My “mobile base” is 4x5 with a Kitchen Buddy (for the water purifier), Mobile Chem lab (for the faucet and hotplate, Vehicle mounted forge, and a minifreezer (for the great food preservation). I like to keep things small and maneuverable… minimalist. I also have a bed, with a foldable seat and a bunch of heavy duty stow boards to block line of sight and carry my necessaries… like a welding rig and various other electric tools.
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This is a pretty nice vehicle. Because I’ve blocked LOS from the bed driving position, I can drive through Zombieville’s all over the map without having to fight any of them, unless I choose to… same with ants.
When I choose to, I have the duel Avalanches that handle almost every problem a major city can throw at you… the 250 round capacity hoppers last for a nice while… I’ve found eight hoppers can generally handle a good sized city. Ammo is extremely cheap and easily replaceable. For the Skeletal Zuggernauts I can either opt to fight them myself unarmed, ( I can’t post my stats in this post cause I’m a newb to the site and I’ve already included one .png file. If anyone is interested I’ll post in a follow up) or I can use the Perforator Turret up front.
But generally I don’t fight the whole city, I just drive up to the bank or whatever, find a nice open spot to park the the car, turn on the Avalanches and do the bank while zombies rush my vehicle.
Sometimes when I leave the bank I can zoom the map out and see a circle of dead zombies on a square tile based map.
Point of all this being that a good vehicle means you don’t have to carry a bunch of supplies and raw materials. My car has a lot of stuff packed away for crafting, but it also has a fold up frame that I have a small a .6 cylinder engine (with controls and stuff) on. I use this to charge my batteries while I sleep… so that means the range of my car is pretty much… whatever. Gasoline is easy to find and that .6 will charge all those batteries on one 10 liter tank. Not that they every get discharged that far. My turrets don’t use that much power… mostly because I haven’t found a laser pistol. But six fully enhanced quantum panels produce over 2300 during the daylight… so mostly I don’t have to use gas to charge.
So, consider the idea that your mobile base doesn’t have to be huge, you can carry the bare necessities and best loot, and then scrounge the stuff you need as you need it. This strategy allows you to explore constantly with great range.
Another great car engine setup is to just replace one of the enhanced electric motors with a 1 liter V-twin. Then you stack on the various alternators… or if you are lucky a generator and the combination of generator and electric motor turns your mobile base into something like a modern diesel freight engine. The motive power comes from electricity which is very quiet in game but the juice comes from gasolina. It’s not fast, but it goes forever on a tiny bit of gasoline.
Other tips:
My car also has quantum solar panels that have been enhanced using a soldering iron… Enhancing them not only makes them tougher… it makes them create more electricity.
Same same with many other vehicle parts. Can’t find an electric sports car for it’s sweet enhanced large electric motors? Just enhance a regular large electric motor and it’s damn near as good… heavier though.
Can do the same to frames… In fact you can pretty much enhance every vehicle component EXCEPT enhanced electric motors…which I suppose is sensible if a bit disappointing.
Haven’t tried enhancing large storage batteries yet…
Note: This is an easy play character… This character is about the easiest one I’ve put together for handling all game situations. The blackbelt profession means I can handle almost all beginning confrontations with ease… I run from spitters and acid zombies in the beginning. Important to pick the right stats to go with the right martial arts skill. But martial arts combat is very powerful indeed… you never need to reload or find bullets.
Just mutated this guy through the Cephlapod tree. Unarmed he does around 150 on crits using Zui Quan. Damage is intelligence based so the Cep mutations are very good for this char. I looking to find a Dragon martial arts technique book. I think his damage will spike to around 250 or so.
No armor is good for high dodge char. get huge bonuses… it seems. If you’ll look my dodge is showing 10 levels higher than my training.
So the whole char was designed with all this in mind. Just took out two Skeletal Jugs at the same time without getting hit…
Oh yeah, foldable vehicles can be carried downstairs. So you can use them to loot dungeons or mount portable turrets and stuff. I carry one downstairs loot a floor and leave everything on the upstair I’m using. Makes things way easier, though probably less intensely fun.
Lots of possibilities with fold up frames… just saying.
