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Soup up our vehicles


grammarsalad

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I would like to request that we be able to Soup Up our vehicles. That is, we should be able to make modifications to them mad max style ( but Yeah, not that extreme). 

 

This would make metal working really come into it's own. Also, there is a balance feature in that metal materials are hard to come by. Some ideas:

 

Ram Prow: basically a metal hunk attached to the front of your vehicle for ramming deadites. Does extra damage and less damage is done to the vehicle while ramming (I assume that vehicles will take damage when running over zombies ( or survivors...) takes damage over time

 

Extra armor: adds durability to your vehicle. Heavier armor slows your vehicle and burns more fuel

 

Mounted guns: mount guns outside your window so you can shoot more accurately(?) while driving. Can be Mounted on driver or passenger side

 

 

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Unfortunately anything close to Mad Max is simply not realistic and above all would make your car undrivable, heavy junk.

 

I've been in over a dozen debates about this back in the Undead Labs forum so I already have my research organized, but here is my TL;DR since I don't want to just dump a wall of text.

 

And I recognize that my opinions are not facts and am willing to converse, trust me I am not trying to strongarm here.

 

Handling takes a massive impact, the cars become heavy and sluggish, visibility is reduced to the point that every average driver will run into things, and unfortunately you cannot simply weld things to cars and expect them to stay there.

 

Mounted guns are probably going to be a no, and if anything should be inaccurate as hell when driving, not more accurate. Having the driver being able to shoot while the car is moving also probably isn't going to hit anything unless they physically take all their attention off the wheel and road.

 

Having people in the passenger side and back seat shoot (at an accuracy penalty) would be the only realistic implementation of shooting from vehicles, and please, developers, do not include this if there is no way for passerbys to shoot back into the vehicle since the player models "disappear" into the car model with opaque windows.

 

Ram Prow is just going to get stuck in potholes, small hills, and ruin the weight balance on the vehicle, and also are not designed to hit "deadites" if you are counting the real-life variations of this (snow plows).

 

Extra armor would be reasonable to a point as long as it affects visibility.

 

 

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I hadn't thought about visibility reduction. And handling! Very good point. I like that.  I kind of like the idea that we can do something like this but if we go over a limit, we ruin our cars: options, but with consequences.

 

As far as the ram prow goes, it seems like It would work on a truck, at least-- the kind that do actual plowing. But, It seems that the design would have to be slightly different. I think a clever person with the right skills could figure something out. I'm not a metal worker. My skill set is much more useful: philosophy :P

 

Same with attaching objects to the vehicles. Maybe one wouldn't weld them on. I have no idea. But, a skilled person might figure something out

 

Very good point about guns. I hadn't thought of any of that.

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a game that is supposedly heading for realism, and generally speaking good balanced gameplay

quoting the last mondoid:

 

"Firstly, and most importantly, we need to make sure that we’re not introducing a new breed of indestructo-tanks to Project Zomboid. We have to make sure that survival times aren’t hugely extended by cars, and that their use carries as many negatives as positives for the players. Also we need to figure out a good balance between zombie squashing fun and the realism Zomboid tends toward, avoiding the vehicles being too OP and sturdy against groups of zombies, while still providing the satisfaction of mowing down zombies in bigger vehicles."

 

wich pretty much sums up why most if not everything requested by op is probably never going to be added in the game

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9 hours ago, Mr_Sunshine said:

 

That's nice and all, but you forgot the most important fact.

 

This is a game.

It's also meant to be a somewhat realistic game. There's a balance between gameplay vs realism. These are notions the developers have already stated they had, take the post above mine as a good example.

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  • 2 weeks later...

what are you talking bout. if you google it, you'd see that every vehicle in the latest mad max not only worked, but was run ragged during the films making, with few break downs. and yes while this was done by teams of expert engineers and mechanics, I'm sure that your character in zomboid , with loads of free time at the point in the game where this becomes a factor, after the food and water and safety is taken care of. so youd have plenty of time to master mechanical skills. and of course where not looking for gorgeous cars that can move. where looking for tough bastards that are useful. so it may not end up pretty, and it may not be the best way to do it, but given a welding torch and half a mind, I'm sure the zomboid character could concoct some crazy car mods for the apocalypse

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I already read the Car and Driver article on it. The concept of stunt/prop cars is not new. And like other stunt cars, there were duplicates available for when they did break down and a ton of spare parts.

 

"not pretty" does not equal "moves better" or "tougher". And especially not "practical" or "reliable". In fact, correct me if I'm wrong but a lot of panels are missing on those vehicles. There is no excuse for blatant inefficiency and bad design choices just for the sake of making vehicles edgy if practicality is your goal here.

 

Prop cars for movies run. That doesn't mean they are badass zombie splatters. That doesn't mean they are useful. It is common knowledge that prop cars exist for visual spectacles and don't actually have to do what they are supposedly made to do. Cars doing their own stunts is not uncommon. That doesn't make them practical.

 

Here's the issue with a lot of the "ramming" upgrades - you will either see yourself build it too high that anything you do hit goes underneath the wheels, or too low that you bottom out on anything with a deeper texture than an oatmeal raisin cookie. It just doesn't work for hitting zed. Anything conventional enough to be thought of will either be made for flat surfaces (cow catchers on trains) or simply not made for speed impacts (plows).

 

Unfortunately making any of this work goes far, far beyond "given a welding torch and half a mind". 

 

In fact, they actually drive quite horrid, and this is to be expected as everything is designed to work on screen.

 

See:

 

 

With the right tools for the right job, some modifications can be made in the sense of reality. For example, brush guards on vehicles used in police fleets. They are something you could reasonably obtain and hold a presence in the aftermarket selection.

 

Roll cages? I guess. Anybody skilled enough could form one for each vehicle.

 

Attaching a snow plow that's not made for hitting things at higher speed (and will usually end up with infected getting stuck below the car on a realistic surface you would have the plow raised to in order to actually drive the thing) and hitting people with it? Hell no. Attach the plow well enough and you will just bend your frame instead.

 

As a gear head, let me let you in on something - ingenuity is great, but rat rods drive terrible

 

Why do you get cut off by H2's all the time? Blind spots. 

 

I'd hate to see how the general public drives anything with even worse understeer and slots to see out of. 

 

You'll see me driving a stock Buick Roadmaster from the 90s years before you see me get into one of those death traps.

 

If you are talking safety and reliability, a diesel Volvo will do a better job than anything on that movie and take you farther as well.

 

No disrespect to Mad Max. Cool cars. But it's not real life.

Edited by Kim Jong Un
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There are some practical things that could be done, Kim Jong Un has pretty much nailed most of them on the head I do think that mounted guns should be considered with the caveat that drivers cant use them also something that hasn't been mentioned are mounting flood lights, speakers and storage racks on the top of the car

 

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I understand that the mad max cars would not be good. I was just saying they did work. but even I, a completely ignorant person when I comes to cars, know that I could use chains on the wheels for traction in zombie gore, I could put sections of fence over the windshield. this it the steel rod kind of fence by the way. not chain link. plus I could just bolt steel plate to the sides, and front of the car. as long as I know it weight limit and stay well within that I can keep adding crap.

 

I'm not sure how I could armour the underside, but as I said, I'm useless when I comes to cars. but some bolts, tools, steel and a welding torch and I could give the car a slightly better survival rate. I don't need it to run like a supercar, i need it to survive multiple mid speed impacts with walking corpses. I'm sure i could do something. and that's without using the hours of spare time our survivor has to study mechanics.

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The reason why cars work is because every moving part works together. Sometimes what seems simple modifications to people who don't know what they are doing will actually have disastrous consequences if not immediately, down the line. Whether this is excess wear on rather important panels or something extra to get caught on every bump is dependent on the addition.

 

Chains on wheels aren't exactly solutions to the problem of zed going under the car. The problem is still there. The underside is going to be damaged if you end up dragging a zed on a crucial part of the undercarriage. Armored offroading vehicles made for combat in wasteland conditions (APCs as an example) would be an example of a vehicle where the problem would not be the center of issues with running over zed, but are inefficient in other categories and would not be a common vehicle in the apocalypse.

 

By putting fences and steel polls you are cutting down driver viability by well over 50%, which is something a lot of people fail to realize. In real life this is a big problem that leads to a lot of accidents, because unfortunately in the real world you can't drive your car third person. It's also worth mentioning that in the game's year/timeframe reverse cameras were not exactly present in mass production vehicles. Granted, it has been done, but there is good reason you rarely see this portrayed in serious representations of surviving anything. 

 

Point being, you just can't do these things with a lot of cars without messing up crucial processes. Watch the video above for how the simplest of mods screwed up the driving experience. The large mickey thompsons just dug into the splash guards and did not improve the offroading capability whatsoever.

 

There are ways to improve your car for efficiency, reliability and safety, welding stuff onto random panels is not one of them. Part of the concern is the fact that you would eventually end up taking off more of the car when these things break off than protecting it, otherwise this isn't really how making a vehicle safer works.

 

As I said, not being "supercar fast" is far from the concern. These supposed upgrades make your average vehicle indefinitely worse, and the ones that aren't all bad still have a lot of give and take.

 

That said, there are upgrades you can give to a vehicle that will ultimately work. These are usually tried and tested and can be found in aftermarket catalogs. However you have to see that not everything comes down to "Is this car bulletproof". Fuel efficiency, storage space, weight, drivability, even the ability to see where you are going, all matter quite a lot and for different reasons in a zombie apocalypse.

 

This is a video game, after all, so game balance is also a concern. Morphing your old Cadillac into a monster truck with spikes coming out of every nook and cranny is rather immersion breaking, and it is acceptable to suggest that cars should never be impenetrable forts.

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Though you think I could maybe plow some zeds with this? It's heavier than your standard car and the tracks give it the traction it needs to just squash them things if they don't just move to the side? Sure it'd be slower but this things pretty armored as is and if you just put some armor on the side panels and leave yourself some window in the front to look out of you'd be pretty set, though it looks like a gas guzzler.

Bulldozer.jpg

Edited by Queen Glory
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On 3/20/2017 at 11:27 PM, Kim Jong Un said:

The reason why cars work is because every moving part works together. Sometimes what seems simple modifications to people who don't know what they are doing will actually have disastrous consequences if not immediately, down the line. Whether this is excess wear on rather important panels or something extra to get caught on every bump is dependent on the addition.

 

...

Ahhh, that's another possible drawback: wear.

 

I assume that vehicles won't run forever even if you had unlimited gas. As such, I expect that they will wear down with use.

 

Modifications could increase the rate at which they wear down both directly and indirectly.

 

First, certain modifications can just flat increase this rate.

 

On the other hand, if you add a plow to a truck that can handle it, but use it for ramming, you increase the likelihood of getting a zombie caught underneath, which then dramatically increases this rate until you deal with the situation ( which should involve some danger like getting bit)

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On 3/21/2017 at 2:44 PM, Kim Jong Un said:

Personally, I think it's going to be a bit too slow for that application, but it's a better choice for crushing something than your everyday sedan

I've seen these things go upwards of 30s sometimes 40 miles per hour and at that rate with the huge mammoth of a hunk of metal. I believe you could most likely crush a zombie under track. Or literally just blow them out of your way like they were nothin' but water moving for a boat.

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36 minutes ago, Queen Glory said:

I've seen these things go upwards of 30s sometimes 40 miles per hour and at that rate with the huge mammoth of a hunk of metal.

Your values are extremely incorrect, at least that definitely was not a bulldozer. It's actually closer to 7.3 mph but 9.1 in reverse for something generic, like a caterpillar D9.

 

The komatsu d37 you pictured is slower, topping out at 4.3 mph and 4.5 in reverse.

 

Anyone could catch up to one running.

Edited by Kim Jong Un
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Just now, Kim Jong Un said:

It's actually closer to 7.3 mph but 9.1 in reverse for something generic, like a caterpillar D9.

 

The komatsu d37 you pictured is slower, topping out at 4.3 mph and 4.5 in reverse.

 

Anyone could catch up to one running.

Huh i've seen em crusin' down roads by them selves going at least twenty, I dont think they were that slow. But i'm not arguing about it I've never been on one myself

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18 minutes ago, Queen Glory said:

Huh i've seen em crusin' down roads by them selves going at least twenty, I dont think they were that slow. But i'm not arguing about it I've never been on one myself

Bulldozers are generally transported on the back of transport trucks and should never be driven on civillian roads in part due to what those wide tracks may do to the road.

 

The closest thing I know of is a JD 764 High speed dozer which tops out at 17-18 for transportation (and is also not the same thing).

 

Your average bulldozer won't go over 10 mph (which is generous enough) and the likelihood of the devs including a lightning mcqueen version are low.

 

A bulldozer would be cool though.

 

 

Edited by Kim Jong Un
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On ‎24‎/‎03‎/‎2017 at 3:02 AM, Queen Glory said:

Huh i've seen em crusin' down roads by them selves going at least twenty, I dont think they were that slow. But i'm not arguing about it I've never been on one myself

might not have been a bulldozer. could have been a bobcat with a scoop on the front. out where I used to live there where zippy little bobcats all over the place driving on actual roads, and a couple time I've seen them on the highway even. but a bobcat and a bulldozer are 2 very different vehicles though, but a bobcat with a scoop would still be quite useful in the apocalypse.  

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On 3/23/2017 at 11:06 AM, Kim Jong Un said:

Bulldozers are generally transported on the back of transport trucks and should never be driven on civillian roads in part due to what those wide tracks may do to the road.

 

The closest thing I know of is a JD 764 High speed dozer which tops out at 17-18 for transportation (and is also not the same thing).

 

Your average bulldozer won't go over 10 mph (which is generous enough) and the likelihood of the devs including a lightning mcqueen version are low.

 

A bulldozer would be cool though.

 

 

In the end of it a bulldozer might not be a good ways of transportation but it would be an efficient enough plowing machine, since zombies dont tend to move very fast and all you need to do is plow them out of the way, possibly crush a couple but It wouldn't be an efficient killer. But possibly something like just used to clear a path out of a horde or to cripple a bunch of zombie legs.

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3 hours ago, Queen Glory said:

In the end of it a bulldozer might not be a good ways of transportation but it would be an efficient enough plowing machine, since zombies dont tend to move very fast and all you need to do is plow them out of the way, possibly crush a couple but It wouldn't be an efficient killer. But possibly something like just used to clear a path out of a horde or to cripple a bunch of zombie legs.

Of course, after all that's what it is built to do. 

 

I'd be worried more about the exposed cab and fact that a shambler could probably catch up to the door and bang on it at the same speed you would drive it.

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