If you’re going down that path then file editing or mods can do the same anyway.
Also, I’m thinking of adding craftable engine additions that improve engine power, but I don’t know much about engine construction. If someone could point me to a decent reference I’ll start right on it.
No automotive experience on my part except for oil changes and tire replacements, so I have no idea how accurate these sources may be:
Engine Construction:
http://automobile-us.blogspot.com/2013/06/engine-construction.html
The most basic guide I could find which explains what-does-what in an automobile engine. Still pretty intense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine
This is the extremely intense Wikipedia article about the engines used in automobiles. This looks like it can take your mechanics skill to 10 and requires an intelligence of 12 to read.
Ways to increase engine power:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question395.htm
Methods listed here include decreasing internal air resistance by using better air filters or “high-performance exhaust systems”. Also there’s something about a computer chip you can replace on the vehicle to boost the horsepower.
http://www.custom-car.us/basics/power-basics.aspx
I did my best. I hope these are good enough. 
I’m pretty sure those ECU replacements just “tune” your engine to provide more horses at the cost of fuel efficiency. They inject more fuel into the cylinder so you get more overall energy release, even though you’re further from the stoichiometric ideal - more fuel leaves the cylinder unburned and goes out the tailpipe. I may be full of crap though.
Diesel engines have turbochargers, which are basically air turbines that capture the energy of the exhaust being pushed out of the engine and use it to increase the motor torque. I think. Actually, I was wrong. They capture energy from the exhaust and use it to pump more air into the cylinder. But I don’t think you can find a vehicle diesel that isn’t turbocharged anymore.
EDIT:
Also, cooling air before it gets injected into the cylinder gives you more expansion and therefore more power. I’d imagine you could find “quantum peltier elements / TECs” just like you find quantum solar panels that you could build an intercooler out of.
And of course there’s good ol’ nitrous oxide, which basically involves mixing the oxygen in with the fuel, allowing you to have way more fuel in the cylinder and therefore way, way more horsepower.
Okay I can see a few things I can add, they’ll probably require high skill to make and equally high skill to install, but it might ease the loss of multiple engines somewhat.
Does anyone have any ideas for what can be added to vehicles? I’m currently rebalancing turrets for a new PR that just got merged so I might as well kill as many birds with this one stone as I can.
By the by, vehicle turrets can now be manually aimed (experimental feature). For Manual turrets like the slingshot cannon, walk onto the same tile and press “f” to shoot with nothing in your hands to use it. For automatic turrets like the pulse turret, they can be fired the same way (though it will always be single shot), or on any tile with vehicle controls (which makes ALL turrets fire at that target).
Note that turrets aren’t originally balanced to be fired by players (and thus influenced by player skill) initially, so your may have some obscenely powerful weapons until I put together a balance patch.
This may have been suggested before, but would it be possible to add little mini-engines that are “foldable” so we can have little portable motorbikes/etc.? Out where I live folks tend to strap these little gas engines onto normal bikes, I just got to thinking that it wouldn’t be to hard for a Cata:DDA survivor to slap on a small electric motor to a foldable vehicle.
I have no idea how realistic this may be, but it would be great have a miniature electric moped which can stored in a player’s rolling fortress and used for looting :).
On the subject of adding engines to bikes, I once saw a bike that had a little engine welded to the front whose torque output was just a rubber wheel that drove the front wheel of the bike. You’d start it by getting the bike moving on pedal-power and then pulling a lever that engages the drive shaft with the wheel, thus turning the engine over and causing it to start. It’d be neat to have a “bicycle engine kit” found at garages and such that takes 1 or 2 Mechanics to install but can only be installed over a wheel and can’t drive an alternator.
I did make the smaller engines foldable (and slightly stronger, the vanilla small electric motor can’t move, even with the absolute lightest, minimum vehicle parts installed, making it pointless to bother installing). So there’s that.
Anywho, let’s not derail this thread any further, there’s a thread for this already.
How useful are these big mobile fortresses of insanity really? My optimal vehicle given unlimited resources is 8x5 and that includes a bumper. It seems like these big Death Stars would be a bitch to move anywhere.
I terms of usefullness . They are not.
Just fun to build an brag about.
In terms of efficiency a bit bigger then the average car is more then enough for all your needs unless you need unfathomable ammounts of cargo space for whatever reason.
My vehicle is my life. I have 7 years of loot and crafting materials stored in the Solar Roller VI. That’s why I need massive amounts of cargo storage.
The flame needs a pocketdimension generator for his vehicle . Implement now. We got teleporters so why not :P. labfinal loot plox.
I also have a foldable bike now, though did recently realize i need to find a way to modify it 
can’t accelerate if i’m holding over 200kg of weight in it. Most of the reason I have these giant vehicles is that I usually need alot of stuff for making all the things I make. And I like having a place to sleep with gun turrets to fend off bears xD, I could theoretically go full wandering nomad on a bike, but I prefer to have my books on hand and craft stuff as I got till I got all the recipes and such.
I am a mechanical engineer if any one wants info on how cads work or what could be added to the game eg
Turbos
ECU’s
I can help 
I think I can make that happen. I’ll put it right next to the Vortex Generator.
cool
[quote=“stk2008, post:854, topic:207”]I am a mechanical engineer if any one wants info on how cads work or what could be added to the game eg
Turbos
ECU’s
I can help :)[/quote]
Yeah, I was just thinking of this.
Personally I love sticking multiple engines on my deathmobiles and if the future update mitigates that… well, let’s aim for some other cool stuff.
Turbo chargers, Superchargers, Carburettors and Fuel injection.
Unfortunately I don’t know much about them or how it would translate.
E.g how would an engine perform with a turbo? How would the same engine perform with a super?
From my vague recollections turbochargers don’t kick in until you hit a certain speed right?
I think they were basically air compressors to force more air into the engine but I’m certainly no mechanic.
I doubt you could fashion one in a cave with a pile of scraps like most CDDA survivors, then again people build record-breaking vehicles in back yard sheds to race on the salt flats IRL.
As to fuel injection, how about adding NOS? (NO[sub]2[/sub], Nitrous oxide.)
Frankly I think that should be fairly easy to install compared to designing and fashioning a brand new turbocharger from scrap iron. You’d probably get a nice power boost but have a chance of damaging your engine from heavy, sustained use or overuse.
You could make it with ammonium nitrate, which we already have in the game, although I think you’d need some decent apparatus to make a compressed can with enough of it to be worth using.
You wouldn’t just be able to stick it in a plastic bottle or jerrycan and pour it into your gas tank, that’s for sure.
It’d probably be easier to raid a garage or something-- you’d need a kit to modify the engine intakes and the tank of NOS itself.
As we’re talking about engine tuning, how about some kind of heat and oil cooling?
A standard V12 should be producing a hell of a lot of heat as it is-- hell, even big SUVs like a Range rover or Land rover will start to have problems if they’re stuck in heavy traffic for a few hours. Having several of them in the same vehicle would probably be like a goddamn sauna.
Also what do you guys think about having moddable engines, like the current gun mod system?
Moddable engines, moddable weapons, moddable anything I’m all for. If someone actual implements engine modifications I would be extremely happy (especially considering the cap on engines that might be going in soon).
Hey hey hey! Let’s see some vehicles here!
[spoiler=I’m on a boat]
Not exactly seaworthy yet, still need more boat boards. Also pretty vulnerable until my blob plating finishes growing.
Armed with four broadside blob slingers (rocks), a forward scorpion ballista, and two rear storm bolters.
[/spoiler]
Awesome, Blaze!
