Vehicle build/repair times thru the roof / colors changed

[Voqar]

I sure hope these are bugs because they wreck the fun of the game. I’ve shelved the game for now because I am not spending my game time watching the hours tick by as I repair. This game is not supposed to be a clock watching sim and spending weeks and clearing entire towns of food to survive vehicle repairs is a really poor game.

1. Adding some things to, and repairing anything on vehicles now takes so much time that it literally takes an unpleasantly long time to build a vehicle (when it takes 4 hours to place a frame and many components) and repairs now take so long that you’d never want to USE your vehicle for fear of having weeks of repairing. It is completely ridiculous and completely UNFUN. This is another example of both selective realism ruining gameplay and/or code getting added to the game without any oversight or thought into the impact of a terrible idea.

2. The colors of component states for vehicles changed and this seems completely pointless (again, as with many changes over the past few months - arbitrary and adds nothing). I don’t know how long I’ve been playing this game - less than many for sure - 1-2 years - but having the vehicle “damage” colors (and more importantly the fully repaired color change to something that used to mean slightly damaged) is both jarring and confusing (and IMO adds nothing positive).

[Shopkeeper]

1. I haven’t updated in about a month so I can’t really comment on this.

2. Just gonna quote this real quick so people know what’s up.

6+ months of agonizing "realism" nerfs have ruined this game

Vehicle parts depend on items and the vehicle code previously required upon some ugly hacks to try and correctly handle damage when adding/removing parts. They now use the same code path (with the effect the colours are identical). This should allow us to close unintended behavior such as installing a broken gun as a turret, welding it, and then removing it and wielding it. Multiple code paths that do almost the same thing are a common problem in the codebase. We can’t really work on new features in that area until the existing issues are resolved.

[Ly1]

Really no comment on this?

I just fixed up and refitted a security van, nothing fancy. It took several hours real time and close to 2 seasons game time. Most of that time was spent doing nothing at all. Literally nothing. Hands off the keyboard, watching the clock tick, 0 interaction with the game.

Whoever is behind this needs to be taken out to the wood shed and shot.

[billygg]

This issue is pretty bogus for me as well.

[BeerBeer]

Interesting. So vehicle repairs take considerable time now? Note that a higher Mechanics skill reduces the time. Is it bad even with skill 10? It’s possible only skilled mechanics are supposed to be able to repair swiftly. Everyone else either suffers the longer times, finds books to learn from, or only does the badly needed repairs.

As for the colors, it did once bug me that the darker green meant 100% condition, but I got used to it. Does anyone else have similar memories? New players might find the bright green more logical.

The only thing I don’t know is if anything else affects the repair speed, such as Dexterity, or Intelligence, or hand/arm encumberance… What is the repair speed formula again?

[gamejunky]

Yeah, this change is pretty brain dead and goes against the whole concept of turn-based game play. Was this change added by someone that plays only real-time MMOs and RPGs, or something, and completely oblivious about what a rogue-like is?

[mlangsdorf]

My Mechanics 6 survivor with a Mechanics 3 NPC follower is still taking 3-4 hours to install heavy frames and just as long to repair them.

I’m not opposed to the longer install times. Building a deathmobile (even a modest one based on a stretched APC or Security Van chassis) should take a long time. Having to repeatedly go out and scavenge for more food while building my deathmobile was interesting.

I am opposed to the longer repair times. It’s impossible to miss bushes when driving cross country, no matter how I try, and each bush hit turns into several hours of repairs. This is unfun.

[Ly1]

Yeah even with mechanics 10 it takes forever.

[mlangsdorf]

I saw on reddit that higher skill is supposed to reduce times by up to 50%. If so, at skill 6, it would take about 36 minutes to touch up a yellow heavy frame, which would be reasonable (18 would be better), especially if NPCs could aid like they do with construction. But I’m not seeing any reduction.

[KiBoy]

What bothers me the most is the fact that you can still make your vehicle parts dark green by using welders/welding rigs/tailor kits/whatever else there is, but actually using the repair action in the vehicle menu caps at light green. At least, it seems to be a problem for me since I ported my save from an earlier experimental, where dark green vehicles could spawn ( I haven’t made a new world on this build yet, do vehicles still spawn with dark green health parts? )

Also, there’s no item in game to fix glass. It makes even less sense when you can use repair, and by extension welding to fix non-green solar panels, but soldering iron seems to have lost that capacity some experimental builds ago.

[Ly1]

Fully repaired vehicles can spawn as of the current experimentals, but they’re rare and I think they only spawn in specific places. Cars parked inside house garages and security vans parked outside jewelers are two potential sources of them. There may be more but those are the only two I’ve come across.

[PoeSalesman]

I completely agree, frankly. I’m at mechanics 8 and had to spend a ridiculous amount of time just repairing my truck. At this point, repair times are just tedious. While I’m complaining about that, I might as well mention that another issue is that they’ve added cranes and made engines much more heavy, but those cranes can’t be hooked to the engines for transport, at least into an adjacent storage area. No ideas if that’s a planned feature or not, but something is necessary if you’re going to make things this heavy, so we can actually salvage engines.

Also, I downloaded the experimental I’m playing on around September 26-27, and I can repair glass with my welder. Whether glass repair was intentionally removed or accidentally broken, it happened between then and now.

[KiBoy]

Fully repaired vehicles can spawn as of the current experimentals, but they’re rare and I think they only spawn in specific places. Cars parked inside house garages and security vans parked outside jewelers are two potential sources of them. There may be more but those are the only two I’ve come across.

Then this recent change is complete B-shit. Let us repair back to dark green health, because the only alternative is wasting few weeks in-game time ( and many hours in real life ) to take the parts out, repair them and put them back in. Good god if you got your heavy-duty frames damaged…

[quote=“PoeSalesman, post:12, topic:12585”]I completely agree, frankly. I’m at mechanics 8 and had to spend a ridiculous amount of time just repairing my truck. At this point, repair times are just tedious. While I’m complaining about that, I might as well mention that another issue is that they’ve added cranes and made engines much more heavy, but those cranes can’t be hooked to the engines for transport, at least into an adjacent storage area. No ideas if that’s a planned feature or not, but something is necessary if you’re going to make things this heavy, so we can actually salvage engines.

Also, I downloaded the experimental I’m playing on around September 26-27, and I can repair glass with my welder. Whether glass repair was intentionally removed or accidentally broken, it happened between then and now.[/quote]

Thanks for the info. I’m starting to lean towards the latter option.

About the engine weight, well, shopping carts can help you if you use the advanced inventory management to immediately transport the engine to the cart without having to pick it up. The problem starts later on at installing the engine, but it’s doable.

Still, I started building my deathmobile in early Summer. I’m in the second week of Winter now, and while I know that making a monster like that from scratch definitely added work time, but I had to spend a couple real-life days playing 4-5 hours a day to be able to complete it.

It’s way more tedious that it ought to be. I want to start exploring the northern part of the town already, cave in skulls of monsters and counter-attack brutes to death, but I still have to put military armor on 80% of my vehicle and I still need a couple cargo carriers.

Not to mention, I have to move my supplies in, but that shouldn’t take long. Having a single stow board on the sides helps speed up the process ( and makes installing storage batteries so much easier )

[jaked122]

[quote=“PoeSalesman, post:12, topic:12585”]I completely agree, frankly. I’m at mechanics 8 and had to spend a ridiculous amount of time just repairing my truck. At this point, repair times are just tedious. While I’m complaining about that, I might as well mention that another issue is that they’ve added cranes and made engines much more heavy, but those cranes can’t be hooked to the engines for transport, at least into an adjacent storage area. No ideas if that’s a planned feature or not, but something is necessary if you’re going to make things this heavy, so we can actually salvage engines.

Also, I downloaded the experimental I’m playing on around September 26-27, and I can repair glass with my welder. Whether glass repair was intentionally removed or accidentally broken, it happened between then and now.[/quote]

Try a cart of some sort. You might have to assemble one.
The cranes are meant to be used as jacks are (they have the same quality at a higher level).
You can use them from at least 2 tiles away.
Engines aren’t really feasible to carry (most of them at least) in real life, and this seems to be an area where someone decided that the game should resemble life more closely.

[Zireael]

Yeah even with mechanics 10 it takes forever.

There was a bug where a sign was inverted, increasing the time with increased skills instead of decreasing it. It was fixed with #18793