Tire Irons, Wrenches and Socket Sets

A lot of cars have a spare tire and a scissor jack. Why? Because the previous car owners worried about getting a flat tire. It’s pretty much the norm - right?

What they don’t have is a wrench, a tire iron or a socket wrench. None of those car owners would actually be able to change their wheel if they got a flat.

It, of course, follows that the hapless apocalypse survivor will also not be changing any flat tires very soon.

So, I have some thoughts about what could be done:

  1. Add wrenches to the item drop list for cars and other vehicles.

In cars.json emergency.json and vehicles.json there are lines like …
{ “x”: -2, “y”: 1, “chance”: 15, “items”: [ “jack_small”, “wheel” ] }
or
{ “x”: -2, “y”: 1, “chance”: 15, “items”: [ “jack_small”, “wheel_wide_or” ] }

Just change those to [ “jack_small”, “wrench”, “wheel” ] or whatev. and you’re done. Badda-bing badda-boom. The “car_kit” item group should probably also have “wrench” added.

PRO: Simple, future survivors and mutants will thank you.
CON: Wrench is too powerful, they must suffer.

Further notes: You could have “wrench” on a separate line with a smaller drop chance.

2. Make ‘tire irons’ a thing. (Can’t really recommend)

Add a new item that only works on wheels, and only allow wheels to be changed with them. Add them to the car drops as above.

PRO: Survivors won’t suddenly be able to dismantle nearly everything as soon as they check a couple of car boots.
CON: Making wheel changing use a different mechanism to WRENCH just feels technically icky.

  1. Split off WRENCH and WRENCH_FINE into separate tools.

The typical crescent wrench won’t be able to both loosen a car lug nut and disassemble an eyebot. Add a new tool for the detail work.

PRO: Wrenches found in cars would no longer be all-powerful.
CON: More work to implement

3 Likes

This sounds like a good idea to me, I wonder how hard it would be to implement. If I knew how to do all this and it wouldn’t be too hard and time consuming I’d frankly just make it and make a PR myself.

Ah, somebody went for Option 2 but it didn’t pass the final hurdle.

I have mixed feelings about that solution as it would stop you using normal wrenches to change tires. Something that is most certainly possible in the real world (and you can see the Youtube videos to confirm it).