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🖤omegamäään Ω Feb 19, 2020 @ 11:21am

Wrench vs Car mechanic Sim ?

What are the differences between Wrench and CMS18?
Why should I buy it, or better asked: What is better, where is CMS18 better?
Is it a copy? is it better? Why should I buy it also, if I already have a car mechanic game.
Questions over questions. And does it have German language?

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Showing 1-7 of 7 comments

Tusk Feb 19, 2020 @ 12:13pm

Well, for one of the biggest pulls for me is this has VR support, CMS does not afaik. Playway S.A. also makes very similar games, I don't like their games, if you ever played a playway game, you will notice from a game trailer if it is a playway game. There are good games made under them, but I think all the developers use the exact same unity toolset the exact same way. Like it's a school and these are class group projects.

Wrench on the other hand is made with very different mindset and toolset, it looks like an original game. And from what I know wrench tries to be more realistic, while CMS is very game-y. But I don't have either of those games, I'm awaiting the new update 91 for wrench and wait for some impressions gameplay about the tutorial and what's in store before I'd buy it.

And that is also one difference, Wrench is EA it keeps getting better, CMS released every couple of years and has bucketload of dlcs.

Also it doesn't seem like there is German language in it.

EssBee

Feb 19, 2020 @ 2:58pm

As someone who has CMS 14, 15, 18 and also Wrench as well, these are my thoughts.

Should you buy Wrench if you already have a car mechanic sim? and Is Wrench better than CMS?
Well, that all depends on what you're looking for from a game really. There's pro's and con's to both.

CMS is a little more geared towards casual style game-play where the real in-depth mechanical side of the game is toned down quite a lot. This helps it to appeal to a wider audience and cater for those who barely know one end of a screwdriver from the other, let alone how the internals of a car work.
With Wrench, however, they're attempting to make it much more true-to-life, and the attention to detail is far greater. It doesn't hold your hand and do half of the job for you quite like CMS does when putting bits together

A quick example... Let's suppose we're doing a bottom end overhaul, a new crank, con rods, and pistons.
With CMS, you basically select your crank, place in position in the engine block and it snaps in to place. Throw a few crank caps at it, bolt it down, job done. Grab a piston which already has the rod and everything attached to it, snap it in place upon your crank, throw a few rod caps and bolts at it, bolt it down.... that's your bottom end complete.

With Wrench, however, although it more or less follows the same kind of procedure and couple of bits snap in to place for you... the attention to detail is far greater where the components are concerned.
With the crank, you don't just place the crank in to the engine block, you have to place all the bearings (shells) in place first on both the engine block and into all of your crank caps, along with the shims to prevent end-float of the crank. When you bolt it down there is a correct tightening sequence to follow, along with having to manually adjust your wrench to the correct torque settings for those particular bolts, and they should also be tightened in stages rather than wound all the way down in one go to allow the crank to seat squarely and allow for 'stretching' of the crank cap bolts.

On to the pistons.... These aren't pre-attached to your con rods like they are in CMS. With Wrench. you have to take each individual rod, place the bearings (shells) in place (big end's) where they seat against the crank, and you also have to place a bearing in to each individual rod cap too.
Then you have to place each individual piston ring in to it's grove, for each piston, place each piston on to a rod, slide the piston pins in place to secure the pistons to the rods, and finally snap the piston pin circlips in to place on each side of your piston, and for all pistons. Then you can go about placing your piston-rod assemblies in to your engine block, placing your rod caps on to the ends of your rods and over your crank, and then place a nut on each side of each rod. Again, you then have a set torque value that you have to tighten those nuts down to, and in separate stages again ,all with slowly increasing torque values to once again cater for seating the caps and rods squarely against each other and also the crank, and to also allow for any 'stretching' of the rod studs.

Yeah, so as you can see. the attention to detail in Wrench is far superior to that of CMS.
Now imagine what that would entail for a complete engine overhaul.
Even the crank actually spins in Wrench too, along with your cams, so timing your engine can actually go horribly wrong if your crank is in the wrong position relative to your cams when you place the timing belt on!
Timing isn't even an issue at all in CMS. Throw a chain or belt on, it's already perfectly timed for you. ...
Perfect for beginners or those who just want fly through a rebuild without any hassle. For the die-hard's though. or real life mechanics or true enthusiasts... yawn!
You can build an entire In-line-4 engine in CMS in about 5-10 minutes. In Wrench, you'd be looking at 30 mins to an hour, depending on your experience with engines.

Quite simply, the level of detail in Wrench is the closest you're going to get to working on a car without actually going out and getting your hands dirty on a real one.
Practically every nut, bolt, washer, bearing, circlip... you name it, it's probabaly modelled in to the game, and each one has to be placed manually and individually. You can't just select a bolt and expect the washer to jump in place for you. YOU have to do EVERYTHING.

So yeah.. should you buy Wrench if you already have CMS?
That all depends how deep your passion for cars and their mechanical workings goes, and do you want that level of immersion from a game?

While CMS can be fun, Wrench is far superior from a purely technical point of view. Nothing else on the market (that I know of) even comes close.

There are negatives though.... Wrench is still in Early Access where as CMS is now fully released, and, for the most part all of the bugs have now been squashed.
With Wrench being in EA, and with a steady and pretty constant stream of new content appearing, the odd occasional bug is bound to find it's way in from time to time. It's unavoidable, especially when you consider Wrench is being developed by just TWO people!
The good news is that both devs are very active on their Discord channel (although not so much on Steam these days), and that anybody who gives them a shout is likely to receive a response in a very short space of time. If the devs aren't available at that precise moment in time, you can pretty much guarantee that someone from the community will be there to answer your call. You don't get that with CMS!

As for the German translations, that one I unfortunately can't help you with. It's not listed as an option on their Steam Store page, so it looks as if it's probably not in German at this point in time. It may potentially be in the works though. Like I say, the game is constantly having new content added, and new localisations could well be a part of that. They have a huge new career mode on the way, so who knows what else they'll be throwing in with that lot!
One option, I guess, would be to jump on Discord and ask. they'll be able to answer your questions directly, or even confirm that they'll possibly look in to it as a future feature if you outright request it. They're very open to suggestions, so you never know!

Besides all of the above, I guess you could check out a few YouTube video's if you want more of an idea of what Wrench is all about, just remember that most of those videos are going to be well over a year old now and the game has come on in leaps and bounds since then. I wouldn't be surprised if we now have double the amount of features that you'll see in any YT video.

I also started a couple of guides wayyyy back in the early days of the games existence when there were no tutorials available in game to get new players up and running, or those who had little mechanical knowledge. They're both a little out of date again now due to the continuous stream of new content being added to the game, so I'm continuously playing 'catch-up' whilst trying to keep the guides relevant and up-to-date. It's almost a never ending process!
But feel free to take a look at these if you like. It'll give you a little insight in to what to expect if you do decide to buy the game.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1631544923
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1638916184

Like I say, it really all depends on what you want from a game. if you want to just pick it up and tinker for 15 minutes or so at a time, CMS may be your better option as it's more geared up for casual play.
If, on the other hand, you really do want to be immersed and throw yourself in to the deep end, then you're not going to find anything more immersive and realistic than Wrench.
It really is, hands down, the best mechanic simulator there is out there!

Edit = typo.

Last edited by EssBee; Feb 19, 2020 @ 4:48pm