Landcruisers: Rolling Thunder (or just Landcruisers) is a mod with one primary goal: Bringing wheels to Forts. As such, it contains many components to conquer the movement of vehicles, including wheels, transmissions, engines, controllers, roads, and some new weapons. This guide will cover all of them.

Landcruisers adds a total of 5 devices (7 if you count variations). They are as follows:



The most important component of any structure not directly connected to your core. Allows you to control structure, and also doubles as a way to control your movement, and read the propulsion information of your Vehicle.
You are allowed unlimited controllers on your vehicle; I recommend at least two for decent redundancy.

You can click on the controller to open up a UI. Doing so will give you access to the brake and the throttle, as well as speed and power stats.



The Most important part of any vehicle. Upon construction, they will spawn with a wheel automatically attached, and the wheels will link up to any other wheels in the same track group.

The track group can be changed by right clicking the wheel, and selecting one of the ten available track groups - alternatively, you can set it to be *just* a wheel, with no attached tracks.
Note that tracks are entirely aesthetic.

Engines are your main source of propulsion. Placing more will give you access to more power, which will let you move larger craft, and move up hills faster. They will not, however, directly affect your top speed.

Transmissions, put simply, will make your Landcraft go faster.
Under the hood, each transmission you place will give your vehicle access to a new gear,each gear giving a higher top speed than the previous for less power. How power and speed is calculated is covered in the [insert section here] section.

Drills will normally be unavailable outside of the map editor. However, if a map starts with drills, placed anywhere, they will be available to any player to place.
Regular drills produce 3 metal per second in exchange for 6 energy per second.
Super (upgraded) drills produce 5 metal per second in exchange for 10 energy per second.
Both require line of sight with the terrain to drill, and must be within 4 grid units to produce metal. The vehicle must also be stationary.

The road is a material that allows any wheels (both friendly and enemies) to drive over. there will be a force exerted on the roads as well when tanks drive over it so you should be careful to prevent the bridges from ripping apart if the tank on it is too heavy. It has the same hp as metal.

To be able to move, your fort will require a bare minimum of one wheel (Minimum of two recommended, for obvious reasons), an engine, and a controller.
At least one transmission is recommended, to attain reasonable speeds.


Construct the wheelbase to be twice the width of the vehicle as the height
Some maps feature treacherous terrain. To avoid flipping over, creating a larger wheelbase compared to your height can be quite beneficial.

Sideways suspensions on the outsides of your wheelbase
These can help prevent your Landship disintegrating when hitting the floor of a valley from a steep hill.

Crossbracing
Generally useful for preventing general rapid disintegration of Landcruisers.

Large doors
Engagements can take place at a surprisingly large number of different angles, heights, and distances. Having large doors ensures flexibility in all situations.


The following is a walkthrough of the basic construction process of your first vehicle.

The construction platform


For the start of your vehicle construction, a wide wheel base is recommended, made out of 2x2 boxes at ground level. Some maps will come with a construction platform, others will not. In the case of hanging maps, build down with 3 longs until you are 5 units from ground level.



The Wheelbase


Extrude up ~3 grid units along your desired vehicle width. Extrude one more layer of 2x2 boxes. This will be where you place your wheels.


Adding the wheels


Now to add the wheels. Place them as desired along the bottom layer of the 2x2 boxes. Add sideways wheels if desired.

I like to leave room for controllers here, as it's a relatively protected spot on any vehicle.


Constructing the superstructure


At this point, you want to start creating the superstructure of your vehicle. Consider how much room you want to have for engines, for weapons, and anything else you might add to your vehicle.

In my example image, I'm constructing my vehicle to contain cannons, and have placed the boxes to accommodate them.

Placing the weapons


Unless you already are certain how you want to lay your vehicle out, IE, you're following a build order, it's best to determine where your weapons and doors will go first, and build around them.
Add more structure to accommodate for doors, or to cover them as required.
If necessary, add more superstructure for the propulsion equipment.


Placing the controller(s)


Controllers should be treated like a nonexplosive core. You don't want to lose them, but unlike losing a core, it's not the end of the world if you do, if you have more than one.
Find a well protected spot to place them, either amongst the rest of your propulsion equipment, or inside your wheelbase.


Placing your propulsion equipment


For your first vehicle, you should aim for a top speed of 30-40km/hr. Start by placing a transmission, and check the controller to see what your new top speed is. Repeat, until you are within or above the desired top speed.
While there is no hard limit to top speed, friction will usually take over at around 60-70km/hr.
Use any remaining space you have for engines. Keep in mind that they are fairly expensive, and should be protected to minimise repair costs.


Preparing your vehicle to drive


Remember those 3 long extrusions we made at the start? Right now, they're holding the vehicle up, and can pretty safely be deleted. Generally speaking, you want to delete them as fast as possible to minimise the risk of your vehicle ripping apart, but an effective strategy can be to delete any angled struts first, and delete upright struts if required.



Room for expansion

For the design in the screenshots, there is room along the top and rear for additional transmissions, engines, and weapons. Mortars on the back can be quite lethal; alternatively, you can use Phantom to quickly move your weapons there if the enemy gets behind you.

Armouring your underside

Surprisingly often, I've found my vehicles getting destroyed by insufficient armour on my underside, and getting shot from below while going over a hill. Wheels themselves cannot be hit by weapons, however, the suspensions can.

Scorched earth policy

If your vehicle controller is destroyed, it's possible that the enemy will be able to reclaim it. A well placed howitzer, barrels (if Shockenaugh), batteries, or anything else that's explosive may be able to prevent this.


And that's it, you're done! In the next section, we'll detail how you drive your vehicle.
While I encourage you to come up with your own vehicle designs, you are more than welcome to copy this one.

In this section, I'll go over controlling your wheel fort(s), and some tactics to ensure that you win the engagement.



To recap, the controller allows you to have physical control and attachment to the structure, control your throttle and brakes, and see propulsion details.






Throttle Basics

The slider in the controller UI controls your throttle. The amount of power applied is completely linear, however, the resource consumption is not, and is detailed further down in the guide.
There is no need to always run the throttle at max, as it will continue to consume resources even when travelling at the max speed the vehicle will allow.


Brake basics

Your brake can be activated by pressing the big "B" button in the bottom center of the controller UI.
This will completely negate any sideways forces applied by the terrain, and will attempt to bring your vehicle to a stop, based on your engine power.

Controlling your hill descent

The brake is a powerful tool; sometimes it's too powerful. Braking downhill with significant inertia can and will cause your vehicle to flip, rip apart, or both. Therefore, it is recommended to either:

Utilise your throttle to counteract your velocity before braking, OR

Drive to the bottom of the hill, brake, then drive up the hill, brake

Safely braking with missing wheels

Once again, the brake is powerful. If you have missing wheels, or a significantly offset center of mass, braking in the same direction as the center of mass offset/missing wheels can be a death sentance.

Like braking on hills, you should use the throttle first to control your speed, and slow down.


Landcruisers doesn't have much in common with real combat. However, some strategy and tactics from the real world do apply.


Onion of Survivability

(C.O taskandpurpose.com )

There's a lot to be said about the onion of survivability. Let's break it down:

• Don't Be Seen
  
  There isn't much you can do about this one. An aware enemy will always be on the lookout for enemy vehicles, and unless you have Phantom as your commander, there is no way to conceal your vehicle.
  
  
• Don't Be Acquired
  
  In the world of Forts, the line between "Don't Be Seen" and "Don't Be Acquired" are heavily blurred.
  Once again, Phantom comes into play here. Other methods that may fall under this layer is hiding behind obstacles.
  
  
• Don't Be Hit
  
  Use your mobility to your advantage if you have it. As for more active methods of avoiding hits, every projectile has some kind of hard counter (Lasers still technically "hit" you, but as shields entirely negate their damage, I'm going to count that as avoiding a hit).
  Machine guns, Flak, Firebeams, Lasers, and Shields will cover every single projectile that can be thrown at you.
  
  
• Don't Be Penetrated
  
  This is standard Forts stuff; any kind of physical material between your innards and the incoming projectile is your friend.
  
  
• Don't be killed
  
  Bury your controller amongst your wheels, or your propulsion equipment. Have multiple, preferably spaced out, to avoid giving the enemy the kill should one controller die. Destroy the enemy at all costs before they can destroy you.

Hull Down

This involves placing your vehicle on the slope of a hill, just below the top, with your weapons peaking over. This reduces the profile that the enemy can hit, as well as give you a quick getaway should a particularly aggressive enemy show up.



Transmission

As it stands, transmission is entirely automatic,nothing has to be controlled by the driver.
As for the gear ratios, these are the mechanics:
First gear:

I'll write this later

Resource Consumption

Engines consume 5 * throttle ^ 2 resources per second (throttle being a number between 0-1).
What that looks like:


This means that there is a second soft benefit to engines: More means you can achieve the same speed with incredibly better efficiency. 4 engines at 25% throttle will consume 1/4th of the total resources, while producing the same power.

*Rounded to 0d.p
Throttle controls
Braking
Braking etiquite
engine efficiency
Dangers of high speeds
Preventing your enemy from getting behind you
What to do if your enemy gets behind you
Onion of survivability
Hull down

For a mod with the size and scope of Landcruisers, there are some major unhandled cases where you can do some actions that may be considered unethical. Commiting these actions may (but almost certainly will not) result in the Military Police making you "disappear".


For many, a good match can be ruined by a mischevious player who chooses to drive inside another player, and shoot their weapons. This isn't fun for anyone on the receiving end, and will almost certainly result in the opponent doing the same thing back.

Teammate or not, it's not much fun when you can't build due to a vehicle blocking your building.

Just like the previous two, it's pretty rude to destroy someones' hard work with an IED car.

Simply put, weapons that you can use to hit the enemy base from your own base defeat the purpose of building vehicles in the first place. You may say that this is a fundamental issue with the mod/map, and you'd be correct.

Keep in mind that these are just suggestions to make the mod more fun for everyone. No one will punish you for not following these suggestions, however, keep in mind that lobby hosts may kick you out if you don't.