ABSTRACT Many phenomenologically successful cosmological simulations employ kinetic winds to model galactic outflows. Yet systematic studies of how variations in kinetic wind scalings might alter observable galaxy properties are rare. Here we employ gadget-3 simulations to study how the baryon cycle, stellar mass function, and other galaxy and CGM predictions vary as a function of the assumed outflow speed and the scaling of the mass-loading factor with velocity dispersion. We design our fiducial model to reproduce the measured wind properties at 25 per cent of the virial radius from the Feedback In Realistic Environments simulations. We find that a strong dependence of η ∼ σ5 in low-mass haloes with $σ \lt 106\mathrm{\, km\, s^{-1}}$ is required to match the faint end of the stellar mass functions at $z$ > 1. In addition, faster winds significantly reduce wind recycling and heat more halo gas. Both effects result in less stellar mass growth in massive haloes and impact high ionization absorption in halo gas. We cannot simultaneously match the stellar content at $z$ = 2 and 0 within a single model, suggesting that an additional feedback source such as active galactic nucleus might be required in massive galaxies at lower redshifts, but the amount needed depends strongly on assumptions regarding the outflow properties. We run a 50 $\mathrm{Mpc}\, h^{-1}$, 2 × 5763 simulation with our fiducial parameters and show that it matches a range of star-forming galaxy properties at $z$ ∼ 0–2.