Tips, Tricks, and Newb Questions!

[Namal]

hmm, ok, I am noob at vehicles, can you tell me please how I can remove tires from cars to put them on other cars? Also, if I have a full battery from a car can I load a motorbike battery via jumping cable with it?

[Litppunk]

only just getting started with my own first vehicle building. (Rebuilding totaled APC and building ATV from scratch) Tires: need a jack and a wrench and lvl 2 mechanics. Then just press e > space vehicle occupies (doesn’t have to be the tire) and then scroll over to where the tire is and press o for remove (the bar at the top shows what you can do where) battery: no idea… haven’t found any jumper cables yet.
Well off I go to see what my first summer has in store for me

btw 1 shot manhacks? Why does it have to be 1 shot and how tough are they? I have run out of awesome buildings to break into and was thinking about doing some hacking. I child zims in 2 shot and rotwielers in 1 with my (20) throwing knives is that good enough? Also I have rollerblades so I am faster than anything I have met on pavement (47) move cost

[Coolthulhu]

btw 1 shot manhacks? Why does it have to be 1 shot and how tough are they?

They’re incredibly weak and a full cloth armor set you can make at tailoring 3 will stop all their attacks except ones to the head (tailoring won’t make you a good helmet until like lvl 6).

By the time you raid labs, you may as well just ignore the manhacks and keep on hacking until you’re done.

[Litppunk]

oh cool doc’s office and police office should be a breeze then.

[Aluminumfoil]

battery: no idea… haven’t found any jumper cables yet.

Find a vehicle with a little charge left in the battery and replace your dry battery with the charged one.

[Namal]

Is it possible to repair broken consoles?

[dovla]

Is it possible to repair broken consoles?

Nope. They’re useful for parts though (deconstruct using construction menu).

[Visotr0n]

I know it isn’t the right place for technical question, but I don’t want to start new thread just for one question which is:

Is it safe to update “cataclysmdda-0.B-2681” to the most recent experimental versions without having saves corrupted? Is it fully compatible and nothing will disappear from my world or inventory?

[Coolthulhu]

[quote=“Visotr0n, post:6588, topic:42”]I know it isn’t the right place for technical question, but I don’t want to start new thread just for one question which is:

Is it safe to update “cataclysmdda-0.B-2681” to the most recent experimental versions without having saves corrupted? Is it fully compatible and nothing will disappear from my world or inventory?[/quote]

Depends on how old is the save version.
Very old saves can refuse to load, newer ones should load just fine.

If it loads badly, just close the game with ‘X’ on the window rather than saving it.

[Malaxxor]

I know this is more of a question than a suggestion, but:

Why is V8 stored in a sealed JAR? Wouldn’t it make a bit more sense to use glass bottles to store it? So I’d suggest to change the recipe of the “sealed jar of V8” to use a glass bottle instead of a glass jar and to rename it to “sealed bottle of V8”.

[AllisonW]

[quote=“Malaxxor, post:6590, topic:42”]I know this is more of a question than a suggestion, but:

Why is V8 stored in a sealed JAR? Wouldn’t it make a bit more sense to use glass bottles to store it? So I’d suggest to change the recipe of the “sealed jar of V8” to use a glass bottle instead of a glass jar and to rename it to “sealed bottle of V8”.[/quote]

Probably would, but I went with the jar because 1) it’s smaller and 2) I was sticking to existing conventions of using jars for “canning”-type things, not bottles. The trick is that the jar is not simply a container in this case; it’s a tool being used for carefully preserving a food item so it’ll last a really long time without giving you botulism, and there are lots of jars actually made for that specific purpose. (Also, have a look at this. These are jars actually designed for both preserving and pouring, at least as far as I can tell. https://websecure.cnchost.com/weckjars.com/productsDetail.php?category=5 )

I’m glad you’re using the recipe, though! (Assuming you are. If you’re not, whoops.)

[KA101]

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:6589, topic:42”][quote=“Visotr0n, post:6588, topic:42”]I know it isn’t the right place for technical question, but I don’t want to start new thread just for one question which is:

Is it safe to update “cataclysmdda-0.B-2681” to the most recent experimental versions without having saves corrupted? Is it fully compatible and nothing will disappear from my world or inventory?[/quote]

Depends on how old is the save version.
Very old saves can refuse to load, newer ones should load just fine.

If it loads badly, just close the game with ‘X’ on the window rather than saving it.[/quote]

Some other details:

Best practice is to keep your known-good version (wherever you’re updating from) and unzip the latest DDA to its own folder/directory, etc. Then copy over your config, save, and templates folders to the new one.

“Very old” in context is version 0.8 or earlier, IIRC. Yours should be perfectly fine, but given that DDA’s Experimental, problems happen, hence why we recommend keeping backups. Had a version about a month ago break vehicle-handling, compacting everyone’s veh to a undriveable clump, forex.

[Packbat]

Pro-tip for backing up save files: Cataclysm: DDA save folders compress really, really well. I think my Build 2700 save folder went from just under 15 MB to just over 1 MB when I put it in a .zip archive.

[Visotr0n]

@Coolthulhu, @KA101:
Thanks for the replies. I have 3 versions of Cataclysm DDA installed, but I have a very sucessful character in version 2681, so I didn’t want to start from scratch. I do backups of the saves every day (as I do with EVERY game I play, I lost saves/got saves corrupted from many games before so I’ve learned )

I was more concerned about not obvious compatibility issues like “this car you left 5 kilometers away is now corrupted”, not the things I would see right after I load my save. And I read about commits to master release and found out that some mods were flagged as obsolete, so I was afraid that mods I used in gameplay would not work. But I did what you recommended - unpacked another version in it’s own directory, copied all data (config, graveyard, memorial, saves, templates) and launched the save. My car is working, every item seems to be where it was, so it’s working fine It’s a shame there is no changelog of new expermental version changes so you could check what can be wrong after updating.

Anyway, it’s working fine, I’m playing latest experimental for about 30 minutes using my old save (from 2681 - not old at all) and EVERYTHING IS OK It’s funny how experimental versions are IMHO less buggy than stable one.

Again, thank you for replies

@Packbat
Lol, I’m so impatient I just use 7-zip for packing, but without compression. But it’s logical that save folders compress well - these are just text files, readable by human. It’s well known fact that text files compress well.
UPDATE: I tried to compress, and my 29,6 MB world just compressed to 926 KB using LZMA2 on Ultra. Nice Thanks for the info, it will speed up my process of sending saves to cloud.

[KA101]

FWIW: “obsolete” mods have been integrated into mainline, so being thus permanently “on”, there’s no need to have 'em in the mod list.

[Packbat]

UPDATE: I tried to compress, and my 29,6 MB world just compressed to 926 KB using LZMA2 on Ultra. Nice Thanks for the info, it will speed up my process of sending saves to cloud.

Ni-i-ice!

[Lorith]

If I recall correctly, I read that the foodco could purify water directly into the vehicle tanks? I haven’t been able to do that, or find where I thought I read it. Am I imagining things, or did I just place things incorrectly in my vehicle?

And a tip: Labs are not nearly as bad as people say they are if you move slowly and think ahead. You can go in with just a pocket knife, a few rocks, and a bit of food and be fine, as long as you use shift+X to peek around corners to check for turrets. If you see one, hit esc and close the door. Keep to the walls and you will avoid practically all threats. When you can reliably take down a manhack (a tossed rock can often kill in one hit with just a little skill) you can even intentionally fail hacking computers to get combat knives and plutonium from them. Remember that if there is ever a threat, step directly away from any nearby computer, as that will make it impossible for the security bots to shoot you if they show up. Keep to the darkness, avoid light. And if you kill manhacks by tossing rocks, you can even kill the security bots by tossing rocks/manhacks/knives at them.

Personally, I find labs to be some of the safest areas in the game, though I do play with 5x or more zombie spawns. That said, ice labs suck.

Another good thing to do: if you find military ids, find a bunker or two and only open the top to start with. The inside is safe, so you can flip on your flashlight to look around. Only open a room that has explosives in it that you can use immediately. Packed LAWs are awesome, as you can immediately bust open any other room with one by standing on one side of the hall and shooting the glass on the other side. I reccommend aiming for another room with explosives, if possible. Never enough boom. C4 can also be dropped right beside the glass to bust it open, and I think grenades work, but I haven’t tried those yet.

I have begun to change how I start to instead go on a mad dash to find a working motorcycle, then race around the countryside looking for science and/or military id cards and somewhere to use them. Both areas are extremely safe compared to the towns.

[AllisonW]

On the military bunkers: if you have an electrohack or fingerhack, you can actually hack the card readers. From my own experience, hacking the card readers on the inside of the bunker doesn’t produce turrets; it just has a chance of breaking the card reader if you mess up. If that happens, you can still use explosives to get in. Alternately, an acetylene torch can also be used to cut through the metal doors.

In any case, I’d save extra military ID cards for further bunkers whenever remotely possible, and only use them to open the front door to avoid spawning turrets. The doors inside get hackin’s or other breaking-and-entering tactics.

[Eric]

One thing on labs: A really easy way to check for “turret rooms” is to check the walls of the hallways. If part of a wall is lit up, do not enter the room that wall piece is attahed to, as turret rooms are always illuminated.

[Lorith]

[quote=“AllisonW, post:6598, topic:42”]On the military bunkers: if you have an electrohack or fingerhack, you can actually hack the card readers. From my own experience, hacking the card readers on the inside of the bunker doesn’t produce turrets; it just has a chance of breaking the card reader if you mess up. If that happens, you can still use explosives to get in. Alternately, an acetylene torch can also be used to cut through the metal doors.

In any case, I’d save extra military ID cards for further bunkers whenever remotely possible, and only use them to open the front door to avoid spawning turrets. The doors inside get hackin’s or other breaking-and-entering tactics.[/quote]
Didn’t know about the hacking bit, and an acetylene torch can be difficult to get compared to running into two ids in the fields. I second the mention on only using cards on the front door after you have any form of entry, however. Why use a card that could open an entire bunker just to open one room? Just bring the alternate id cards that go BOOM, hiss, or click. Also, I have used missile launchers on rooms full of explosives, and have yet to run into any problems besides a scratched grenade and a dented incendiary grenade, so don’t be afraid to shoot explosive-filled rooms open. Just don’t use nukes

One thing on labs: A really easy way to check for “turret rooms” is to check the walls of the hallways. If part of a wall is lit up, do not enter the room that wall piece is attahed to, as turret rooms are always illuminated.

Also highly agree with this - if you don’t have night vision. Higher levels of night vision make it nearly impossible to tell without peeking inside. If you see the wall lit up from a distance, don’t bother opening the door. If you can’t tell, stand diagonal from the door, open it, then shift+X to peek into the door frame. If there is a turret, you should be able to hit escape to avoid being shot, then close the door. Ten labs, only been shot once when I opened the door from straight in front.