If you look at the json for those two furitures there’s no motor in them. Shouldn’t they have a chance to drop an eletric motor or at least a small electric motor ?
Would adding motor to their drop create a problem, like making electric motors to easy to find ?
I agree, I think they should drop electric motors.
From memory; I can’t see how adding motors to the drop list would affect game balance negatively. I don’t think they are generally that valuable early game (IMO when game balance is most important); and by mid game - you can pull them off of any electric vehicle you come across.
It needs to be a smaller electric motor, which I’m not sure exists in the game right now. The existing one are vehicle-scale and extremely high torque and high power consumption.
Desk fans can be disassembled for small electric motors.
The vehicle washing machine requires a small electric motor, and at 70 lbs, seems in line with the weight of most household washing machines.
Electric motors are a rarer drop than small electric motors, but I don’t know if that’s intention or just one of the things that happened because the things that people have thought should include electric motors have turned out to be rare.
–Or both! Which seems rather odd to happen, but I guess it could. Right? Or does that not make sense?
–Hmm I was going to contribute a more useful thing to this comment. But I forgot. I’ll post it if I remember. Which will probably be at a time where it is useless.
So the Idea is that small electric motors are too small and electric motors are too big ?
And also that small electric motors ‘size’ are a bit inconsistent since its found powering : Electric Bike, Fans, vehicle doors, and electric jackhammers ?
The solution would be to introduce a medium electric motor or a tiny electric motor ?
An electric bike doesn’t need more than a 3-4 HP motor, and even that’s possibly more powerful than you need. And 3-4 HP seems like it might be adequate for a jackhammer, and possibly too much for a door.
Fans don’t need more than a 1/4 HP motor, as do a lot of other items that drop small electric motors. A tiny electric motor for food processors, desk fans, RC cars, electric carvers, cordless drills, vacuum sealers, and hair trimmers makes sense.
The power curve would be something like:
Tiny < 0.5 HP (desk fan or equivalent)
Small 3-5 HP (electric lawn mower)
Standard 10 HP (?? equivalent)
Large 50 (small car engine)
Enhanced 50
Electric bicycle motors are or rather can be pretty powerful. They are designed to carry an average of 250lbs up a hill doing 10-15mph.
250 lbs up a hill at 15 mph is about 3.6 KJ of energy - a 5 HP motor provides 3.6 KJ/s, so that’s overkill. Looking at electric bike laws, most of them limit you to less than 1 KW of motor, and that’s less than 1.5 HP. There’s a couple of jurisdictions that let you put a 2 HP motor on your bike, but Maine specifically limits you to 1.5 HP.
C:DDA is supposed to be set in a more dangerous version of Maine, so the laws may allow a 4 HP motor on an electric bike. But a small electric motor should be around that range.
Looking over the numbers again, a tiny electric motor in the 0.5 HP range and a micro electric motor in the 0.1 HP range might be appropriate, with the micro motor for hair trimmers and desk fans. A 0.5 HP motor powers a pretty robust garbage disposal; that’s a lot of power for a hair trimmer.
Youtube for DIY electric bikes and gas powered bikes. In regard to the law…BAHahahahahahahahahahaaa…seriously, nobody with an electric bike cares. I can fly at 50mph if I want. I just slow down when I see a cop car. Edit: no license needed, but I never go past 25 for safety.
I also just came from a bike shop yesterday that sells electric bikes that cruise at 25-35 off the shelf. I’m not trying to sound like a dick here, but the law is totally different to reality. Plus in game you can build whatever you like right 
E-Bikes DIY can go as fast as you wantem too =D
Plus in game you can build whatever you like right
You can but right now you can’t build your own engine. So we need some references on what would be a reasonable range of engine power.
if this :
The power curve would be something like:
Tiny < 0.5 HP (desk fan or equivalent)
Small 3-5 HP (electric lawn mower)
Standard 10 HP (?? equivalent)
Large 50 (small car engine)
Enhanced 50
Is implemented you will still be able to build a bike with an enhanced motor on it if you want.
But then there’s always the same question with C:DDA do we really need more complexity ?
Exploding small motor in tiny and small might not change much and not be worth to go through the recipe. Unless it opens the possibility to add more cool recipe to the game (A crossbow re-arming itself quickly with a tiny motor ?)
Complexity is this games middle name!
Besides I know someone will concoct a use for new items somewhere along the line. Tiny/Small motors can be used to build RC vehicles instead of simply finding pre-built ones. Bicycle engines, gas or electric. Motors for boats like a dingy or inflatable boat and toss on oars or a motor with a menu when inflating it.
How about a cooling system for a closed cycle suit? Air tank keeps the air flowing inside. But a small fan to pump cool air through an outer cooling system. Just an idea or two.
I dig putting in the power level = X thing.
I was poking through the code yesterday, trying to figure out what kind of electric motor I should get to supplement my diesel engine now that my survivor has Mechanics 8.
As it turns out, C:DDA already measures engine power in units of 1/2 HP (see data/json/vehicleparts/alternators.json which specifies the alternator loads in HP), so the actual HP table is:
small electric motor: 10 HP
electric motor: 50 HP
large electric motor: 200 HP
enhanced electric motor: 250 HP
so the game really could use a tiny electric motor at 2 HP (4 power) and a micro electric motor at 1/2 HP (1 power). It’s not a big enough issue that I’m going to go fix it now.
Is it “just” a json edit ? Like adding tiny electric motor in the appropirate json files and updating the recipes that should use it ?
Should be, unless there’s some weird hardcode somewhere. You might even get away with not editing the recipes if you make the current small motor a medium motor and the new tiny one a new small motor.
So I tried to add tiny motor in items and vehicleparts :
in \vehicleparts\motor.json :
{
“id”: “engine_electric_tiny”,
“copy-from”: “engine_motor”,
“type”: “vehicle_part”,
“name”: “tiny electric motor”,
“item”: “motor_tiny”,
“difficulty”: 1,
“durability”: 80,
“power”: 4,
“epower”: -200,
“damage_modifier”: 80,
“folded_volume”: 0.5,
“breaks_into”: [
{ “item”: “scrap”, “count”: [ 0, 1 ] },
{ “item”: “cable”, “charges”: [ 1, 2 ] }
],
“extend”: { “flags”: [ “TOOL_SCREWDRIVER”, “FOLDABLE” ] },
“delete”: { “flags”: [ “TOOL_WRENCH” ] }
},
I’m not sure what “extend” and “delete” mean since it seems only the small motor use it.
In items\vehicle_parts.json
{
“type”:“GENERIC”,
“id” : “motor_tiny”,
“name” : “tiny electric motor”,
“description” : “A tiny electric motor. Useful for crafting.”,
“weight” : 250,
“color” : “light_cyan”,
“symbol” : “,”,
“material” : [“steel”],
“volume” : 0.5,
“bashing” : 0,
“category” : “veh_parts”,
“price” : 2000
},
Not sure about the price, I kept the same as the small one.
I didn’t manage to use the formatter I just got syntax error (EDIT : I justed needed to paste the whole file)
What’s left after those two ? Recipes and item spawn ?
extend and delete let you add flags or remove flags, respectively. I think you’re using them right.
Now you just need to add it to recipes and spawn lists and make the PR.
Done :