Decided to stop whining and see what the hype about this first person/third person 3D Zomboid stuff was about….proceeded to play my longest session in months, it really is crazy how great it looks and plays (after I messed with my graphics settings)

i died ten minutes later

Found this real nice military vehicle on my CDDA run but no keys in sight and the door is locked. Checked the garage it was parked in front of and I’ve looted every zombie I’ve killed and still no keys.

Would have to break the window if I wanted to Hotwire it (even if I had the means to do so) and wanna know if it’s worth breaking the window to look inside and the keys are a lost cause or if I should hold off.

I noticed when driving my various cars around that my Dart, a small, light, standard car I use for stealth missions, seems to absolutely guzzle gas compared to my big, heavy, lumbering SUVs, my step van, and my ambulance. At first I thought this was just because it had a smaller gas tank than those heavy-duty vehicles, but then I started tracking actual gas usage and no, it legitimately did use a lot more gas than the heavier vehicles. So I went on a vision quest through the game's codebase and now I know why.

The fuel consumption formula in the game has a lot of things you'd expect - it cares about how fast you're traveling, what gear you're in, what RPM the engine is at, the engine's quality, and of course the vehicle's mass. Most of this works out how you'd expect - although there are two notable exceptions to that. Speed is one; the higher the top speed, the more fuel efficient the car is - you can basically think of fuel consumption as the proportion of how close you are to the car's top speed. So if your top speed is higher, you get the same multiplier but more distance traveled. It's not unreasonable, just a little weird.

But what's more than weird is the way the game handles mass. Heavier cars do have worse fuel efficiency... but so do lighter cars. There's a sweet spot - a chassis mass of 1000 has the minimum multiplier for fuel cost. A car that weighs 900 and a car that weighs 1100 both have the same penalty. And this is where the Masterson Horizon and Chevalier Dart get absolutely wrecked - their chassis mass is only 650, so they eat a 2.2x fuel consumption multiplier because of their weight.

Add in the fact that the Dart specifically has a low scripted top speed of 70 km/h and that engine quality has a sizable effect and the Dart has one of the lowest engine quality values of any car in the game and the average Dart consumes about 3.5x as much fuel per distance traveled as the most fuel efficient car in the game. The Horizon fares a little better at 2.5x because of its higher top speed and higher average engine quality, but it's still not a car I would describe as fuel efficient.

What is the most fuel efficient car? Surprisingly, it's the Mercia Lang 4000. Usually lambasted because of its high script weight of 950 compared to other sports cars, that script weight actually helps it here as it almost touches that 1000 script mass sweet spot, it has a high average engine quality, and it has a very high top speed - and all of this puts it at the most fuel efficient car in the game. I still wouldn't recommend it, it's only a two-seater, but it is interesting.

But waiting in the wings at only 1% behind the Mercia is... the Franklin All-Terrain. As if we all needed more reasons to love this car, on top of everything else it is good at it is also extremely fuel efficient. It lands exactly on the 1000 mass sweet spot, also has a high average engine quality, and has a surprisingly high top speed.

Other popular cars, compared to the Mercia Lang 4000 / Franklin All-Terrain:
Chevalier D6 - 1.5x
Dash Rancher - 1.5x
Most standard and sports cars - 1.75x
Dash Bulldriver - 2x
Step Van - 2x
Franklin Valuline - 2x
Ambulance - 2.2x

(Note that all figures here are calculated at the car's rated top speed; actual comparisons at various speeds can vary a lot by where the various cars end up in terms of RPM but the general rankings should be steady over time for most usecases.)

But what about actual mass, you might ask? Wouldn't the lighter cars do better once accounting for the components and cargo the vehicle has to carry?

Well, for fuel efficiency purposes, actual mass is irrelevant - the code only refers to the chassis's mass for fuel consumption. But for actual acceleration and handling, the vehicle's total mass does in fact matter - and that brings me to the second point of this post:

There are a lot of vehicle parts you can remove from cars that do nothing or almost nothing - and by removing them, you actually make the car drive better! So what parts can be removed?

• Tires, suspension, brakes, battery, driver's seat - 100% necessary, you can't properly drive the car without them.
• Passenger seats - you could remove them, but then you lose the storage. Not worth it.
• Hood - you could remove it, but then you lose your engine protection. Keep it.
• Doors and windows - only actually useful to the player sitting in the associated seat. If you have a driver's side door and window installed, zombies will hit the door/window instead of you when attacking. But if you're playing single player, you could easily remove all passenger doors and windows and lose actually nothing.
• Windshield - you might think it protects you from zombies or crashes, but it doesn't. The windshield protects you from rain. And that's it. So if you don't want to get rained on while driving, install the windshield, otherwise, skip it. Edit: Turns out, no, it doesn't even do that. You would think it should, and there is some code that would imply it does protect from rain, but that code never actually gets checked. Windshields do nothing.
• Trunk lid - does practically nothing. There is code in the codebase that would indicate that having a missing or damaged trunk lid would cause items to fall out of the trunk while driving - but that code is currently nonfunctional and does nothing (as of B42.21.0). And the trunk lid doesn't protect the trunk at all, that's another myth. It feels like it should (and I wrote a small mod that lets it do that), but at the moment it does not.
• Rear windshield - also does practically nothing and is an easy skip if you're lightweighting your car.
• Radio - For a regular car, skipping a radio saves 1.5 encumbrance. Not much. But if you've got an emergency vehicle, that radio you have installed is a 15 encumbrance monster. If you never use it... maybe take it out?

You can shave a surprisingly large amount of weight off a car once you lean into this. An ambulance with no rear door, no rear windshield, no HAM radio and no passenger door shaves 56 encumbrance off its final weight and you lose basically nothing, at least in single player. I should mention that in MP if you want to lock a car then that's when it becomes valuable to fully seal the car up - doors and windows everywhere are required to be able to properly lock a car and keep people out.

Speaking of keys, as of B42.21.0, hotwiring a car is perfectly safe. There's a common myth that hotwiring a car will damage its engine in some way and I can safely say having gone through the code that no, hotwiring does not reduce the engine's quality or condition, even when you fail. A car having high engine quality does make it harder to hotwire, so it'll take more attempts, but it's safe to do.

There is a root to the myth, like the trunk lid myth, where there is code that would suggest that failed hotwire attempts harm the car - it just never develops into an actual impact. Failing a hotwiring attempt sets the flag 'hotwiredBroken' on the vehicle. This flag remains even if you later succeed at hotwiring the car. The thing is, though... nothing else in the codebase ever checks this flag. It appears to be an orphaned bit of code, either something Indie Stone planned to develop further, or a remnant from a previous design which has been abandoned. The important thing is, it doesn't do anything at the moment.

About a year ago I made a small mod for my own playthroughs. The idea was simple, zombies I'd killed had a small chance to get back up later as sprinters, inspired by the Crimson Heads from the Resident Evil remake.

It started out pretty basic, but I kept adding things until it became a lot more fleshed out (excuse the pun). Crimsons are faster, stronger, can't be knocked down, and can break down doors and climb through windows much quicker than regular zombies. They can even vault tall fences!

I also added a head crushing mechanic using certain axes, sledgehammers or a lucky stomp, so you can make sure bodies stay dead. Burning and burying work too!

Eventually I decided to polish it up and put it on the Workshop. You can make Crimsons rare for the occasional surprise, or common for more of a challenge. It's got a bunch of sandbox options, and is safe to use with existing saves. It's single player only for now but I'd like to eventually add multiplayer.

It's called The Crimson Dead! Here's a little gameplay clip showing some of the mechanics. Hope some of you enjoy it!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3795812696

Well guess what happened! So pissed....

Been surviving in a 0.04 loot world with Romero's zombies, and for the first time since carving was added, I can make infinite bats, it's time to take back the world, one swing at a time

pretty much remaking the system completely

Every run I have the same problem. Power goes out, water goes out, I find a generator, and after a couple of months there’s just nothing left to work towards. So I made a mod about fixing the grid yourself.

You right-click a utility pole (or one of those big pylons) and there’s a Power grid menu with 4 repair stages. Inspect the substation, replace wiring, fix the transformer, then do a black start. Water works the same way through the legs of a water tower, but the pumps need power, so you have to sort out electricity first.

Each stage eats actual materials (wire, electronics scrap, sheet metal, car batteries, pipes, bleach and so on), needs Electrical or Mechanics, and makes noise. The last one is really loud, so expect company.

Once it’s done the whole map gets power or water back. Lights, fridges, taps, all of it. In sandbox you can tweak material cost, repair time, skill requirements and noise, and there’s an option where the grid breaks down again after X days and you have to go back and repair the last stage.

You can add it to an existing save. I haven’t tested multiplayer yet, the code is written for it but I genuinely don’t know if it holds up on a real server, so if anyone tries it please tell me.

Next thing I want to do is proper power plants and pumping stations that only cover the area around them, instead of the whole map at once.

It’s my first mod so any feedback helps. If the repair menu doesn’t show up on some pole or tower, drop the coordinates in the comments and I’ll add it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3820220452

My favorite base I’ve made

I was really sad about dying in my save so to cope I doodled a bit
I KNOW HE'S BASIC DON'T TELL ME 👹

if anyone wants commission work i would love to draw some more pz art

https://commissions.gg/sweett4108 <3

Here's the Workshop link - This mod is a heavily modified fork of Glapnak's Claimable Outposts. The mod is very similar to State of Decay in it's function, and with 10 different outpost types, it adds 223 possible outpost locations across Knox County.

The idea was to add some vitality to the gameplay loop and help relieve the burden on more sought-after resources in servers like Weapons, Ammo, and Welding materials like Metal and Propane.

I hand-built each outpost location (sandbags, tents, etc.) and added a little extra spice if you have SiaCatty's The Mutants enabled as well.

Both Bandits and Project A-Life are supported, as well as multiple Weapon mods such as Guns of Marz and VFE!

Hope you all enjoy, Happy surviving!

Been making a custom game mode and needed to find all of the Porta Potties & Outhouses.

There is 189.

Location List https://notebook.zohopublic.com/public/notes/xfalb1ed5c71f82dc408eb2b4c4fbaeed6746

Every clock has spawn points and rarity. You cant see office clock in a home. Also some clocks has special design that only spawns in specific places.

You can reach mods from here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3820158389

I don't have any mods that would change this. It's all vanilla+ type shit. KI5 vehicles, common sense, vanilla outfits + gear etc.

I've seen people play Zomboid where their game map looks the same as the map you see when you choose your spawn location. I was wondering if this was a mod or if there was something in the settings that allowed me to change the appearance of the game map to this.

Edit: Alright my dudes, I have good news and bad news.
The good news is Mr. u/DSJ-Psyduck has found the mod I was looking for.
The bad news is that it adds the map as an item and doesn't out right change the in game map like I thought it did. The comments on the mod page also say that the mod is broken and that it messes up the loot tables. That comment was however made at the very end of July so I'm hoping it's fixed by now. Thank y'all for your help.
Here's the mod page link if you'd like to install it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/comments/3387445972
Cheers!

Base 1: Rosewood Firestation

Base 2: Darkwallow Resort

Settings: Medium population, normal settings