Making a Supercar: Guide

Guide created using an unknown version of Cataclysm DDA.
The information present here might not apply to the current version of CDDA.

0.D (Danny)

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Vehicles are very useful to have; whether for smashing zombies or having a joyride. But, you don't want to make a regular car. You want a supercar. Cataclysm: DDA provides a quite robust system for piecing together your own vehicle in any shape or size, from a solar-powered tricycle to a semi-truck covered in spiked plates.

Required Tools and Parts

You will need, at minimum, these things to build your own car or supercar:

• A high enough mechanics skill to install the parts you desire
• An engine (or more) (faster the better; V12 engine is the best). Foot crank has low speed, but can pull surprisingly heavy vehicles, so is worth considering for early game vehicles.
• At least 2 wheels
• Vehicle controls
• At least one, and probably more, steel frames. In 0.D (Danny), you can use any frame, and lightweight frames reduce vehicle weight but make it more fragile.
• At least one seat or saddle
• A welder and batteries, an integrated toolset and a way of powering it or a vehicle welding rig connected to a vehicle that can generate and store power (it can be the supercar itself).
• A wrench, or again an integrated toolset
• Fuel - be it Hydrogen canisters, gasoline, diesel, or plutonium cells.
• A metal tank for fuel. Or a LOT of solar panels if using an electric engine.
• A Motorcycle battery, Car battery, Truck battery or Storage battery (in order of capacity). Necessary to start a combustion engine.
• A hacksaw
• Armor (steel/superalloy/spiked/hard), spiked does additional damage to zombies.

You may want other fun parts, you can see more parts at Vehicles. The integrated toolset can save you a lot of batteries, but only if you have a sensible way of powering it (ie. not with batteries). Vehicle welding rigs can be occasionally found in Garages and are really efficient at welding when coupled with solar panels or engines with alternators..

Where To Start

The easiest way to get parts is to salvage them from other vehicles, therefore it is highly recommended to source a working vehicle first so that you can move between wrecked cars that may be far apart quickly. Look for a car that has a working engine and enough wheels by examining it, the vehicle interface will tell you the condition of the car's various parts by moving the cursor around with the movement keys. If it doesn't have any gas you'll need to find some, either by filling a bottle or other container at a gas station by examining the pump, or by examining a car and siphoning the tank with a rubber hose. Thenexamine your vehicle again and while the section with the gas tank is selected press f to fill the tank. When you have a small amount of gas, you can drive it to a gas station to fill it up to 100%. Now you have a working vehicle, you have the option of travelling around to collect the parts you need to start from scratch or to augment the already functional vehicle.

The next step would be to gain the mechanic skill required. You could give yourself level 1 in character creation and this would be enough to remove parts from cars which levels your mechanics skill pretty quickly. Alternatively, you can scavenge and Read the "Under the Hood" (beginner) and "Mechanical Mastery" (advanced) books to bring your skills up. Starting with the Wannabe Mechanic profession starts you off with Under the Hood. If the books for some reason don't want to spawn, try repairing and reinforcing (using Soldering iron) all solder-able items you can afford to break. Steel ones should be easiest to repair, as you can just smash up a wrecked car to get scrap metal.

Gathering Parts

You have many options to gather parts for a vehicle. The most obvious and recommended is other vehicles, and with the correct tools in your inventory you can strip down broken down cars for all the parts you would need for a functional vehicle. There are many broken down vehicles in and around towns, including some of the more rare vehicles like bubble cars and solar powered cars. You will of course have to contend with the inhabitant of towns and it may not be the safest option. Your best bet is to travel along roads, where you will find sparse numbers of wrecked vehicles. If you plan on removing a part and immediately installing it on your current vehicle, park alongside the wreck no more than two tiles away and stand between them to remove the parts you desire; this way you can simply move two tiles over to your vehicle and install them straight off the ground. When using the welding rig to install a part, make sure that you're near (4 tiles at most) the rig and have a line of sight to it, otherwise it won't work and you'll waste duct tape. Note that parts cannot be removed if something is mounted to them, it can be tricky to completely dismantle a vehicle without running into this problem, but the general rule of thumb is start with the wheels and remove the outer parts moving inwards.

You can also find parts in a garage as well as tools and other supplies such as jerry cans. Having a jerry can full of gas in your trunk might get you out of a pinch someday. Garages typically have an unfinished vehicle inside which you could scavenge from or items in lockers or on counters. Be aware some parts are very heavy, so if you want to lug and engine or steel plating out you should probably park somewhere nearby.

Public Works are another great source of tools and sometimes parts. They usually have a working flatbed truck with a little fuel in as well, it's well worth raiding one if you see it on your map. Farms are another option for gathering tools and maybe a working truck, but less likely.

Crash sites are a source of metal, and sometimes parts, from which you can craft parts such as steel frames and plating. You will need a shovel or digging stick to clear up the wreckage and make it usable, and you will need a lot of batteries and time to craft the various parts. It's not the most efficient way to do things but if you find a crash site in a nice secluded spot, you can work on your vehicle relatively undisturbed.

Planning Your Design

You should decide early on what your vehicle is going to be. Super fast quad bike? Drag racer? RV? Tank? Titanic mobile base studded with turrets? These are all possibilities, as well as hybrid designs as you may choose. Planning your design will lead to less headaches and backtracking later on. Some important things to note when planning your vehicle:

• Only one tank can be placed per tile
• Only one engine can be placed per tile
• A tile is considered "IN" (i.e. not exposed to the elements) if it has a roof and surrounded by either roofed tiles or tiles you cannot pass through: boards, closed doors, a windscreen, or any of the 400-storage utility units. In 0.D (Danny), storage batteries do not block movement.
• You can attach plating to just about anything.
• It is generally a good idea to armor anything you would rather not see destroyed. While it may shave a few miles off your top speed (which you don't need anyway if you like steering and stopping) steel plating is cheap and expendable. Your minifridge or welder, less so.
• The more engines you add, the worse the fuel efficiency but the faster and the less likely to break down it will be.
• If your driver's seat doesn't have a seatbelt you will go flying through the windscreen sooner or later. Make sure there is one installed.
• Heed the wisdom of evil overlord list rule #27: I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies.

Choosing Your Engine

V12 engines are the biggest and most powerful in the game, so if you need a lot of horsepower then these are what you want. V6 engines are the most common and found in most cars and trucks you will find, they are mid-powered and when stacked will still provide a lot of power. Electric motors are reasonably common, being fueled by solar panels and storage batteries and while they don't pack much of a punch they are much much quieter than gas guzzling engines (but not silent).

2 small engines working together have less performance than a single larger engine but worse fuel consumption. Always install the largest single engine that you gives you acceptable performance. A second engine should be installed only to give you redundancy or alternate fuel options. A lot of hybrid vehicles consist of a electric motor backed by a combustion engine, and the combustion engine is only used when the electric engine is low on energy.

In all cases, more powerful engines consume more fuel than smaller engines. You may want to use a smaller engine that achieves acceptable performance instead of a larger engine that just burns more fuel when you're cruising at 40 mph.

Choosing Your Wheels

Wheels are generally a trade-off between road speed and off-road speed. Each wheel increases your vehicle's rolling resistance, which makes it slower, but distributes the weight across more contact area, which makes your vehicle less slow off-road. Wider wheels and off-road wheels have more rolling resistance than road wheels, but better off-road performance. It's probably more useful to have a vehicle with an on-road speed of 60 miles per hour and an off-road speed of 40 miles per hour than a vehicle with an on-road speed of 100 miles per hour and an off-road speed of 20 miles per hour, but that's going to depend on where you intend to drive.

If you examine your vehicle, you can see an approximation of your off-road performance. Actual off-road performance depends on the exact terrain under your wheels, but if you're seeing 10% off-road performance that means you can expect your top-speed and acceleration when you're off-road to about 1/10th to 1/5th your performance on a paved road.