Vehicle repairs

0.E (Ellison)

Vehicles
Driving
Repairs
Installing and removing parts
Construction
Parts and components

Vehicle status

You may be able to drive a vehicle with more than two wheels (such as a car) even if some of them are broken or missing. You can check its mobility status by examining it.

The damage of each part is displayed using a color code:

• Undamaged
• Damaged
• Very damaged
• About to break
• Broken

General repairs

Finishing a repair grants [part difficulty + 2] * 5 + 20 practice points to mechanics skill.

Tools

For repairs you usually need the following tools (in your inventory or nearby) and enough mechanics skill for that particular part:

• welder or integrated toolset and welding goggles, or duct tape.
• wrench or integrated toolset or equivalent tool with 1 level in bolt turning and fine bolt turning quality.

For removal:

• A tool with metal sawing of 2 or more.
• Or a tool with screw driving of 1 or more.
• A tool or vehicle part that acts like a jacking or lifting tool, such as a jack, Boom crane, Forklift arm, Pallet lifter, or Telescopic crane. Or high enough Strength.

In some cases you need other tools. But these are the most common ones.

Repairing

1. examine the vehicle
2. Use the arrow keys or numeric pad to navigate to the vehicle location which has the part you want to repair
3. Press r (for repair)
4. Use the arrow keys or numeric pad to navigate to the component you want to repair and press RETURN

If a part is colored gray it means that it's broken and you can't repair it, only replace it.

Removing

1. examine the vehicle
2. Use the arrow keys or numeric pad to navigate to the vehicle location which has the part you want to remove
3. Press o (for remove)
4. Use the arrow keys or numeric pad to navigate to the component you want to remove and press RETURN

If a part is colored gray it means that it's broken. If you remove a broken part you only get scrap metal, or other pieces of junk in return. If the part is not broken, you get the part used to make the component back. The damage of the item you get back depends on how damaged the component was.

Changing tires

Alternatively to repairing an installed wheel, you can simply change it with another one. Changing a tire doesn't require any mechanics skill and, better yet, doesn't waste any of your precious welder batteries.

Tools

Tools needed (in your inventory or nearby):

• wrench or integrated toolset or equivalent tool with 1 level in bolt turning and fine bolt turning quality
• A tool or vehicle part that acts like a jacking or lifting tool, such as a jack, Boom crane, Forklift arm, Pallet lifter, or Telescopic crane.

Note: The jacking value needed is proportional to the weight of the vehicle, so removing parts will lower the value. Your own weight is counted, so it's best to stand outside of the vehicle while repairing it.

Components

Components needed (in your inventory or nearby):

• A replacement wheel of the same type as the broken one (of any size, although the same size is preferred)

Actions

1. examine the vehicle
2. Use the arrow keys or numeric pad to navigate to the vehicle section where the broken wheel is
3. Press c (for change tire)
4. Use the arrow keys or numeric pad to navigate to the type of wheel in the list displayed in the bottom right and press RETURN

Causes of damage

Vehicles are damaged by colliding against obstacles, environmental damage (such as acid and fires), zombies' attacks, the type of terrain you're driving over or just by simple use.

Collisions

In a collision, the vehicle first suffers damage to the colliding tile on the vehicle. This damage depends on the weight and speed of the colliding objects. Armor on this tile protects against damage.

There is then "shock" damage radiating out through the vehicle to other tiles, where the damage is divided by the distance from the tile of impact to the other tiles. Armor on these other tiles does not protect against the radiated damage.

For example, by crashing the front right part of your vehicle against a building you would damage mostly just the front right wheel, front right frame, the front right board or quarterpanel, and any accessories such as headlights at that location. The shock damage would affect any adjacent tiles, and might cause some damage to the tiles adjacent to those tiles.

So if your deathmobile is an sedan, with the front tiles armored in military composite armor, and you hit something in the driver's front corner hard enough to produce 400 points of damage:

• The armor absorbs 70 points of damage, and the remaining 330 points are applied to the headlight, quarterpanel, and frame until the damage is all absorbed or the parts are all destroyed. That probably wrecks the quarterpanel and headlight but the frame stays inside.
• The rest of the front row takes 200 (400/2), 133 (400/3), and 100 (400/4) points damage with armor not protecting. It's entirely likely that all the front quarterpanel gets destroyed.
• The rest of the driver's side takes 200 (400/2), 133 (400/3), 100 (400/4), 80 (400/5), and 66 (400/6) points of damage with no armor protection. The windshield probably shatters but the doors stay on and the rear quarterpanels are damaged but not destroyed.
• The driver's seat is 3 tiles back and 1 tile to the right of the point of impact or roughly 4 tiles away. The driver's seat, seatbelt, and controls take a total of 80 (400/5) points of damage, and depending on which part takes the hit, one of them is probably destroyed.

The best way to avoid collision damage is to not run into hordes.

Failing that, adding a row of ram plates to the front of your vehicle has a couple of benefits: rams are heavy and have a damage multiplier on collisions, so you can go slower and still produce the same amount of collision damage to the zombies while taking less damage to your vehicle. Also, because the collision happens farther away from the vulnerable parts of your vehicle, the shock damage to the vulnerable parts is less: 400 base damage at 4 tiles is 80 damage to your seat, while 280 base damage at 5 tiles is 46 damage to your seat.

In the latest experimental, you can armor against shock damage at a specific tile by installing shock absorbers, but they don't work right in 0.E. Even in the latest experimental and going forward into 0.F when that comes out, shock absorbers only protect a single tile: a shock absorber on the driver's seat protects the driver's seat, but not the passenger seat next to it or behind it.

Exceeding Vehicle Safe Speed

If the current speed exceeds the indicated safe speed (which you can check by examining your vehicle), the chance to damage the engine grows (not with foot pedals though. you just deplete a lot of stamina). You'll know if you're exceeding it if the current speed display turns yellow when a little over the safe speed, then red when a lot over the safe speed.