Vehicles and damage received

fairly new to the game - I was wondering if there was any way of seeing how much damage is done to your vehicle when you run into things, besides the standard ‘watch parts change from green to red.’ i spend a lot of my time driving around in my only, incredibly precious and equally fragile vehicle, avoiding shrubs and rabbits. should i just be mowing them down whilst laughing maniacally? everyone deals with an apocalypse differently.

hey you, hi. i figure the best you can do is to hedgehog-up your ride by equipping it with blades or spikes which you simply replace after they fail from absorbing all the damage they can handle.

once you can make batteries, have gotten your first load of them from silently raiding a lab, got lucky with stores in town etc, you can upgrade your core to the most expensive plating you can afford … while putting a row with cheap or plating between it and your outer spikes. some damage will still come to the core but at least you have an ‘i dont care’ zone around you.

seriously, just add some outer stuff and let it fail. its amazing how much juice you will save that way!

don’t worry about the bushes. but do get wide wheels and put plating on them asap.

How do you create your own batteries?

Batteries:

Skills

  • Electronics 2
  • Mechanics 2

Comps

  • screwdriver OR integrated toolset
  • ammonia x1 OR lemon x1
  • steel chunk x1 OR butter knife x1 OR steak knife x1 OR bolt steel x1 OR scrap metal x1
  • aluminum can x1 OR tin can x1

Batteries in 5 easy steps.

1 Use your screwdriver to stab a hole in your lemon.
2 Insert butter knife into the hole in your lemon.
3 Cram butter knife lemon into a can.
4 ???
5 Profit.
You have made 100 batteries!

It’s the only way I see it working, but ya Kenoxite has it down. I believe you only need mechanics 1 though.

Based on what I’ve seen, that’s true for any recipe that has a secondary skill - the secondary only has to be at 1, whereas the primary has to at least equal the difficulty rating.

Good to know. That might save some skill points in my default survivalist template (unfortunately it doesn’t).

You mean you never made one of these in middle school science class?

Way back in the day, it just used less butter knifes/cans and more wires.

It also seems like damage to the vehicle is like a shock wave. most damage to the front and slowly to the back where it stops. Well that’s my explanation of how my car’s front turns to light green and headlights break, while in the inside the seat belts and gas tanks all go yellow.

Ammonia carboys are common as feck, drink and girls. So are knives. Tin cans aren’t, but aluminium ones are.
more batteries than you can ever use. Bonus is, when you run out of ammonia you’ve got a carboy you can fill with gas or water.

As for rabbits: Gahaha. run them over.

Shrubs: Don’t. For the love of god. I actually drove my own car IRL into the corner of a hedge. Shrubs and hedges are most certainly not something you want to run over.

Drive heavy vehicle + into a Hedge = expect hedge to capitulate.
Pretty good theory, right? Seems real life doesn’t work that way.
Turns out it tore the rear carbon plasic bumper thing partway off my car and the hedge was no worse the wear.