Sprocket update for 23 February 2023

Hi all,

Quite a large movement change in this one. Design will take a little more skill to get vehicles moving well, but it's far more rewarding when you do.

This is up on the experimental branch, you'll have to opt-in to test it early:

Additions

• Maximum brake force for tracks can now be set in the track designer config tab. Too low and your vehicle will have trouble stopping. Too high and your vehicle will do a front flip, or be too responsive with clutch braking.
• Added an engine torque graph in vehicle movement info screen.
• Added RPM limiters to engines. Lets vehicles with few high ratio reverse gears not burst into flames. This will be automatically placed at the max safe RPM, but you can override it.
• Speed limit estimates are now displayed on the engine, transmission and track designers. These calculate the theoretical top speed achievable, taking max engine RPM, sprocket radius and gears into account.
• Added axle offset sliders for all wheels except the sprocket. Allows you to shift all wheels on the axle out from the mount, to align them with the guide horns.

Changes

• Engines now have a torque curve, instead of constant torque. You'll need to increase those early gears (up to more realistic levels) to get the lost torque back.
  The curve is constant for all engines for now. This gives the idle RPM option significant effect, as you can start higher on the curve.
  Pivot rotating, usually being a low RPM task, is slower and more realistic than before. Getting back to previous pivot rates will require you to be more careful with your width to length ratios or do huge 1st gears.
• Changed brake force application approach. It stops leaning into the turn when using clutch braking.
• Twin transmission steering gear shifting will slow down the closer it gets to 1st gear. This gives the powertrain time to adjust to the increased speed differences.
• Renamed engine target min and max properties to upshift and downshift.
• Current tab of engine design (basic or advanced) is now saved between game sessions.
• Significantly increased engine acceleration when disconnected from the tracks.
• Strengthened torsion forces used to keep tracks moving at the same speed as their powertrain output. Results in more accurate twin transmission turning.
• Vehicle movement info screen graphs now utilize the entire vertical axis.
• RPM graph now shows max engine RPM and the idle.
• Gear graph now shows drive, reverse and neutral, instead of an absolute gear.
• Transmission size now scales with engine torque. Tankettes will be easier to make while tanks with ship engines will need to be closer to ship size. This is necessary for geometric internals.
• Expanding engine power preview dropdown will set the preview rpm to the current upshift rpm.
• Another pass on balancing roadwheel/end wheel power distribution.
• Brake turning and pivot turning are now limited to 1st gear. This is possible due to the RPM limiter.
• Removed transmission max ratio limits across eras. The maximum ratio is now a constant 30:1.
• Made track belt mass closer to real values, with help from A1exAndro from the community. Tracks are approximately 3x heavier now.
• Made all wheel model widths match the value set in the designer correctly, you might need to make some tweaks to your design.
• Track segment length slider now controls the pitch (distance between pins), instead of the full length of the segment.
• Updated tracks, engines and transmissions of all built-in vehicles.

Fixes

• Fixed unreadable font size on vehicle movement info screen graph labels at resolutions above HD.
• Fixed clutch braking gradual braking not working, it was fully braking instead.
• Fixed end wheels never providing traction due to a change in V0.12419.
• Fixed incorrect muzzle velocity (it was faster than said on the UI). Resulted in higher penetration values than expected.
• Made sprocket wheels fit much closer to track segments.
• Fixed sprocket teeth appearing through the Mark IV track segments.
• Fixed missing suspension arms on legacy small torsion bar suspensions (From before scalable suspensions, only accessible on old designs).

Disabling track belt change

I've changed how track belt info is stored in blueprint files, which makes the old way of removing track belts impossible.
It's fun to see until we get official wheels, so I've made setting belt width or thickness to 0 disable the track belts.
File editing sprocket or idler widths to 0 will disable them now.

• Hamish