diff lock damage kills the pace

When Spintires came out, you could drive fast. It was risky, you risked toppling a loaded truck, you risked getting stuck badly, maybe hit a rock and be stuck with the wheels off the ground, take a wrong turn and fail, but being skilled you could hit AWD and diff lock and 1+ gear and go zooming across the map, rescuing stuck players in multiplayers quicker than they thought possible, in hard mode of course.

The diff lock damage was introduced, and the same playing style was heavily penalized: go fast on most surfaces, and the diff lock damage would happen, and at times when you're most concentrating about your driving. Having to watch that, turn it off for 5 seconds, lose speed at a critical time, could upset your strategy. (Yes, lose speed: that means wheels are actually spinning when you turn it off, so it shouldn't get damaged in the first place, not being able to build that kind of tension.)

Diff lock damage is the game designer deciding, "you don't get to drive fast in this game", and that's that. The game I bought and the play style I loved is no more. Spintires is now the game of slow driving, to the point where I defy you to get the UAZ stuck unless it is either under water or sitting on a rock with all wheels in the air: if you stick it in 1/3 gear 1, it will always pull through.

But now it takes ages to reach stuck trucks for support. Voila, here comes the new checkpoint system that lets support trucks pass on shortcurt roads. Navigating the terrain at speed is no longer needed. What was the game about again? Should be called MudCrawler, not Mudrunner, that'd be more honest.

Not only would the checkpoint system not be needed if there was no diff lock damage, it makes the maps worse. When you have a road across the map that you can't use for lumber that is also fenced off against use from the sides, that strongly restricts the possible routes that you can use. You get less challenge on the same map area, and it is obvious when comparing maps to their orginal counterparts.

And yes, I could play casual, but have you been to casual multiplayer? have fun getting people to stick around and not recall their trucks, unless they're fully loaded and at least halfway to the lumber mill they'll rescue to garage before you arrive.

Diff lock damage doesn't actually add anything to the game thatwould be worth while, it's an annoyance, nothing more. You can always avoid it; the truck stalls if you don't hit Q quickly enough, so you will always want to avoid it; it doesn't add depth to the game in any way I can see.

The upside: trucks with no differential (but where are the chains on the Zil?) and trucks with always-on differential that take no diff damage.

tl;dr Diff lock damage slows the pace, and necessitates kludges that make maps worse, with no upside.

As long as differential damage is unrealistic I am all for removing it. So be it from what you are saying it seems like even if it is realistic it is mostly a hindrance to gameplay which would warrant it's removal to begin with.

Well, I wouldn't say it is a "hindrance to gameplay", but it changes the gameplay in a certain way that I don't like and don't understand. There could be an upside to it, I'm just not seeing it.

mendel you are a little late to whine about diff lock damage, i tried the lobbying against it when it was introduced, but its not use, it is here to stay.
pavel seems to love it, so it will stay. you just have to play the Q on Q off minigame like the rest of us 😉 😃

Well, maybe now that we have difficulty rating stars, perhaps we could use a star to have that thing turned off? Some checkbox on the dialogue that starts a new game would do. Having the diffculty configurable instead of preset "casual" and "hardcore", so like maybe adding "custom" and being allowed to choose might now be possible.

over 50 hours of play in hard-core mode in both single play and multiplayer, and I have not seen damage from AWD/Diff-locks on anything I have been driving, nor have any of the people I play with, even the couple of games I have had in casual mode I have not seen AWD/Diff damage.

likewise I have watched many Twitch streams including when playing with people in multiplayer and have not seen this fabled damage from AWD/Diff-locks use.

Its almost as if you are playing a completely different game, or your doing something so fundamentally wrong and inept that it causes it.

@b101uk There is no diff lock damage in casual mode. Spawn a C-255 on Crossing in hard mode, equip the garage tent for weight on the rear axles, drive straight out of the garage and turn right onto the mud track, put it into 1+ gear and engage AWD and diff lock, then floor the accelerator, you'll see the message several times before you reach the garage. But yeah, that is presumably "fundamentally wrong and inept", and you can probably explain why.

i know this is for naught but i am with @mendel on this. just because this is less of an issue on the redone stock maps, because there is so much automatic and extrude mud brush used on the new maps.
on mod maps the lockdamage terror will return and bite you too, you wait and see.

on maps like blackwater canyon, el bosque barvo and similar, you are in for some fun.

Someone doesn't understand how FOUR wheel drive works. (4wd and awd are NOT the same thing) and someone def doesn't understand how locked diffs operate. If locking diffs weren't breakable or damaging on different surfaces, car and truck manufactures would give all 4wd and awd vehicles diff locks from the fsctory irl. But, that's simply not the case.

@mendel said in diff lock damage kills the pace:

@b101uk There is no diff lock damage in casual mode. Spawn a C-255 on Crossing in hard mode, equip the garage tent for weight on the rear axles, drive straight out of the garage and turn right onto the mud track, put it into 1+ gear and engage AWD and diff lock, then floor the accelerator, you'll see the message several times before you reach the garage. But yeah, that is presumably "fundamentally wrong and inept", and you can probably explain why.

I don't play in "casual mode"

ok used that silly +1 gear mode with AWD/diff-lock permanently ON, took the long route turning right out of the garage 4 times and drove to the other garage, had the accelerator at maximum all the way, 3 times I got there with no damage, 1 time I get there with just 1 warning message totalling 16pts of damage, hardly a fundamental problem I would say given the fundamental "easy" mode advantages that "1", "R", "A" and "+1" gives, after all "+1" is still an auto gearbox capable of shifting gears 2 to 5.

however exactly how do you propose some form of driveline damage to be incurred in "1", "R", "A" and "+1" if they are ostensibly "automatic" in most of their operation, with the AWD and diff-locks being the only ostensibly "fully manual" items to penalise? and is that not asking for nothing more than making the easy controls easer for the sake of very occasionally having to press a button maybe twice.

if you use a wheel with clutch and h-shifter you have gear change damage to contend with, having to be in the right gear and contend with slow changes, and covering the same route there is more potential for gear change damage than diff damage in "+1" mode, granted wheels with clutch and h-shifter don't incur diff damage at lest if you play like a reasonable person as far as I have seen, BUT that "* Q on Q off minigame *" you refer to is replaced by the "clutch and gear change mini game", and I can tell you, you will change gear far far more times than you would have to press "Q" using "+1" if you were trying to cover most routes quickly i.e. faster than most would consider reasonable given this is NOT a T4 and T5 class Rally Raid truck simulator, but one of mainly heavily loaded truck crossing from A to B.

last edited by b101uk

Hey,

Differential will take wear damage from heat when high speeds are reached. I believe, this fine taking damage after four seconds to differential like this, is temporary. In future, there are lot of oportunities to change this differential "damage".

But for now, developers have other things to carry.

@b101uk said in diff lock damage kills the pace:

@mendel said in diff lock damage kills the pace:

@b101uk There is no diff lock damage in casual mode. Spawn a C-255 on Crossing in hard mode, equip the garage tent for weight on the rear axles, drive straight out of the garage and turn right onto the mud track, put it into 1+ gear and engage AWD and diff lock, then floor the accelerator, you'll see the message several times before you reach the garage. But yeah, that is presumably "fundamentally wrong and inept", and you can probably explain why.

I don't play in "casual mode"

Well, you wrote, "even the couple of games I have had in casual mode I have not seen AWD/Diff damage", and I provided an explanation why you were unable to do that.

ok used that silly +1 gear mode with AWD/diff-lock permanently ON, took the long route turning right out of the garage 4 times and drove to the other garage, had the accelerator at maximum all the way, 3 times I got there with no damage, 1 time I get there with just 1 warning message totalling 16pts of damage, hardly a fundamental problem I would say given the fundamental "easy" mode advantages that "1", "R", "A" and "+1" gives, after all "+1" is still an auto gearbox capable of shifting gears 2 to 5.

Your experience is fundamentally different from mine. There's a "simulation quality" setting in the options that could affect it, other than that I don't know what would (maybe presence of a clutch & shifter?) , but I'd have to test that.
Ok, I always get damage at the place where I would predict it, when the track gets narrow and the tracks are hard sand, and the diff lock is not needed. But I do get the red drive-line damage shown a few times, but then it goes away again. (Of course usually I would have been hitting Q then already.) The question is, should that happen? It happens even on the unequipped truck.

however exactly how do you propose some form of driveline damage to be incurred in "1", "R", "A" and "+1" if they are ostensibly "automatic" in most of their operation, with the AWD and diff-locks being the only ostensibly "fully manual" items to penalise? and is that not asking for nothing more than making the easy controls easer for the sake of very occasionally having to press a button maybe twice.

Driveline damage is incurred when the driveline tension winds up. On soft ground, this is not an issue since the wheels can just slip and release the tension; typically, you'd unlock the differential when getting back on the hard road. Driveline tension also depends on the difference between wheel rotations and so gets worse with speed. So the question is, how much slippage is there really on those terrain types where we encounter diff lock damage? I am definitely encountering this on sandy ground in 1 gear.

And it's not "very occasioally", it's all the time.

if you use a wheel with clutch and h-shifter you have gear change damage to contend with, having to be in the right gear and contend with slow changes, and covering the same route there is more potential for gear change damage than diff damage in "+1" mode, granted wheels with clutch and h-shifter don't incur diff damage at lest if you play like a reasonable person as far as I have seen, BUT that "* Q on Q off minigame *" you refer to is replaced by the "clutch and gear change mini game", and I can tell you, you will change gear far far more times than you would have to press "Q" using "+1" if you were trying to cover most routes quickly i.e. faster than most would consider reasonable given this is NOT a T4 and T5 class Rally Raid truck simulator, but one of mainly heavily loaded truck crossing from A to B.

The difference is that gear change is not a quick-time-event; it happens under your control. Also, does it stall your truck, throw you out of gear, or otherwise slow you down like diff lock damage does?

Edited, see stricken part above

last edited by mendel

@mendel

My "simulation quality" is set to maximum i.e. fully to the right.

In order to get the "1", "R", "A" and "+1" shifter the clutch and h-shifter function must be explicitly turned OFF in the in-game controller options, if the clutch and h-shifter function is ON then the "1", "R", "A" and "+1" shifter is unavailable.

Before I did the test in +1 shifter mode, I used the clutch and h-shifter with the C-255 and garage body, a 4th gear run was only just feasible if you took the line of lest resistance, this was the line I used with +1 mode, as it encompassed the most harder ground in order to keep speed up.

The place I got damage using +1 was as you expect given the gameplay limitation of +1, was on the rise just after a left hand corner just east of the southern limber mill, which is the only significant length of hard dry track, and I was in the centre of the track too, my other 3 runs I was much more on the left/right edge.

Your avoiding answering what do you propose as driveline damage in "1", "R", "A" and "+1" if they are ostensibly "automatic" in most of their operation, with the AWD and diff-locks being the only ostensibly "fully manual" items to penalise?

There is no point saying "yes but simulation" in one breath because you incur the penalty of having to press "Q" "Etc" once in a while when you have selected the decidedly none simulation gearbox mode with all the advantages it gives over a more simulation orientated clutch and h-shifter, you are advocating nothing more than there being NO penalty whatsoever for "1", "R", "A" and "+1" use in hard-core mode for the ONLY things that are ostensibly fully manually controlled thus the user can selectively avoid.

Clutch and h-shifter advantage and disadvantages:
Advantage:
No diff-lock damage in mud to on hard dry dirt tracks.
The feeling of a more simulation orientated experience.

Disadvantages:
Cannot attain in 1st gear a wheel speed as slow as gear "1" can at its 1/3 setting.
You don't have the torque-converter-esque function of "A" or "1 at its 1/1, 2/3 or 1/3" setting to start moving with minimal wheel slip using just the throttle to match resistance before only slightly exceeding it to move forward without digging deeper wheel ruts.
Every gear change has the possibility to cause 6pts of truck damage if there is the slightest bit of accelerator depression upon shifting. (can cause problems if you have a throttle axis with a little zeroing problem, as there is no axis dead zone setting).
Every gear change you lose forward speed as there is no drive as you would expect, unlike "+1" when it changes gear seamlessly without loss of drive as ground conditions thus resistance changes (outside of the initial change to +1).
Fuel management is more of a thing as you often find yourself moving slower in a lower gear so will seek to mitigate it by turning off/on AWD and even diff-lock as ground condition change because its not feasible to change up a gear or is rendered pointless if you have to change back down gears is 50m with the risk of coming to a stop if you leave it to late, it also means you don't have momentum that can carry you across some muddy patches that +1 can often afford.

@b101uk said in diff lock damage kills the pace:

Your avoiding answering what do you propose as driveline damage in "1", "R", "A" and "+1" if they are ostensibly "automatic" in most of their operation, with the AWD and diff-locks being the only ostensibly "fully manual" items to penalise?

Well, in my original post I did say that having no such penalty would be preferable.

The reason to have it is either gameplay (and then I am against it because it makes it worse for me), or it is simulation (and then I am against it because it's not realistic in its present form).

Disadvantages:
Cannot attain in 1st gear a wheel speed as slow as gear "1" can at its 1/3 setting.

That is hard to believe, and if true, certainly a fault of the game as you should be able to run with a slipping clutch.

Every gear change has the possibility to cause 6pts of truck damage if there is the slightest bit of accelerator depression upon shifting.

This is definitely a fault of the game. It probably exists because the game engine has no concept of truck engine RPM.

when you have selected the decidedly none simulation gearbox mode with all the advantages it gives over a more simulation orientated clutch and h-shifter

I am operating the game with keyboard and mouse (and a gamepad for crane operations). I do like to use manual gearboxes in other games, but I'm not aware that MudRunner offers this, given my input devices.

last edited by mendel

@mendel

but there lays the problem, your advocate using "simulation" as an excuse to get rid of it, but wont accept simulation in other areas to replace it because it makes it harder for you with your ostensibly automatic gearbox, with very few other manual action that can be penalised.

in the real world you don't slip your friction clutch to simply attain a lower wheel speed, you attain a lower wheel speed by using lower gears at engine tick-over, as a friction clutch only has a finite short life before the friction plates become glazed from excessive slipping, and while clutch damage is not in game, your answer is NOT remotely simulation orientated because I wander if you think it could be added to the gear 1 or R in 2/3 and 1/3 modes to penalise their use for extended lengths of time, as most clutch and h-shift users would welcome clutch damage as a thing from prolonged slippage.

for example adding clutch damage in gear 1 or R in 2/3 and 1/3 modes and for clutch/h-shift users is adding "simulation" in other areas, and advocating adding shifting delay/drive loss during auto-shifting of gears in +1 mode is another adding "simulation" in other areas, which are the type of penalties that are universal for all and would help justify removing diff-lock damage rather than just saying "but simulation!"

@b101uk said in diff lock damage kills the pace:

but there lays the problem, your advocate using "simulation" as an excuse to get rid of it, but wont accept simulation in other areas to replace it because it makes it harder for you with your ostensibly automatic gearbox, with very few other manual action that can be penalised.

Wrong again. I would accept it, but I said the game doesn't offer it.

in the real world you don't slip your friction clutch to simply attain a lower wheel speed,

Yes you do, when accelerating from a standstill on slippery ground. As the vehicle accelerates, you ease off the clutch.

Since clutchless users can't do this, they need another way to achieve that result, hence lower gear 1 speed.

@mendel said in diff lock damage kills the pace:

@b101uk said in diff lock damage kills the pace:

Yes you do, when accelerating from a standstill on slippery ground. As the vehicle accelerates, you ease off the clutch.

No you don't. If that's how you drive a standard in real life, you don't know how to drive a stick.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutch_control

http://topix.landrover.jlrext.com/topix/service/archive/63182/off-road driving.pdf is off-topic here, but a nice comprehensive summary.

Are we comparing gear 1 at 1/3 with accelrator key pressed to 1st gear shifter with accelerator pedal as lightly pressed as possible? Or auto gear 1 pedal to shifter gear 1 pedal?

@mendel said in diff lock damage kills the pace:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutch_control

http://topix.landrover.jlrext.com/topix/service/archive/63182/off-road driving.pdf is off-topic here, but a nice comprehensive summary.

Are we comparing gear 1 at 1/3 with accelrator key pressed to 1st gear shifter with accelerator pedal as lightly pressed as possible? Or auto gear 1 pedal to shifter gear 1 pedal?

@mendel

from the Land Rover off-road driving pdf

"Slipping the clutch:
Use of excessive clutch slip to prevent the engine stalling will result in premature clutch wear. Always select a gear low enough to enable the vehicle to proceed without needing to slip the clutch
.

DO NOT drive with your foot resting on the clutch pedal; driving across uneven terrain could cause you to inadvertently depress the clutch, resulting in loss of control of the vehicle."

we are NOT by any stretch of the imagination talking about clutch slip consummate with heavily laden hill starts etc etc, which is short lived slippage with the engine near peak torque RPM within the bounds of what is considered normal, we are talking about the prolonged slippage used to attain a low wheel speed for long periods, the two are completely different uses, one is relatively normal and at most lasts <5sec even with the most inept of drivers, the other can last much much longer in spintires.

1st gear with an h-shifter with the accelerator not pressed (once moving) has about the same minimum wheel speed as gear 1@1/1 with a little bit of accelerator pressed, meaning its not possible to attain slower wheels speeds as per 1@2/3 or 1@1/3, without engaging in unrealistic amount/duration of clutch slip, which you would just not do IRL when you have a low-range capable transfer box which would give you all your main gear ratios often at an additional 2:1 or more reduction vs. the high-ranges 1:1 transfer box output.

i.e. many of the 5-speed trucks in game have transfer box to split drive between the front and rear axle sets, most transfer box are 2-speed hiving high range often 1:1 drive, and low-range, which is a reduction gear often around 2:1, which generally places 3rd gear low range within overlapping wheel-speed of 1st gear high-range.

but in-game 1@1/3 and 1@2/3 are conferring an advantage that is akin to having 2 low-range gears (without the torque multipacation) through the use of clutch slip to attain low wheel speed and torque converter-esque slip durations.

@b101uk said in diff lock damage kills the pace:

@mendel said in diff lock damage kills the pace:

Are we comparing gear 1 at 1/3 with accelrator key pressed to 1st gear shifter with accelerator pedal as lightly pressed as possible? Or auto gear 1 pedal to shifter gear 1 pedal?

1st gear with an h-shifter with the accelerator not pressed (once moving) has about the same minimum wheel speed as gear 1@1/1 with a little bit of accelerator pressed, meaning its not possible to attain slower wheels speeds as per 1@2/3 or 1@1/3, without engaging in unrealistic amount/duration of clutch slip, [..]

So you're comparing auto gear 1 pedal to shifter gear 1 pedal. I found on Spintires that with auto gear 1 and pedal, 1/3 is really not needed. What I do need it for is for use with keyboard acceleration, because that is on/off.

So what you should investigate:

  1. is auto gear 1 with lever on 1/3 or 2/3 position actually slower when you're using pedals, aka does the setting matter?
  2. is manual (shifter) gear 1 with the accelerator lightly touched (or not at all?) faster than auto gear 1/3 with push-button acceleration?

If the answer is "no" to either, I don't see that there's a problem.