Vehicle Consumption and Efficiency Problems?

[KliPeH]

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:20, topic:13091”]Blazemod (vehicle additions pack) bundled with core game has this bug fixed.
Unless something changed, the one distributed by blaze does NOT have the bug fixed.

The bug mostly affects driving on roads. Offroading isn’t affected much.[/quote] So grabbing the latest experimental build (6045, as of writing this post) is pretty much “safe”?
I’d suggest locking threads with fixed bugs in the future.

[Vastin]

AFAIK the overall issue with fuel efficiency is still not fixed? Even small vehicles rip through both liquid fuel tanks and storage batteries like they were nothing.

Moreover solar panels charge rate is very low now. I had to hack my local jsons just so that an APC covered with panels could do much more than keep up with the minifridge drain (while not moving…). Even with that, it will still burn through a set of 4 large storage batteries in some fairly short hops. I’ve gotten used to just driving a few blocks each day rather than ever doing longer trips, without hacking the solar panels, I don’t think you could use a larger vehicle at all - which could be the intent?

At any rate in addition to the far lower efficiency, electric motors can barely go at 34 kph with an APC and can’t drive over a bush. Probably realistic, but not terribly fun.

The real problem is that even if you go with a gas/diesel engine, you’ll generally be draining it off about as fast as you can siphon gas out of cars you pass. I don’t mind gas being a precious commodity, but I’d rather it be treated as a rarer find with a much higher energy density than a common find that you have to go through like Niagara Falls. It’s logistically aggravating and makes vehicles a lot less fun when you have to spend half your time humping around a steel can and a hose.

Either way the deathmobile is now reduced to a very slow moving logistical base that you kind of crawl around in as a matter of necessity, not so much with the rolling engine of awesome.

So, more realistic in terms of it being difficult to keep an APC fueled in the apocolypse, but kind of unrealistic in that gas is very common - but seems to provide an energy density closer to that of cord-wood insofar as engine efficiency goes.

[Greiger]

I’m really starting to think that a lot of this is hyperbole. You are certainly not using up as much fuel as you gain if you siphon cars as you pass them, maybe out in the sticks between cities, or in a 20 ton behemoth that should be guzzling fuel, but in cities there are more than enough abandoned cars to top off a 60L tank. And that’s before you even look at gas stations.

[Vastin]

I’m really starting to think that a lot of this is hyperbole. You are certainly not using up as much fuel as you gain if you siphon cars as you pass them, maybe out in the sticks between cities, or in a 20 ton behemoth that should be guzzling fuel, but in cities there are more than enough abandoned cars to top off a 60L tank. And that’s before you even look at gas stations.

Of course it’s hyperbole.

Part of it is a confusion of scale - the actual distance between towns is only a few hundred meters, so running out of gas after going, say, a kilometer in an APC with a 60 liter tank seems really absurd, though in game you’d probably assume that was really more like 10km - though that’s still some truly awful fuel economy, more like what you might expect from a tracked Main Battle Tank with a turbine engine.

As for the quantity of gas available - there’s tons, but honestly, I’d rather there was 1/4 as much gas and it lasted 4x as long, just so it wasn’t such a logistical PITA. There’s already a lot of logistical challenges in the game, and you really do have to constantly run around with a jerrycan & siphon in order to keep your APC running nowadays - that part wasn’t really hyperbole at all.

The bit about solar isn’t hyperbole either - it’s not really feasible to run anything but a small car on solar now, and even those take days and days to recharge.

As a note, here’s a reference for the M113 personnel carrier. I doubt it’s super accurate, but lets assume it’s in the ball-park:

http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/cv/inf/M113.html

This puts the fuel load of the basic gas version at around 300l (80gal), and the range at about 322km (200m), which comes to right around 1km per liter. Interestingly this vehicle weighs a bit more (at 10.3mt), vs around 9.6mt for my fully loaded APC - I was a little surprised that the real thing weighed in that low, but then, I guess they aren’t nearly as heavily armored as an MBT.

Now, my APC only has one 60l tank, because I was too lazy to weld in any others, so it should only have ~60km range on a full tank. Lets just say that it didn’t come remotely close to that, being barely able to make it across town, and I found it so annoying that I ripped the fuel engine out after a day or two of refilling it, and threw in an electric engine with some modded solar panels until such time as the fuel efficiency bugs in the current release are ironed out and re-balanced.