Silnik spalinowy czy elektryczny w Scrap Mechanic: co robią biegi

The one difference that decides everything

Both engines read the same thirteen step ladder: 0, 30, 60, 90, 150, 240, 390, 630, 1020, 1650, 2670, 4320, 6990. What each engine does with the number it reads is opposite.

A Gas Engine treats the gear as torque. It always asks its bearings for the same target speed, 4244.132 degrees per second, and the gear decides how hard it pushes toward that speed. Low gear means low force and a wheel that stalls under load. Top gear means the same top speed but far more force behind it.

An Electric Engine treats the gear as speed. It always pushes with the same torque, 1000, and the gear sets the speed it aims for. Gear 5 on an Electric Engine Level 1 asks for 150 degrees per second and no more, no matter how light the vehicle is.

That single difference explains most of what people notice in game. A gas car in a low gear crawls up a hill and still tops out fast on the flat. An electric car in a low gear is genuinely slow and will not exceed its gear even downhill, but it will not bog down either, because the force behind it never drops.

Both engines behave the same way when they are not being driven. Instead of releasing the bearings, they hold them at a standstill with twice the torque of the gear that is selected. That is why a parked vehicle stays put on a slope, and why running out of Gasoline stops a car rather than letting it coast.

The level table

The two engines have identical ladders in every respect except how the gear number is read.

Level	Gears available	Bearings it can drive	Work per fuel unit	Upgrade cost
1	5	2	4000	4 Component Kits
2	7	4	6000	6 Component Kits
3	9	6	9000	8 Component Kits
4	11	8	13500	10 Component Kits
5	13	10	20250	top level

Three things to read out of that table.

Every upgrade is exactly half again as much work out of the same fuel. 4000 becomes 6000, 6000 becomes 9000, and so on to 20250, which is a little over five times the level 1 figure. The engine’s own upgrade panel shows this as a flat +50% each time.

The gear count grows by two per level, and because the ladder climbs steeply near the top, those two extra rungs are worth much more than the two below them. Going from level 4 to level 5 adds 4320 and 6990 to a ladder that previously stopped at 2670.

The bearing limit grows by two per level as well. A level 1 engine drives two bearings, so a four wheel car needs at least a level 2 engine unless you split the drive across two engines.

Taking one engine from level 1 to level 5 costs 4 + 6 + 8 + 10 = 28 Component Kits, which is the single largest kit bill most survival players meet.

Fuel: what a can and a battery actually buy

Fuel is not spent per second. It is spent for the force the engine actually delivers, and only while a driven bearing is speeding up. Coasting is free, and so is engine braking. That is why a light buggy can drive most of a map on a couple of cans while a heavy hauler drinks the same fuel climbing one hill.

The number in the table is the fuel budget one unit buys. A Gas Engine Level 1 gets 4000 units of work from one can of Gasoline. A Gas Engine Level 5 gets 20250 from the same can.

Where they diverge is what a unit of fuel costs to make:

• Gasoline: 5 Crude Oil into 5 Gasoline at the Craftbot. At a workbench or portable crafter it is one barrel per can, so the ratio is the same everywhere and only the batch size changes.
• Battery: 5 Metal Block Level 1, 1 Glow and 5 Chemicals make 10 Batteries.

Crude Oil comes out of the ground and out of containers, and it is also the input for plastic, so gas engines compete with your Circuit Board supply. Batteries need Glow, which means either a Glowbug farm or luck with containers, plus Chemicals. Neither is free, but Crude Oil is the one you are more likely to already have stacked.

Building cost

The Electric Engine is noticeably more expensive to make, and the gap is in the parts you least want to spend:

• Gas Engine Level 1: 20 Metal Block Level 1, 5 Component Kits, 1 Circuit Board and 5 Crude Oil, 30 seconds.
• Electric Engine Level 1: 20 Metal Block Level 2, 5 Component Kits, 10 Circuit Boards and 5 Batteries, 30 seconds.

Same 5 Component Kits and the same 30 seconds, but the electric version wants Metal Block Level 2 instead of Level 1, ten Circuit Boards instead of one, and five Batteries on top. For a first vehicle that is a real barrier.

The Scrap Gas Engine

Before either of those there is the Scrap Gas Engine: 10 Scrap Metal Blocks, 5 Scrap Wood Blocks and 2 Circuit Boards at a workbench or portable crafter, in 10 seconds. It drives 2 bearings and gets 3000 work per can, so it is less efficient than any levelled engine.

It also runs rough on purpose. Its torque rises and falls between 60% and 100% of the gear you selected on a two second cycle, so a scrap powered vehicle surges rather than pulling evenly. It only exposes four gears, topping out at 90, which on the shared ladder is the fourth rung. That is enough to move a small cart and not much more.

Build one anyway. It gets you driving hours before you can afford Component Kits, and it is the reason the first quest car works at all.

Which one should you build?

Gas, for almost every survival vehicle. It is cheaper to make, its fuel is cheaper to make, and the fixed top speed with variable torque is the behaviour that suits driving over terrain. Pick a high gear and the engine sorts itself out.

Electric earns its cost in two places. The first is anything where you want a controlled, repeatable speed: a lift, a conveyor, a turntable, a crane. Setting the gear sets the speed, full stop, and it will not creep faster when the load comes off.

The second is that an Electric Engine can drive its joints differently from one another, at every level. Point the Connect Tool at a joint it drives and you can set that joint to standard, differential left or differential right, which is how tank steering is built. A Gas Engine has no such menu and drives everything connected to it identically.

That is a different thing from the steering settings a Driver’s Seat Level 5 unlocks, and the two are not substitutes. The seat’s panel adjusts how far and how fast a bearing it steers turns. The engine’s menu decides which side of a differential a bearing it drives belongs to. An engine cannot stand in for the seat, because it does not steer anything.

An Electric Engine also accepts suspension springs as driven joints, not just bearings, so a suspension arm can be given a differential side of its own. A Gas Engine takes bearings only.

For a normal car the honest answer is that the gas engine wins on cost and the electric engine wins on precision, and a survival base ends up with both: gas in the vehicles, electric in the machinery.

Getting more out of the engine you already have

Holding sprint in the seat selects the next gear up for as long as you hold it. It does this from whatever gear you are in, which means you can reach one rung above the highest gear your engine’s slider normally allows. On a level 1 engine that is the difference between 150 and 240.

Connecting a steering input to an engine that is still sitting in gear one bumps it to gear two automatically, so a new car never starts in the dead gear.

Engine questions

Which is faster, the gas engine or the electric engine?

On a level 5 engine the electric engine’s top gear asks for 6990 degrees per second while the gas engine’s target is fixed at 4244.132, so an unloaded electric drivetrain can spin faster. In a real vehicle the gas engine usually feels faster, because it applies up to 6990 of torque against a load while the electric engine is capped at 1000.

Do gas and electric engines use fuel at the same rate?

They spend from the same size budget: 4000 units of work at level 1 up to 20250 at level 5, per can of Gasoline or per Battery. What differs is the price of the unit. Five barrels of Crude Oil make five cans of Gasoline, while ten Batteries need 5 Metal Block Level 1, 1 Glow and 5 Chemicals.

How many wheels can one engine drive?

Two per level: 2 at level 1, 4 at level 2, 6 at level 3, 8 at level 4 and 10 at level 5. The limit counts bearings, not wheels, so a bearing carrying a suspension arm counts the same as one carrying a wheel.

Is upgrading an engine worth 28 Component Kits?

The full run from level 1 to level 5 costs 4 + 6 + 8 + 10 Component Kits and buys five times the fuel economy, eight more gears and eight more bearings. If you drive a lot it pays for itself in Crude Oil. If you mostly build stationary machines, spend the kits on the machines instead and stop the engine at level 2 or 3.

Why does my electric vehicle refuse to go faster downhill?

Because an electric gear is a speed target rather than a throttle. The engine holds the speed the gear asks for and stops adding force above it. Select a higher gear, or use a gas engine if you want the vehicle to run out to a single high top speed in every gear.