Wheel power is weak and power consumption (2kW) is a joke

Thales shared this feedback 5 years ago
Submitted

I think best use of wheels are for carrying heavy cargo in high gravity environments. But wheels are not powerful enough to move that heavy cargo. For example my truck that has 8 large block 3x3 wheels (at 100% friction and 100% power) can't produce enough power to move a large cargo container full of ore up to sloped terrain (close to 1 million tones in total).

People are saying about adding thrusters to the truck but this is not a cheap way compared to wheels and also immersion-breaking thing for an efficient use of wheels.

Second thing is that of course wheels use much less power than thrusters but 2KW is a joke. (For comparison: Tesla Model S engine produce 581KW.)


Also I want to thank for your efforts on improving wheels in the last years to make them bug-free and great for use.

Replies (2)

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Bump- time to address these silly issues and improve balance on various blocks before final release.

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Today I played the beta to and see that wheels use much more power. This is good. But wheels are still not powerful enough to haul heavy cargo. I use my large block 8-wheeled truck to test:

- Empty mass is 350 tons.

- It has one large cargo container.

- Total mass is 4000 tons when its filled with ore in realistic settings.

Eight 3x3 wheels can't even produce enough power to move it on semi-flat ground. Shouldn't 8 wheels capable of moving 1 large cargo container full of ore?

This is my truck that I'm testing right now: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1594729153

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There is another issue with wheels; there has to be a minimum suspension travel limit that can be adjustable or not. Because currently wheel suspension has 100% freedom and when one wheel hits a small bump that is high enough to move wheel upside 100%, wheel block gets destroyed along with several nearby blocks. To prevent this I have to use very hard suspension strenght that's not good for vehicles and makes suspension useless.

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I mean, our current Semi Trucks only haul a couple tons, not 4000.

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'A couple tons'

I think you mean 20-30 tons, with a maximum total weight of 40 tons- that's for an 18 wheeler which has 2 powered axles with 8 wheels ( 10 wheels in total ).

If you want to be more realistic though, then Quarry-trucks carry 300-450 tons ( the largest versions ). So yeah, if someone builds a large-grid truck with the largest 5x5 wheels, and has atleast 4 wheels, they should easily be able to haul 350 tons.

Please do some fact-checking ( which took me one minute, literally ) before making false statements in future, thankyou.

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The largest truck in the world: http://www.belaz.by/en/catalog/products/dumptrucks/7571/75710/


Size: 20,6m x 9,75m x 8,17m

Wheel radius: 2m (4 wheels)

It can carry 450 tons of payload.

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My truck:

Size: 42,5m x 17,5m x 17,5m

Wheel radius: 3,75m (8 wheels) (this is even not the largest wheel)


As we all can see, size in Space Engineers is much larger than real world. And considering that it's near future, it's normal to have much larger trucks. Comparing to its size 4000 tons of mass is not as high as it seems. Real world trucks of this size would haul more than 4000 tons of payload. Also, I added only 1 large cargo container full of ore. If I fill the cargo with ingots, it will be 11500 tons instead of 4000.

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That truck you linked says it can carry 450 megatons of payload. Huh. Big trucks.

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<sigh> no, that value is 450 metric tons. Still a big truck though.

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Right you are. I just took the first google result for mt.

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They seem somewhat skewed, when comparing small grid capabilities to large grid.


Example:


Small Grid:

8x 3x3 wheels, can easily climb steep grades with 9 full Medium Cargo Containers and 5 full Drills. No issues.


Large Grid

6x 5x5 wheels

Can't even go up moderate grades with only 1 Large Cargo Container at 3/4 capacity. Have 3 total Large Containers, the rest of the vehicle is bare bones. Just a minimal frame to support the Cargo and attach the wheels to.

They're not even fully welded! Just the simple 1-iron placement Armor blocks.


Barely will move on fairly level ground (at .9g), slight hills cause it to wheeze and cry and slow down to a stop. Moderate grade, I can get a little way if I get a fairly good rolling start, but quickly am rolling backwards.

This is at full power, full traction.


Really ruined the attempt to play Survival on a planet. It's hard enough to obtain the ore - flying ships can't carry any realistic hauls of ore. By the time to scrape off a little of the surface area, it's overloaded. And that's perhaps 1m depth of drilling. (Please don't suggest I should play "destructive mining"...)

So, it's left to wheeled vehicles. The Small Grid just can't go deep, it's mainly limited to surface scraping. Unless you try to drive into the side of a mountain, but then it's a total crapshoot if you're going to hit any 'useful' ore.


So, it seems it's limited to Large Grid with Piston drilling (Somewhat like an Oil drilling platform). Other than this, I've yet to find any realistic mobile platform to move about and target specific ores.

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