BUG: tractor weights get worn and need maintenance

[JPSGT40]

If you mount a weight on the front of your tractor and drive around with it, it will get "maintenance" wear just like your tractor's engine. In fact, it receives the wear and tear at the same rate as the tractor.

Laughing yet? You should be. It's rediculous. A big block of steel/lead should not wear out within 1 game day.

When I noticed the weight's condition (maintenance %) was dropping I decided to watch how quickly it would plummet. After less than 9 hours play (in-game clock set to "real time") the condition of the weight had plummeted to 60%!

I took it to the shop and did "repair" on it. Only cost $4 to get it back to 100%.

It didn't seem to have any negative affect having it at 60%, so it's probably safe to just ignore it's "health", but the point it is its maintenance % should not go down at all.

[DizzieDawgie]

Makes me wonder what happens when the weight reaches 0%. Does is somehow "fail"? Maybe it magically becomes filled with helium and has an opposite effect on your tractor.

[JPSGT40]

I did a further test on a cultivator (Rau Polymag 300).

I took it to one of the HUGE fields on the USA map and ran it until its health hit 0% and just kept going to see if ANY negative affects would occur. Nothing bad happend to it and it continued to work perfectly cultivating the soil. Field status registered as 100% cultivated when I finally finished.

So I would have to conclude that non-engine equipment maintence % is meaningless and gives no negative impact on its performance and functionality -- and, thus, showing their maintance % go down is therefore a bug that should be squashed.

Tractor and truck maintence % DOES matter. When their % starts getting low you do lose horsepower, but it never really "breaks down". I suspect it would also affect their trade-in value, but I haven't tested that.

[DizzieDawgie]

Thanks for the info, JPSGT40. That's exactly what this community needs more of: Experimentation!

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." ~Wernher von Braun

[JPSGT40]

The testing is not for the faint-of-heart. It took me 3 hours of real time to get that cultivator down to 0%.

I wonder if maintenance wear would be accellerated if I increased the time scale to 120 X ? It shouldn't affect it, but you never know with bugs.

[Nightwolf]

the guide says maintenance only affects engine power and speed, and since those arent factors on weights, the wear and tear code acutally tries applies the negative engine power and speed to the weight...which it doesnt have..... so 0-0 stil equals 0 lol they just spammed the code on everything and didnt bother to clean it up before launch... probably rushed

[Waggy]

Originally posted by DizzieDawgie:

Makes me wonder what happens when the weight reaches 0%. Does is somehow "fail"? Maybe it magically becomes filled with helium and has an opposite effect on your tractor.

Thank you, I needed the laugh.

[proXimo]

Tested: Game speed does not affect wear rate, only pure playtime. Sitting in a tractor while the engine is dead no longer seems to wear them down or count towards "work hours".

What I have not tested: Faster wear rate if machine is used above it's rated horsepower.

I think (0 tested) that fuel is consumed faster when using a machine that doesn't have enough horsepower. This includes pulling a fully loaded, too big trailer up an incline that is too steep for the tractor to handle and it slows to a snail pace. If this is true, then I believe wear rate goes up just like fuel use goes up.

In general I've noticed machines wear out at an almost identical rate that fuel is consumed. It might just be me, but it's almost universal with all machines I've used. This includes harvesters, my tractors, and contract leased vehicles all used in various situations.

[Phaz]

Originally posted by JPSGT40:

I did a further test on a cultivator (Rau Polymag 300).

I took it to one of the HUGE fields on the USA map and ran it until its health hit 0% and just kept going to see if ANY negative affects would occur. Nothing bad happend to it and it continued to work perfectly cultivating the soil. Field status registered as 100% cultivated when I finally finished.

So I would have to conclude that non-engine equipment maintence % is meaningless and gives no negative impact on its performance and functionality -- and, thus, showing their maintance % go down is therefore a bug that should be squashed.

Tractor and truck maintence % DOES matter. When their % starts getting low you do lose horsepower, but it never really "breaks down". I suspect it would also affect their trade-in value, but I haven't tested that.

I also did a test, with the Amazone D8 30 seeder. When it was a 1% health the max speed when operating was 11 km/h. After repairing it, the max speed went back to 15 km/h (as indicated in the specs). So that's over 30% productivity loss when unrepaired.

So it does also matter on attachments. Did you look at the max speed at all?

[JPSGT40]

>>> Did you look at the max speed at all?

Yes, I saw max speed decreased from 7 down to 6, but that's because my tractor was down below 60%. After doing "repair" on tractor was able to run all tools at their stated speeds.

[JPSGT40]

OK, I just did another test and it closely matches what PhasmaNL experienced.

I used a harvester (New Holland TX32 with its matching TX32 header).

As the health of the header dropped to 37% the fastest I could harvest was 4 MPH (rather than 6 MPH). I repaired the HEADER back to 100% and could harvest at 6 MPH again, even though I kept the harvester's health at 73%.

So, certain equipment lose productivity speed as their maintenance health decreases. Giants has also stated several times that things like tractors and trucks lose horsepower if you don't maintain them, so we know that as well.

Still makes no sense that weights wear out so quickly.

I wonder what happens to wagons/trailers? Can't image their storage capacity decreases. Maybe they increase roll resistance making it tougher to haul stuff up hill? Guessing, of course.

[Chakes]

Originally posted by proXimo:

In general I've noticed machines wear out at an almost identical rate that fuel is consumed. It might just be me, but it's almost universal with all machines I've used. This includes harvesters, my tractors, and contract leased vehicles all used in various situations.

While I cant't contribute much more of value to that discussion, I can at least say that I didn't experience that at all. For me, my vehicles wear out much quicker than they consume fuel (fuel consumption set to normal ingame).

The "worst" vehicle when it comes to breaking down for me is by far the Imperador 3.0, the herbicide spray/dry fertilizer combo. I had to fix it 4 times now whenever it hit <60% health while it still sits on 90% fuel.