but it’s been pointed out that these are probably too generous, as even a strength ten character should probably not be able to hold an engine in place while they bolt it down.
The game currently has two sources of lift, the Telescoping Canteliever and the Boom Crane, which one installs in a separate vehicle near the one being worked on.
The issue is that these take a lot of mechanics skill to make, and a simpler solution for engines and large batteries should be possible for non-deathmobile users.
So the lift required is directly connected to the strength requirement and that’s where this issue lies? IE: You don’t point to a specific requirement of lift, you simply assign a strength requirement and the lift requirement is generated based off of that?
Re-reading a lot of this stuff, I think I better understand what was being discussed. Unfortunately, it seems that some of my comments were off-base. x_x
Well probably not a lever but definitely something like Pyrite posted with the two by four frame with a winch to do the lifting. Or something like this attached to the ceiling instead; Homemade Chain Hoist - HomemadeTools.net
Actually lots of great inspiration on that site, for this game and real life.
The entirety of the existing system is:
You can install/remove parts up to 10kg per point of strength. (which is really high, but perversely not high enough)
There’s one vehicle part with LIFT 1 and another with LIFT 4, they both require welding and decent costruction skills.
Both base their lifting capacity directly on the LIFT flag, LIFT 1 means you can lift a lot, LIFT 4 means you can lift a LOT.
There’s nothing in between, we need to fill that gap, and the most reasonable thing to put there is a few simple machines.
I will point out that there are a number of current and historical armoured recovery vehicles which basically amount to a heavy tank with a crane mounted on top. Something like that could be an epic rare find and/or an awesomely powerful tool in the Cataclysm.
After spending a fair bit of time looking for a storable tool (rather than a vehicle part like the telescopic cantilever or the boom crane) with LIFTING 1; I decided to make this little mod. All it does is add a craft-able “makeshift engine hoist” to the game.
It’s fairly hard to make requiring a mechanics skill of 5 and a fabrication skill of 3 minimum.
So, it shouldn’t hurt the early game balance.
I based it off the engine hoist I saw in this youtube vid.
