Working cars

[kometax]

I think it would be fun If we could drive a car at some point or use it as emergency shelter. I mean old cars (without electronic components) and one's protected from EMP. 

[Mroz4k]

Nothing works in TLD, not even things shielded by EMP. The geomagnetic incident that happened seems to be of a lasting character- only time things work is during the aurora.

Besides, devs already said they will never add working cars, so this is an unnecesary suggestion.

[snakevondoof]

aren't they already emergency shelters? I mean they have very small warmth bonus and wind protection and a place to sleep...what more could you want from it?

[snakevondoof]

i would like to be able to honk the horn to scare animals...just for the shts and giggles  

[Mroz4k]

21 minutes ago, snakevondoof said:

i would like to be able to honk the horn to scare animals...just for the shts and giggles  

Gonna be hard to do without a working engine  

Just use your imagination  Or yell loud insults at them, that works.

[snakevondoof]

or just scream "BEEP BEEP" haha!

[Fuarian]

39 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

Gonna be hard to do without a working engine  

Just use your imagination  Or yell loud insults at them, that works.

Aurora will be able to activate cars in the future. I'm almost certain. 

[Mroz4k]

34 minutes ago, Fuarian said:

Aurora will be able to activate cars in the future. I'm almost certain. 

Devs stated before that they will never add driveable cars. Give it up. It's literally one of the few things that they stated they will not be adding. 

We will have a horse for a mount, that will be the only way to get around (supposedly, even though it makes no sense what-so-ever).

As for the honking... that's possible. But with it only being able to be added on Aurora, unlikely and somewhat unpractical. 

I am pretty sure cars will have shining headlights during the Aurora. But besides that, I see nothing particularly useful.

[Fuarian]

1 hour ago, Mroz4k said:

Devs stated before that they will never add driveable cars. Give it up. It's literally one of the few things that they stated they will not be adding. 

We will have a horse for a mount, that will be the only way to get around (supposedly, even though it makes no sense what-so-ever).

As for the honking... that's possible. But with it only being able to be added on Aurora, unlikely and somewhat unpractical. 

I am pretty sure cars will have shining headlights during the Aurora. But besides that, I see nothing particularly useful.

That's what I meant. Driveable cars is ridiculous and a horse is too. The horse just wouldn't fit well with the game. But having cars turn on and maybe even warm us up during the Aurora is definetly coming.

[Mroz4k]

12 hours ago, Fuarian said:

That's what I meant. Driveable cars is ridiculous and a horse is too. The horse just wouldn't fit well with the game. But having cars turn on and maybe even warm us up during the Aurora is definetly coming.

Oh, now I get your point. My bad misunderstood your point of "turning on cars during Aurora" 
I agree, I expect in time the cars will have some functions during the Aurora. Cool idea with the heater, makes a lot of sense. And like I said, I expect the lights will turn on which might act as an Aurora version of the stationary flashlight. And the car battery could be used as a fire source during Aurora, I suppose. (close to the car, I assume). That's just juggling some ideas around the car usage.

[JAFO]

On 9/30/2017 at 8:11 AM, Fuarian said:

But having cars ... maybe even warm us up during the Aurora is definetly coming.

12 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

Cool idea with the heater, makes a lot of sense.

Sorry, but this makes no sense at all.. car heaters use waste engine heat to warm the cabin.. so if you can't start the engine, that ain't happening.

 

[Fuarian]

1 hour ago, JAFO said:

Sorry, but this makes no sense at all.. car heaters use waste engine heat to warm the cabin.. so if you can't start the engine, that ain't happening.

 

Aurora, I mean. That still doesn't make much sense considering that the engine doesn't turn on with electricity but rather combustion.

[KinoUnko]

I can see cars figuring into something substantial. Not driving or anything. But possibly running, presumably during aurora nights. You can move batteries around, you can also open/close fuel tank caps though nothing beyond that at this point. Maybe gasoline will be future resource similar to lamp fuel. No reason to expect all the cars to be bone dry empty, most if not all vehicles found on roads would have some fuel left since the geomagnetic storm was unexpected. Though on long runs the fuel maybe useless after sometime, unless NW canada still runs pure gasoline instead of the usual gasoline/ethanol mix common in the US.

[Mroz4k]

7 hours ago, JAFO said:

Sorry, but this makes no sense at all.. car heaters use waste engine heat to warm the cabin.. so if you can't start the engine, that ain't happening.

Why can't you start up the engine? I get that the solar flare generated electricity is not strong, but if we assume that the car batteries work (for starting fires) then they will work in spark plugs as well. So as long as you can use spark plugs and there is some fuel in the car (which there would be unless someone syphoned it out or the car stopped in the middle of the way by the geomagnetic storm). You are right about the heaters being linked to the engine, but I see no reason why the engine shouldn't be started.

Let's say all the cars would have a different (randomly generated) amount of gas in them, so the heater would be a limited resource. Imagine it as building a campfire next to the car as you would right now. Imagine you only have 4 hours worth of fuel - so you could only maybe increase the temperature (on Aurora night) for 4 hours, by 12 degrees Celsius. The heater would gradually over-time increase the temperature, we can say 12 degrees would be max which would be reached after 2 hours of heater working. Just like the campfire temperature can be raised up to 80 degrees of "feels like bonus" and grows up gradually as the fire burns and you add more firewood, the heater could increase it by 12 degrees, much slower than the fireplace would. 

Fuel covers could be used to check how much fuel is in the car, perhaps.

But since Aurora creates unstable power, I imagine the engine would run at low capacity (low combustion cycles, caused by the malfunctioning spark plugs) so I can't imagine the car could run with enough power to move the car through all the snow and frozen surface in the first place. This is also why the heater wouldn't produce much temperature and would produce it very slowly. And why the gas in the tank would run for a long while.

6 hours ago, KinoUnko said:

Though on long runs the fuel maybe useless after sometime, unless NW canada still runs pure gasoline instead of the usual gasoline/ethanol mix common in the US.

That would be more of an issue with gasoline cans than with the fuel tanks. You are right that the gasoline with ethanol mix has a shelf life of about 3 months - because ethanol absorbs water from the atmosphere. However, for this to make any difference with the cars, you would need to have your fuel tank opened all the time. The fuel tank is air-tight at all times unless the car engine is running, then it is exposed to air. But the fuel is constantly being utilized to make the engine run, so there is no water absorption happening while the engine is active. And once it's turned off, the fuel tank will be sealed once again.

So, the shelf life should not matter unless your fuel tank is damaged and air can get inside. People that tell you it does matter (in case of cars, of course) are probably trying to sell you something
Boats are a different story - their fuel tanks are not so well isolated, and the presence of high water concentration around the bodies of water make this process much faster. Boats wouldn't work for long if one is using old gas.

Now, back to the gasoline cans. Since those are in-game only used for lantern fuel, this does not matter. Because gasoline in itself has a high octane number - and if ethanol in it attracts water, this octane number is lessened as the water enters the system. However, kerosene in itself has low octane number, so the ignition properties of "spoiled" gas are not going to lessen compared to kerosene for the use in the lamps, but it won't be vehicle-worthy anymore. That's why we won't be able to collect gas cans and refill the cars.

In fact, you want your gasoline can be mixed with either a real lantern fuel or at least with water - in order to decrease the gasoline´s ignition point. Otherwise using pure gasoline in your lanterns would carry too high of a risk of explosion. Kerosene lamps are intended for kerosene with high ignition point, gas has very low ignition point. Luckily, even a little bit of water can increase the ignition point drastically in the gasoline and should be possible to use it in a lantern.

But all of this is just theoretical, I wouldn't actually recommend gasoline to be used in kerosene lamps at all. Too high of a risk of explosion!

[JAFO]

1 hour ago, Mroz4k said:

I see no reason why the engine shouldn't be started

If the engine has been started, I see no reason the vehicle can't then be driven.. and we know Hinterland aren't going to go down that path.

 

1 hour ago, Mroz4k said:

I imagine the engine would run at low capacity (low combustion cycles, caused by the malfunctioning spark plugs)

I'm guessing you haven't worked much on car engines, then. (I've done all the mechanical and electrical work on my own cars and motorcycles for the last 40 years.) There is nothing about aurora or EMP that can cause a spark plug to malfunction. Electronic ignition systems, yes.. but if those are damaged, then you aren't going to be able to get it to start at all.

 

[Mroz4k]

I am done. I made a long article on this and it got deleted. FFS...

Will keep it short. We all know how 4 stroke combustion engines work, if not, I recommend internet research.
One of the steps in there is ignition. Spark plug uses high voltage spark to explode the gas and air mixture to spin the piston. It has to be perfectly timed, too.

The issue I saw here was that the aurora creates a finicky electrical current. So, in times, the engine would get into the ignition phase, but the spark wouldn't fire. This means that instead of reaching for example 10000 spins a minute, the engine would always operate at the maximum of average 5000. As an example - more would simply not be possible because of the finicky current. 

That would be good enough to keep the engine running, heater heating (albeit slowly) but the engine wouldn't generate enough kinetic energy to move the heavy car. Gasoline would be consumed, but the engine would be running at slow spins. I suppose it would also be prone to dying a lot before it got heated, similar to having issues with starting your car during very cold mornings when it's solidly frozen.

EMP would fry the circuitry. This never happened in TLD, it seems that the scenario is more of a "continuous interference" except during Aurora, when the energy comes back in a form of high voltage unstable (probably alternating) current. I originally was going to use Tesla coils as an example since they seem to work on a principle similar to TLD.

Very simply put - engine could be turned on, it would run, but it would be too weak to move the car.

[KinoUnko]

15 hours ago, JAFO said:

There is nothing about aurora or EMP that can cause a spark plug to malfunction. Electronic ignition systems, yes.. but if those are damaged, then you aren't going to be able to get it to start at all.

To be fair, enough current can melt the electrodes and destroy the plug. On the other hand you make good point, there are many points of failure in the iginition and electrical system in modern cars and any damage caused by the geomagnetic storm would most likely render the car inoperable, there's really no middle ground with electrical/ignition systems. For simplicity and game balance sake I expect the cars will be either operable or not, only on aurora nights, and not driveable. Assuming Hinterland implements this at all.

[Mroz4k]

Yea, but you don't see any modern cars in the game. Most of them are pretty old models, the models I recall from the game seem to be based on Škoda 120 at least in my opinion. Which is a bit strange but I suppose there are some American cars similar to it, in its time this car was quite a reliable drive.

But it's a car from the communist era, over 40 years old. Back then, there was no computer in the car, so as far as electrical systems go, they are all very primitive. If the geomagnetic storm didn't destroy the radios, I doubt it would destroy the old cars as well. That is the funny thing about the new age cars - the fact that there are computers in it to decrease the fuel consumption and increase the comfort etc, the new age cars are more susceptible to other influences. If we admit EMP, then everything would have been dead and inoperable. But seeing as how the more primitive electrical appliances work, even if irregularly, it should be indication enough that there was no EMP, just constant interference. The malfunction I meant was not really a malfunction, more of a limitation - the plugs wouldn't simply operate the engine fast enough to build up enough power to move the car. Due to the instability of the current (seen in the flickering of the lights), the plugs would be limited in how quickly they can operate per minute.

[JAFO]

On 02/10/2017 at 7:08 PM, Mroz4k said:

The malfunction I meant was not really a malfunction, more of a limitation - the plugs wouldn't simply operate the engine fast enough to build up enough power to move the car. Due to the instability of the current (seen in the flickering of the lights), the plugs would be limited in how quickly they can operate per minute.

As soon as the engine is running, it's generating its own electrical power for the spark plugs.. it's no longer dependent on the aurora at all. So your claim that it would be impossible to keep the engine revs high enough to move the vehicle doesn't hold water.

[hozz1235]

On 9/29/2017 at 1:46 PM, Mroz4k said:

Nothing works in TLD, not even things shielded by EMP. The geomagnetic incident that happened seems to be of a lasting character- only time things work is during the aurora.

Besides, devs already said they will never add working cars, so this is an unnecesary suggestion.

In Wintermute, there is a bunker that can only be opened when the Aurora is active - so some things work.  Could open the door for others!

[Cattleman]

Being able to start a car in TLD would be impossible... The amount of amperage needed to turn a starter fast, and long enough to start a car is something on the order of 400 amps MINIMUM!... And that's saying the car is perfectly tuned and in excellent running order in a warm climate. Now take an older vehicle that is probably not in perfect tip top shape and in a very cold climate... One would need to maintain 500 to 700 amps for several seconds, and possibly repeatedly before the engine would fire and run. This kind of sustained amperage is obviously not possible, even during aurora as everything flickers. The only source of that kind of amperage is seen in sparking electrical wires in buildings which are between 120 and 480 volts alternating current... Cars however are 12 or 24 volts direct current. So with all this said the aurora could only produce enough amperage in a 12 volt direct current system to operate dimmly lit headlights and the radio in cars as both of these require 20 amps or less, quite a lot less for the radio. Simply put the aurora doesn't produce a strong enough, or stable enough current to start a car.

[hozz1235]

The batteries are removable, right?  I could see taking one, hooking it up to some component in the Dam, Radio Tower, etc. to get a trickle-charge going on it during the Aurora...

[dead frozen dude]

Forget the electricity... You smash 'em apart, melt the electrodes down and you've got lead to cast bullets... Spent casings could be reused, procuring the propellant/fresh primers would be the biggest problem... probably only if you get your hands on somebody's handloading tools & supplies.