How does the new vehicle system work as far as fuel efficiency is concerned? I have a pretty big van with a 2.5L V6 and it only goes 44 on roads, 6 off road. I’m not particularly concerned about speed on road, since any faster than 44 makes it hard to avoid broken cars and other obstacles, but I don’t like the 6 off road since I get stuck when I hit a bush or zombie.
How do I make it go faster off road?
If I put a bigger engine in, will I lose fuel efficiency? In real life, engines tend to work most efficiently when used near their maximum capabilities. That is, if you need 1,500 - 1,800 watts of power, you get a 2KW generator to be efficient. A 10KW generator would be quite inefficient.
My experience is that better tires have a substantial effect on offroad speed. A set of six big 35’’ armored wheels off an APC increased my offroad efficiency up to 97% - basically allowing me to travel as fast offroad as on.
I would also like to know more about how fuel efficiency is handled, and if there’s a simple and dirty .json edit us muggles can do to cut down vehicle fuel burn until some proper balancing is done.
[quote=“EnDSchultz, post:2, topic:13228”]My experience is that better tires have a substantial effect on offroad speed. A set of six big 35’’ armored wheels off an APC increased my offroad efficiency up to 97% - basically allowing me to travel as fast offroad as on.
I would also like to know more about how fuel efficiency is handled, and if there’s a simple and dirty .json edit us muggles can do to cut down vehicle fuel burn until some proper balancing is done.[/quote]
There is as a matter of fact: \data\json\items\vehicle\engine.json should contain the fuel efficiency, rpm ranges, and gear ratios of liquid fueled engines.
Since engines of a certain type are set on a baseline editing that baseline should affect all engines based upon in. For example the 4 cylinder engine sets the baseline for the 6, 8, and 12 cylinder. Gearing is based on engine I believe, but I’m about two weeks behind on latest experimental so it might have changed.
Remember, increasing peak rpm will increase overall speed, adding additional gear ranges will allow for better power bands, and changing optimal rpm will allow for better efficiency at higher speeds. And of course modding the base efficiency will improve fuel consumption.
Of course you could always find the electric motors and tweak them for great justice (hilarity) while regular engines get fixed, since they have no rpm band. Fun fact, setting epower to a positive number will make an electric motor that actually charges the batteries as it runs. Note: doing so completely breaks intended vehicle balance.
At the moment, a 700kg vehicle with an Electric Motor can get 200 map tiles of driving range out of a single storage battery assuming a speed of 32kph. Said battery takes 74 hours, or 5 fifteen hour days of sunshine, to charge off of 1 Quantum, or 3 Upgraded, or 6 regular Solar Panels. As a rule of thumb, doubling vehicle mass doubles electricity consumption. Increasing speed to 64kph doubles fuel consumption again, and increasing speed to 96kph doubles fuel consumption yet again.
While waiting for engines to be fixed you can mod electric to be OP, sure, or you could sprint in rollerblades to to reach 95kph, which is more than double the speed of the fastest muscle vehicle. Regular rollerblades, for comparison, are about 55kph while the fastest muscle engine (handle, peddles, saddle) is 48kph. So… yeah… I’m glad I did thorough testing. I never would have guessed.
To go even faster on rollerblades, pick up Quick and Sure Footed. Not sure if Parkour makes a difference or not.
Coolthulu wrote an initial test to get max range of a vehicle (creates a vehicle wirh full tanks and just drives in a direction until out of gas) and I backported it to the pre-change code to get the old range values. Still needs some tweaking, but the range of these vehicles dropped by orders of magnitude, and the next step is adjusting whatever is necessary to get efficiency back to that point. Them we can see about rebalancing the system intentionally around example vehicle max range and MPG type values.