But I built this not to be conventional. 😉 It's an experiment in torque priority for a wheeled vehicle. It was a conscience decision. The vehicle is not geared for acceleration but for pulling and climbing power.

What you are describing is an electric drive train. That's what you actually want. Now with a gear/transmission drive train the only thing you are able to do is lose efficiency by adding parts, so therefore the trick is to use the bare minimum number of parts for the entire line, yeah it will end up being conventional bu that's exactly why the convention is what it is. ;)

In regards to the gearboxes I would have typically built it in the "multiplier mode" with multiple gearboxes values per gearbox. I chose to build it this way so that I could tinker with the gear setting on each transition. Additionally the extra gearboxes right now gives me the option of 6 gears, an additional 6 gears when the Modifier is applied and a separate reverse. It gives me lots of options for tweaking. It's packed tight but I wanted to also experiment with the numbers.

As for symmetry I'm fully aware of the tool. When placing wheels I usually turn it off.

Hello, agrimes. The vehicle has more then one clutch as I built it with a consideration that torque is going to drive the vehicle, not RPS. It was an experiment in not tying the vehicle to the RPS of the engine. This also gives us more pulling and climbing power. I separated the drive train in to 3 zones: Engine, Transmission and Wheels. When accelerating the clutch for each zone will not engage until the previous zone matches the same RPS. This allows the Transmission and wheels to be disengaged from the work of the engine getting up to RPS. This allows the vehicle to be driven like a "regular car": you only acclerate (apply torque) to maintain speed or increase speed, the subsequent zones should "coast".

on the little symmetry mode pull-out, the rightmost icon gives you a tool to move the symmetry plane around, I think that's what you were missing.

A nasty gotchya of this game is that many parts have a hidden mirrored version, so things like wheels must always be installed with symmetry mode active and on the left side of the vehicle. Doing this will cause the mirrored version to be placed on the opposite side of the vehicle. It's a very nasty and counterintuitive feature that affects engines too.

As for steering, I've started using a geometric curve to flatten the steering response, I have a 4WS module on my workshop that will implement the geometric curve and will work pretty well on any 2-axle vehicle without further tuning. https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1892520382 Some vehicles are a bit more responsive on the rear end so you might have to tune the high response down to 0.5 or 0.6. Most vehicles will turn on a dime with this thing AND be controllable at speed with no other adjustments.

Overbuilt to the power of 100. =\ I think I had an older version from a mission pack... It's the densest design I ever tinkered with. Ok, it has some interesting features, I couldn't get the drivetrain touchscreen to work... Ok, I had already gone through and trimmed down/optimized removed a good number of the controllers. To start at the beginning, you absolutely cannot afford to waste any space on your drivetrain that isn't utterly essential. Mechanically speaking, this design needs to have EXACTLY one clutch. It also needs not more than three gearboxes. It needs the reversing box. Now for forward drive, a vehicle of this class only needs TWO gearboxes. Now think about it, each gearbox is controlled by one bit, so two gearboxes is two bits, and there are exactly 4 permutations of two bits, so therefore if you are crafty enough in choosing gear ratios, you now have a 4-speed transmission.

I appreciate you making this car. The changes are listed below. They should take you around 1 min to implement if you want to try it.

/thumbsup :). Feel free to make an adjustments you want. I wouldn't mind taking a look to see what changes you made (please feel free to post modified to workshop) I'll take a look at it again but it all seems good on this side. I appreciate your comments.

Well I tried following the road from Tajin Airstrip in the arctic towards the bridge and fell in the water. Anyway, this is your car and you should tune it the way you want. I can drive a modified version :)

Hi dupa. I only played it on keyboard mode and I've had no problem with the responsiveness. It's much more manageable at speed now with the Dampening added. Not sure why you are seeing a difference because I'm having no problem with steering.

I tried driving it and it was barely responsive with axis sensitivity of 5%. However in joystick mode it is manageable. I guess you took the car for a test drive before updating, which leads me to the assumption that you might be playing in joystick mode. It's toggled by J key. See if you have a little joystick icon on the right of your screen.

Anyway what worked for me is this: I set A/D sensitivity to 100% and in the dampening controller I divided the raw input by 4 making it effectively 25%. The reason I did this and not just set it to 25% in the seat is because when you release the keys, it takes time for the input to return to zero, so when you release the key it's still steering. The more sensitive the seat is, the faster it returns to zero too. So this is 25% + fast reset.

Thanks for the suggestions, dupa and Malin. I looked at TT's truck and he uses a dampening formula which decreases the steering effect with speed. Using his example I built a Dampening microcontroller and installed it on the MULE. Seems to make staying on the road more manageable at speed. Let me know what you think.

The steering difficulty doesn't just come down to the sensitivity. It's difficult to follow roads and go where you want to go. One of the reasons is that the control seats take their time resetting the input. When I try precision steering, I end up oscillating left and right. Try driving TT's truck , it handles very well. Maybe borrow some ideas.

I have made a microcontroller that reduces steering sensitivity with an increase in speed. That could help with the steering.

Hi dupa, thanks for your comments. I'm updating the control scheme in the next release which should be the final for this version (small engine with single radiator). It will go back to the W/S for Accelerate and Brake and A/D for Steering. I managed to find some space to drop in a microcontroller to do the translation from seat to key presses. It's pretty packed. :)

In regards to your comment for steering improvement, where do you see the issue? I find that if I tighten the steering anymore it overturns at high speed and is very difficult to keep straight. I added the option to turn on 4 wheel turning if you want to be extremely maneuverable at slow speed.

Very nice vehicle design. Control keys are strange to me - I would use wasd or arrows instead of splitting the controls to 2 hands. I assume it's because the 5 and 6 keys are on/off and arrows/wasd are numbers. A simple microcontroller will take care of it. Vehicle steering could also be improved. I realize this is WIP, I hope you bring this car to perfection! 👍