Since foot pedals can no longer be crafted, oars remain as the only muscle-powered “engine” you can craft with rather basic resource base (just need access to wood and metal).
And they actually do function as a fully viable substitute for foot pedals on a bicycle-type wooden vehicle.
To clarify: oars remains fully functional as a vehicle engine on dry land, assuming said vehicle actually has enough wheels.
So basically now “rowboat wooden bicycle” is a staple DIY vehicle (consistently available via crafting alone, without relying on any salvaging for more “advanced” vehicle parts).
Makes we wonder, is everything working as intended here?
I mean, assuming you are sitting atop a wheeled vehicle that isn’t too heavy, there’s nothing preventing you from using oars to push yourself forward, like ski poles.
Its probably the stupidest thing I could imagine doing, but there is absolutely no physical limiter there.
I agree with you 100% that that’s actually completely possible.
However, as of right now, this isn’t just “possible”, this is actually the only way you can make a muscle-powered vehicle from scratch without access to more advanced components.
Even if moving a vehicle on land with oars is not intended, it should still be kept in the game since it does actually work…
Also; clearly we need “flintstone technique” powered vehicles…
As stupid it may sound - the first bicycles did not have pedals and were “walked”. They did offer faster speeds than walking or running (on flat ground) and were less exhausting.
At that point we’re just talking “push with feet”. Could implement skateboards n scooters n unicycles too with that, some sort of ‘standing seat’ concept.
I guess the problem with “flintstone technique” is that whatever part would actually enable it would be technically considered an engine. And, thus, it will accept alternators, among other things.
Leading to absolutely hilarious contraptions to the effect of “run in place for 3 minutes to recharge your coffee machine”.
So this should be possible yes but woefully inefficient. If we don’t already have it, we should have some kind of variable efficiency for engines on ground vs in water
To be fair, perhaps an even BIGGER problem comes from the fact that oars are considered to be CONTROLS.
So if you add oars to a vehicle (without any controls) you can now use said oars to control your OTHER engines. Up to and including 9000 hp helicopter turbines, if that’s what you have at hand.
Heh. I keep forgetting how janky our non-car vehicles are. We could probably somehow flag Controls that aren’t mechanical, and these should be posted to GitHub as issues.