I created a makeshift charging station consisting of a folding frame, saddle, controls, foot pedals, and a car alternator. I was using this to kick-start dead batteries and recharge my welding station’s battery. hooking jumper cables to this contraption and another vehicle allowed me to slowly charge a dead battery. however because I didn’t install a wheel, the station didn’t move but still allowed me to increase my target speed up to 50 mph without increasing my actual speed, but I didn’t lose stamina this way. so if I just hold down wait while on this thing I can fully charge a battery in a couple minutes (1-2 in game hours depending on size of battery) faster than solar panels without and without drawbacks + its portable.
I wanted to report this because it seems a little powerful to fool the game into thinking your generating up to 50 mph worth of static on a bicycle for free. I’m hoping someone can patch this in the experimental to make it use stamina even though it has no wheels. so that way you can still charge batteries with jumper-cables but not have it be broken.
(I hope this doesn’t get removed because I like the idea of charging things with a makeshift charger if your strapped for materials, but want to see it fixed)
The stamina loss is pretty low. It may not be noticeable, especially if your strength is high.
Alternators don’t actually care about the speed of the vehicle, they have a constant load.
Stamina consumption doesn’t do much (you can just regen it in 5 minutes), but biking also drains your hunger, thirst and fatigue stats, meaning you will need to eat, drink and sleep more if biking a lot.
Don’t hold wait: there’s a wait function bound by default under | button.
foot pedals provide up to 45 power. a car alternator consumes exactly 7 power to produce 1492 epower. pedaling at or below the safe speed uses no more hunger/thirst than standing still. If you wanted you could (and should) put all 3 alternators on the pedals to consume a total of 21 power (less than half of what you are making) to produce a total of 4476 epower.
The chance of consuming hunger/thirst/fatigue increases with load. At 1.0 load (45 power for an 8 strength character), you will consume one every 10 turns, below that the chance is roughly (load/10)-in-1.0 to consume 1 hunger/thirst/fatigue.
Compare to regular hunger rate: 1 point of hunger/thirst/fatigue per 5 minutes (50 turns).
So statistically, pedaling at 0.2 load is enough to double your hunger rate (compared to not pedaling at all).
For a 10 strength character, pedaling with all 3 alternators will put your load at (4+7+11)/55=0.4, meaning your hunger rate is tripled compared to the regular rate.
Pedaling with just the truck alternator will give you almost half of the 3 alternator epower, while only doubling your hunger/thirst/fatigue rate.
So 3 alternators is better if you’re waiting, but if you’re crafting when pedaling and also trying to conserve food, it’s better to use only the truck alternator.