You mean the mirrors are mounted on naked frames with some extra plating added, and you’re viewing them through reinforced windshields? Since you can’t mount mirrors on same tile as windshields. The picture doesn’t really make me fully understand your build.
Been trying to make a 5 wide vehicle work but I feel so exposed on turns, if I’d end up stopping whilst the vehicle isn’t straight, monsters could sidestep right into it. I’m going back to the 7 wide model I had at the start.
However those outer quarterpanels will turn into something a bit more lethal (I’m thinking sawblades, aaaall the way).
It takes a special kind of autism to sit and savescum for ~8 hours, testing various approaches to improving ones mobile home/murder machine. Being my first proper vehicle this is still very much a learning process, in the future I’ll be able to slap something together much faster without so much experimentation.
You fancy city dwellers with your fancy powered vehicles!
We in the wilderness have two wooden frames with two cart wheels, powered solely my your legs and by the abysmal screeching of a zombie horde behind you…
Ok, I’m puzzled.
This modified Security Van worked fine (diesel engine it the one it came with); then I added the cargo carriers and a few 60L tanks.
Top speed suddenly dropped to 5 km/h. 7, if I engage both engines.
I plan on making a solar-primary mobile base with a minimal-weight gas backup engine once I lock down the nearby mechanics garage. I’m hoping for an APC/Security van sized build. Couple of questions:
Will one motor be sufficient or will I need two?
What should my backup be?
How heavy should I go on frames and armour?
I know it’s hard to say anything definitive, but ballpark speculation is welcome.
All three of your questions really depend on how much weight you plan on actually carrying inside your vehicle. If you are disciplined and can keep the supplies you carry around in the back to a minimum, you can use smaller motors and heavier armor. If you want to carry around a lot of stuff, you will need stronger/more engines.
That being said, electric engines are not going to be as strong as fossil fuel ones, and the storage batteries to power it are heavy. It will be easiest to travel light on the inside.
Broad strokes I know, but you have to decide on the payload before you can build the vehicle.
I’ll probably and keep my hoarding to a minimum, bringing only stuff I have proper use-cases for and maybe caching less-likely stuff along my way. I could probably skimp a little on armour, especially on the sides and rear, as I don’t mean to use the vehicle in too much of a deathmobile fashion , apart from potentially running over the odd zed or two when it’s convenient. I’d prefer to have it be primarily renewable since I don’t want to have to siphon gas from cars or take on a gas station filled with zeds every time I run low on my eternal roadtrip. Thanks!
Depends on the motor size I guess, a single V12 diesel engine is enough to power my monstrous 47 ton mobile base built entirely out of heavy and orichalcum frames and plates put on every component.
I plan on trying out an enhanced electric motor (or two might be needed) down the line, but this diesel engine is pretty efficient for now.
Have some pictures, I’m really having fun building this thing. Currently on the look out for more drum rollers.
Also just built an exploration vehicle, managed to keep it at a low 3 ton for mobility’s sake, of course it has a boom crane, hauling space and is fully made out of orichalcium. Battery is taken care of by the main vehicle’s solar panels, got a recharge station in the back and can just swap storage battery to a full one on demand.
Damn, thats genius, i always have been troubled while driving, since i put my exploration vehicle attached on a side, i have to be careful while turning. and if i put it on the back, crashing in reverse is totally forbidden, never ocurred to me to make a docking bay with a few more extra tiles xD
That’s the price I pay for flattening everything in my path.
Really though, is there a way to increase my off-road capabilities and still use drum rollers? Before I completely switched out my old tires I had some wide 24" off-road ones mounted at the same time but that still had me at 10% IIRC.
Your vehicle weighs 50 tons. You’re going to need a lot of road rollers to reduce that ground pressure to something manageable, and road rollers (by design) do not have very good off-road performance.
EDIT: Completely unrelated to vehicles, but can you fix clothes that are ‘burnt’ and do burnt items get some sort of penalty (like it’ll break almost immediately next time it takes fire damage)?
I did some digging on wheel mechanics and saw your post on github, now of course specific numbers may have changed over time, but can I just go into wheel.json and look at contact_area to see which have best off-road traction, or is there more to it?
Because drum rollers seem to actually have relatively high contact_area, so since you’re saying they have poor off-road performance, is it calculated differently now?
Also where are treads listed?
