Vehicle construction

[Champagne]

So I have a car that I crashed into a toolshed. Fortunately There Is another one not too far away Is it possible for me to put another gas tank into my current car and maybe even extend the storage space/ size of the chassis? Does anyone have interesting builds of vehicles? Last question: Can I build a side car for my motorcycle?

[TurningBreeze]

If your mechanics skill is high enough, you can pretty much do any of that. With the relevant tools, some steel and some batteries, you can gradually transform your car into a 14 wheeler if you want.

To get to the interface: press “e” to examine, then press an arrow key in the direction of an adjacent (non-storage) component of the vehicle. From here you can navigate to the location on the chassis which concerns you, then add/remove/repair components. Try to do it without the bits you need and it will tell you what you’re missing.

[drake1storm]

Am I just a bad driver? Everyone invests so much time in cars, but I rarely keep them functioning for more than 5 minutes.

PS, random tip, a big rig can plow straight into a bunker. Handy if you have no other way in.

[eternalflame]

Generally, it takes driving skill of at least 4 to not “fumble with the controls” occasionally constantly while attempting to drive straight. Even if you read a Top Gear Magazine to get your skill to 1, you will still have to drive around a long time before you do not risk colliding into random crap next to the road. You can reduce the risk by driving slower and only tapping ‘5’ rather than holding it down, thus giving you time to react. On the other hand, slower speeds translate into longer travel times.

As for keeping your vehicle operational, I’d recommend finding its engine. Many of the built in vehicles have the engine in one of the front tiles, where it risks the greatest damage if you want to use your ride to demolish houses or forests. Moving the engine back is a good idea, provided you can do it. Armouring the front should help but I have not managed to test this extensively. Putting an extra layer of frame outside the wheels should shield them from damage. Wide wheels are rare but they let you drive over land mines safely. I have not tested other traps with a wide wheeled vehicle.

[Flare]

Am I just a bad driver? Everyone invests so much time in cars, but I rarely keep them functioning for more than 5 minutes.

You exp gets spent the more input you give while driving in a car. That is to say you won’t gain any exp, or very little from driving in a straight line with no input like going left or right, or going faster or slower.

Holding down left or right with a little gas to drive in a slow circle is a good way to quickly spend all your exp on driving skill as you’re constantly giving it input to keep turning.

[kenoxite]

Holding down left or right with a little gas to drive in a slow circle is a good way to quickly spend all your exp on driving skill as you’re constantly giving it input to keep turning.

Which makes me think that we should eventually get a race track (like http://youtu.be/E9lRMzuMg3I). A place to train our driving and test our prototypes properly. And, once NPCs are fleshed out, make them learn how to drive and compete with players in a Carmageddon style.

[Asra]

You can get XP for driving by running over zombies and animals too, right?

[drake1storm]

[quote=“eternalflame, post:4, topic:1040”]Generally, it takes driving skill of at least 4 to not “fumble with the controls” occasionally constantly while attempting to drive straight. Even if you read a Top Gear Magazine to get your skill to 1, you will still have to drive around a long time before you do not risk colliding into random crap next to the road. You can reduce the risk by driving slower and only tapping ‘5’ rather than holding it down, thus giving you time to react. On the other hand, slower speeds translate into longer travel times.

As for keeping your vehicle operational, I’d recommend finding its engine. Many of the built in vehicles have the engine in one of the front tiles, where it risks the greatest damage if you want to use your ride to demolish houses or forests. Moving the engine back is a good idea, provided you can do it. Armouring the front should help but I have not managed to test this extensively. Putting an extra layer of frame outside the wheels should shield them from damage. Wide wheels are rare but they let you drive over land mines safely. I have not tested other traps with a wide wheeled vehicle.[/quote]

Huh, never knew that. I guess I finally have a reason to get more than 2 mechanics.

[eternalflame]

Why get anything less than 6 mechanics? Time spent reading is time spent filling experience pool for melee training.

[drake1storm]

I generally use fire to clear towns, so melee isn’t something I really value.

[Ferodaktyl]

Wide wheels are rare but they let you drive over land mines safely. I have not tested other traps with a wide wheeled vehicle.

Just busted my wide wheel passing over a nailboard trap. Now i must find another wheel, though the car doesn’t seem impaired in any way by the busted wheel. I guess as long as you have 2 functional wheel, you can warp along the map

[Iosyn]

[quote=“eternalflame, post:4, topic:1040”]Wide wheels are rare but they let you drive over land mines safely. I have not tested other traps with a wide wheeled vehicle.

Just busted my wide wheel passing over a nailboard trap. Now i must find another wheel, though the car doesn’t seem impaired in any way by the busted wheel. I guess as long as you have 2 functional wheel, you can warp along the map :P[/quote]
Yep and Yep.

Cataclysm: Any land-based vehicle can function with only two intact wheels.
Any extra wheels are simply redundancies for the first two.

[Flare]

Might I also point out that along with that, it doesn’t really matter where you put your wheels. Putting them in a line front of the driver’s seat on a 15 tile wide vehicle is entirely possible, and provides the bonus of them hitting any land mines and shotgun traps before they hit you.

[TurningBreeze]

I dunno, I’ve had issues with wheel placement before. My plan was to put all the wheels in the center/back of the car (with my storage) and surround them with boards so that they wouldn’t normally take damage. The vehicle also had a roughly 3x5 roofed front cab with driver’s seat, bed, RV unit etc. When I removed the wheels that had originally been on the front cab (it was a “car” in another lifetime), topspeed went to zero despite still having six wheels in the back. I think there must be some manner of limitations on where and how many wheels you need to make the vehicle go.

Also, more wheels usually means higher topspeed with the same engine. They’re not just for redundancy.

[i2amroy]

I dunno, I’ve had issues with wheel placement before. My plan was to put all the wheels in the center/back of the car (with my storage) and surround them with boards so that they wouldn’t normally take damage. The vehicle also had a roughly 3x5 roofed front cab with driver’s seat, bed, RV unit etc. When I removed the wheels that had originally been on the front cab (it was a “car” in another lifetime), topspeed went to zero despite still having six wheels in the back. I think there must be some manner of limitations on where and how many wheels you need to make the vehicle go.

The game does a rough calculation of the center of mass of your vehicle and checks to see if that center is within the supported area of the wheels. If it isn’t then it will deem it an invalid wheel configuration and your vehicle won’t run. So while only 2 wheels will work, your vehicles center of mass needs to be in the right place. The more wheels you have, the more area is supported by them and the less balanced your vehicle needs to be to run correctly.

(In the case of your car if you had of had some major counterweights on the back of it to move the center of mass back near the wheels then it should have worked.)