Spintires: Mudrunner/snowrunner

Finally hit 100% on the Kola Peninsula (well, at least until they decide to add new missions to it). I'd say aside from the logging missions, which took me longer than I care to admit and where frustrating as hell. It wasn't completely awful. Kinda of got into a rhythm with what routes to take and what to avoid. Looking forward though to moving over to Yukon and not having to put with thin ice and freakin boulder field's everywhere for a while.

I finished all the main contracts and tasks in the Kola Peninsula before the logging missions were introduced. I don't relish the idea of going back there and facing all those boulders and mud traps all over again.
 
Phase 4 is on PTS now. There is a new hard mode, having to pay for fuel should be interesting. I foresee liberal use of the very efficient Azov 64131 for everything, being slow means less repair costs also. Fuel cost seems to favor using gallons over litres, probably a bug I hope.
 
Phase 4 is on PTS now. There is a new hard mode, having to pay for fuel should be interesting. I foresee liberal use of the very efficient Azov 64131 for everything, being slow means less repair costs also. Fuel cost seems to favor using gallons over litres, probably a bug I hope.

Had a peek on the Maprunner site. 4 maps. And more damn snow from what i can see.
 
Had a peek on the Maprunner site. 4 maps. And more damn snow from what i can see.

Yea, it's mostly snow, but the KSP player in me still wants to try it out, because rockets!

I have been doing fuel economy tests getting ready for hard mode. So far the H2 is the most economical fully upgraded scout, who knew?
 
I finished all the main contracts and tasks in the Kola Peninsula before the logging missions were introduced. I don't relish the idea of going back there and facing all those boulders and mud traps all over again.

The real issue with it is that one mission requires three loads of medium logs and the other three loads of long logs. The log station in Imandra only has two lots of medium and no long. So it forces you to travel from Lake Kovd back across. I did it with a convoy of five trucks. It got very tedious after a while.
Phase 4 is on PTS now. There is a new hard mode, having to pay for fuel should be interesting. I foresee liberal use of the very efficient Azov 64131 for everything, being slow means less repair costs also. Fuel cost seems to favor using gallons over litres, probably a bug I hope.

Just looking at the maps as well. More thin ice by the looks of things? Oh, joy...

Paying for fuel is an interesting mechanic. Be interesting to see how much it costs to fill the bigger trucks.
 
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The real issue with it is that one mission requires three loads of medium logs and the other three loads of long logs. The log station in Imandra only has two lots of medium and no long. So it forces you to travel from Lake Kovd back across. I did it with a convoy of five trucks. It got very tedious after a while.


Just looking at the maps as well. More thin ice by the looks of things? Oh, joy...

Paying for fuel is an interesting mechanic. Be interesting to see how much it costs to fill the bigger trucks.

Looking further into it, hard mode may need a few tweaks. Logging in Michigan for example would pay out too little with the equipment investment needed. Hopefully they will place a few logging trailers around to use.

I just saw the Azov 10 wheeler is getting a suspension lift, and the Zikz gets Tayga tires and a suspension tweak. I am glad to see the vanilla trucks getting some love.
 
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Having tried mudrunner on ps now and seen plenty of snow runner on YouTube this i definitely a game I prefer to watch than to play. Find it very slow and frustrating, fair play to all how love to play it as it looks amazing but I just cant get into it. Much like train sims.
 
Having tried mudrunner on ps now and seen plenty of snow runner on YouTube this i definitely a game I prefer to watch than to play. Find it very slow and frustrating, fair play to all how love to play it as it looks amazing but I just cant get into it. Much like train sims.

It's definitely not for everyone. I have been on a space game kick lately with No Man's Sky and Elite Dangerous, this is my chill out game believe it or not.
 
I was thinking of starting a new game on "Hard" difficulty to see what it's like. Is it possible to save my old game, and reload it? Or does starting a new game automatically erase the old one?
 
@zargdin You can choose a new "slot" when starting a new game, without losing your old one.

I have two active game saves that I play, that I've done things differently in.
 
I played hard mode for about an hour, it's definitely different. If anyone wants to do co-op on Xbox later tonight let me know.

Edit: So far I am making decent headway in Michigan, hard mode doesn't let you have the DLC trucks for free which is understandable. My strategy is to do easier tasks until I unlock off-road tires. Once that is done I'm off to Gas Town (Island Lake), to drag some of that free fuel where it's actually useful.

One more thing, the default transmission really sucks, but it's great with fuel economy. The CK1500 in particular becomes a real gas hog with the off-road transmission. It's quite economical with the default gears though, I use the clutch kick method to save fuel also.
 
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Edit: So far I am making decent headway in Michigan, hard mode doesn't let you have the DLC trucks for free which is understandable. My strategy is to do easier tasks until I unlock off-road tires. Once that is done I'm off to Gas Town (Island Lake), to drag some of that free fuel where it's actually useful.

Yeah, I had a go at it last night. The game is configured a bit differently to the normal mode, and the restrictions definitely make you think a lot harder about strategy. I like the fuel-paying and the 24 hr time cycle which cannot be altered. The real problem is that you must pay a hefty fee (2000 credits) if you want to recover your vehicle to the garage. And if you want to fast travel between garages you also have to pay a fee (not sure how much), which might be a game-killer for me. I'll see how long I can stick it out for.
 
I started the Urska River map in the new Amur phase. I could see from map previews that it would be, like the Kola peninsula, a snow bound episode. I was hoping it would be a bit more forgiving than Imandra, but so far it seems like another boat-load of misery. Rocks, thin ice, mud-pit traps beneath the snow, near impenetrable snow drifts. I'm having a hard job getting my scouts around the place, God knows how I'll manage with my semis loaded up.
 
Edited my post because I was wrong about fuel
add-ons.

I ended up starting over in hard mode, mistakes were made and it wasn't pretty.

So far this time around I am being a little more cautious. I am at level 5 right now. I am planning to go get the P16 to help things along soon. I have a new appreciation for the Scout 800, it's quite capable all stock.

XP is a more precious resource than money in hard mode. At least in the early levels. I can already see fuel will be no issue for a while because you can use fuel from mission trailers. Just make sure they are above 10% capacity or you will not complete the mission.

Update:
I now have the P16 and am at level 7. I managed to flip the Fleetstar when I was almost there. Luckily I brought the Scout along too. As I predicted the P16 made short work of saving the day. I finally splurged a little and kitted out the CK1500 for scouting. I still need to go save the White Western Star to fill out the starter fleet.

So I made a risky gambit and went to Taymyr. I have the Tayga, and spent a small fortune on the Yar 87 and Loadstar, funds are razor thin now. I have been going into co-op for some extra money, I can make about 20k an hour in a busy session.

Russia, Taymyr anyway, has been good to me. I went with the Yar 87, and it was definitely worth the expense. The Tayga, well it's the unstoppable thirsty monster it always has been. I still have some free fuel left, 6$ a liter is scary high lol. It's cheaper to send a truck to Michigan, fill up a cistern, then ship it back again.
 
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Hard mode in the new map has been brutal. I have the new Zikz finally, but progression has been so slow with having fuel so far away.
 
The last time I played Snowrunner there wasn't a release date for mods to be available on consoles. Last night I found myself watching videoclips of the game and I decided to start the game after a 20 GB update. I stopped playing the game months ago because I got bored after finishing all of the non dlc contracts. With the recent update and mods this game has become significantly more enjoyable. I wish mods were available on console from the beginning just like they were for PC. But at this point I'm just glad to have a game to enjoy before the release of Forza Horizon 5.

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Modified Twinsteer by Gaskellgames, this thing is awesome. With this single load (4 vehicle spare parts and 2 concrete slabs) I was able to complete a contract in one trip 😄.
 
I fired Snowrunner up for a bit last night. There finally is a Photo mode now. I started a fresh hard mode, and made a beeline for the P16 with the Fleetstar to get back into the physics.
 
Yeah, I jumped back into this a few days ago because I'm bored of pretty much everything else at the moment and figured I'd try and get a bit more done on the first Wisconsin map.

Got easily 300 odd hours into this game. I'm not brave enough to try hard mode though. :lol:
 
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I'm not brave enough to try hard mode though. :lol:
Hard mode is very challenging. You really have to think hard about your resources and strategy. But it can be good fun. Unless you make a total cock-up of things like I did. A few months ago saved up my hard earned cash to buy a really good Russian truck, then drove it into a swamp and it's been stuck there ever since! Don't have enough cash to pay for the retrieval.
 
I've been enjoying hard mode actually... At first it was a little frustrating because I forgot how much the start of the game sucked when you only have highway tires, then I liked it once I got settled in... Then got a little frustrated again when I have to drive all the way out to those remote places on maps with no garage and can't just recover my trucks and instead have to individually drive each one back which gets very tedious... But now that I'm kinda used to that, I'm liking it.

I'm limiting myself to using Chevy/GMC/Hummer trucks and the ANKs (it's a stretch, but AM General was sorta related to GM through the Hummer) for my hard mode playthrough. Works pretty good really, the Kodiak is good for moderate to low weight loads and is pretty fuel efficient, the GMC MH9500 is great other than its somewhat low power, and the ANKs are challenging logistics-wise as they both burn fuel and have small fuel tanks. I'm going to buy the Brigadier soon but it's just kinda hard to justify at like 3x the in-game price of the MH9500.

I sold the Fleetstar and used the money to ship my scout Chevy pickup to Alaska and then Kola Peninsula to get the AWD upgrades for the Kodiak and MH9500 early, makes a big difference for them... Tough drives without chain tires and a roof rack for fuel on the Chevy pickup though, had to hypermile a bit and plan carefully.

In hard mode it's much more important to use the resources on the map. Since you can't sell trailers and you can't bring them with you to new regions, it's important not to buy any trailers you don't absolutely have to and instead use ones that are around the map.
 
I think I've analyzed most of the missions in normal mode, so Hard mode would be really similar to my playstyle. But I've only really completed Michigan and Alaska and I've got about 250 hours into the game. I'm trying to play more often, but I want to play them as they're actually pretty challenging as it is for now. I've done a it in Russia too but it's honestly just inconveinent when there aren't garages attached to the map.
 
My only real nitpick with hard mode is that the only way to repair cosmetic damage is to shell out big bucks in the garage. Meanwhile, trucks will slowly lose cosmetic damage if left outside, only to regain all those dents once placed in a garage.

If you want another option for a one brand hard mode play through International has you covered, you only need the CK1500 for just a moment to drag the repair trailer to the Fleetstar. Transfer some fuel after repairing and off you go. The Scout 800 can also be quite capable so don't sleep on it. If you sell off everything else you find in Michigan (stickers make trucks more valuable for some reason) you can get the HX520 and small Paystar to have a real solid fleet of trucks even before going for the Bigger Paystar in Wisconsin.
 
My only real nitpick with hard mode is that the only way to repair cosmetic damage is to shell out big bucks in the garage. Meanwhile, trucks will slowly lose cosmetic damage if left outside, only to regain all those dents once placed in a garage.

If you want another option for a one brand hard mode play through International has you covered, you only need the CK1500 for just a moment to drag the repair trailer to the Fleetstar. Transfer some fuel after repairing and off you go. The Scout 800 can also be quite capable so don't sleep on it. If you sell off everything else you find in Michigan (stickers make trucks more valuable for some reason) you can get the HX520 and small Paystar to have a real solid fleet of trucks even before going for the Bigger Paystar in Wisconsin.
Yeah I hate the cosmetic damage repairing. It wouldn't be so bad if the damage didn't look awful and if you didn't get random damage from tiny sticks and rocks in the road so often if you go any faster than offroad transmission's high gear. It does give me a little extra incentive to drive safely too, although I've never really been a speed demon in these games... But when I've gotta make so many trips back and forth, it's hard not to try to make up some time on the paved sections.

I save the time trial things for when my trucks get cosmetic damage. Then I can go as fast as I can for those and not worry about stones screwing up my clean truck since it's already screwed up. The first gold medal easily covers the repairs as I think it's only $2500 to fully repair the GMC/ANKs... Dunno about other trucks though, I imagine some of the big ones are more expensive.

I skipped logging stuff in my normal mode playthrough, but it's also a pain in hard mode... the logging trailers cost $14k, and it's frankly super tedious driving back and forth to fill the annoyingly large numbers of logs you need. Pretty tempting to cheese the logging using the manual loading tricks...

It's kinda amazing how poorly they have done the logging in SnowRunner, big downgrade from MudRunner/SpinTires in basically every way. You no longer have as much freedom to choose how you deliver the loads, and the loads are super uninteresting sizes. Delivering long logs in MudRunner was interesting because they were actually really long and required planning your route carefully, and delivering 2x short logs meant you needed a trailer that was a pain to back up and higher rolling resistance in the mud compared to the large/medium log dollies. Now you just drive back and forth with 1 bundle at a time, and the long logs are the size of the old medium logs. It's really slowed my progress in my game down as I can only stomach like 2 trips a night... But that's all I've got left to do in Michigan.

Yeah I'd second International for a one-make playthrough if anyone else is considering it, would be a better option than GM for sure but I just like the GM trucks. More options and variety, and some will be better suited to the Russian areas if you are planning to do those too.
 
According to the Maprunner site, the Tennessee map of Phase 7 is out. I'm away from home and at the moment, so can't verify this, don't know if it's out for xbox. Can anyone confirm this?
 
It would be an understatement to say that some of the expansion themes have aged worse than milk:

PS Store
Rebuild roads, fuel lines, and various buildings to bring an old soviet rocket launchpad back to life in Amur Oblast, a huge new winter region with four 4km² maps. Using powerful new vehicles, haul the massive rocket to the launch pad yourself.
I’d rather not 🤔
 
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