Help! Heavy Cab/Hardened Tracks/Engine Conundrum

Another player came to me with an issue about an engine disparity on one of his builds, and I have no answer for him.

He has a bastion cabin, 6 hardened tracks, and a cheetah engine. His build ran at a speed of 72. He then swapped out the cheetah engine for golden eagle, which should have given him a speed boost. Instead, his build’s max speed DROPPED to 65. In both cases, his tonnages were within limits.

When he switched to medium or light cabins, he got the speed increase as expected, but couldn’t understand why his bastion heavy cabin with hardened tracks doesn’t get the speed increase. At first I thought it was a fluke with the Bastion cabin, but the problem lies with the hardened tracks. I set up 2 skeleton builds to test this out.

First test: Ermak heavy cabin, Goliath tracks (2), Cheetah engine — max speed 55. Replaced Cheetah with Golden Eagle, max speed increased to 65. Result as expected.

Second test: Ermak heavy cabin, Hardened tracks (4), Cheetah engine — max speed 75. Replaced Cheetah with Golden Eagle, max speed DROPPED to 70! Result NOT as expected.

I repeated this test with other heavy cab/hardened track combination with the SAME results (Golden Eagle cut max speed). Medium and light cabs achieved expected results.

We both were under the impression that a Golden Eagle engine will ALWAYS speed up ALL track builds, irrespective of the cabin size and the type of track (and as long as tonnages are within limits). Is there something different about heavy cabin/Golden Eagle/Hardened Track combinations???

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Ermak has a max speed of 65 KPH and Bastion has a max speed of 60 KPH. The Golden Eagle only increases max cabin speed by 8 percent. +8 percent of 65KP is 70.2 KPH. +8 percent of 60KPH is 64.8 KPH.

If the max cabin speed with a fast engine is less than the max speed of the track, then the Golden Eagle perk won’t help you.

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Important to remember that golden eagle raises the speed cap for tracks/augers/omniwheels/atoms, but it doesn’t raise the cabin top speed as much as oppressor or cheetah. So if your cabin can’t hit the speed cap of the movement part, golden eagle won’t help as much.

Because of this, I usually use the slower heavy cabins with slower movement parts, and use whatever engine makes the most sense. Faster tracks go better with medium or light cabins.

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You’re really, really right about that. :slightly_smiling_face:

There are no dumb questions, just dumb people.