Some General Automotive Ideas
Creating more cool automobiles megathread

To set some things that feel a bit sane to me...

At 100 trips along the expressways, I'd say you'd probably need to get maintenance or your car would stall and you'd run higher risk of failing rolls. This is the equivelent of an oil change and tire/break rotation.

At 200 trips without maintenance you'd run the risk of parts legit breaking on you suddenly... This is the equivelent of ignoring those things and having your breaklines clog on the expressway at 3AM.

That's the kind of glacially slow maintenance for shit that matters I'm talking about... But assuming it's staggered out a bit, it does mean a trickling flow of work for mechanics.

And as for the cosmetic stuff... As someone who grew up around tuner and street racing culture, those people basically wash their cars every few days if not every day, to keep them in peak good looks. I'd say theme-wise for a corpie, keeping their ride not looking like a pile of shit, would be a good thing for the status quo enforcement stuff, but that there should be automatic systems for that. A 300-500 chy carwash basically.

But this is of course, my massively spitballed assumptions on a sane method of implementation for it.

As far as what good it does. There's an archetype that sees very little work at current. And it needs more of it. Because to be honest, DECKERS see more work than mechanics do, and the only people who see less, are typically riggers.

And yep, ride-sharing is a thing, and if rides are even pricier than they are now, you will see more of it. And that will result in LESS mechanic RP, not more, as there will be fewer rides out there.

But if you turn it into positive stuff, tweaking engine to burn less fuel, rotating tires to make it go fast, stuff like that, then you can also open more edge above other players simple because you went and RPed with a mechanic to get your ride pimped. Maybe even allow for some dangerous modding, like adding a lot more speed, but at an increased chance of crashing. Optional upgrades and mods like that, which may then require maintenance.

Then you will also have a lot more options when it comes to stuff like racing and maybe will make that a thing again. Will you dare to push it with all the risky bike mods to win the prize, or will you try to win on the sheer power of skill? And then those people take risks, which sometimes lead to crashes, leading to RP. And the flash to cover those repairs/mods comes from PVP in form of racing.

Which is much broader archetype than just rides, and is open to quite few other RP avenues too.

My tendency is to view good expansion of systems as something that adds value, rather than just removing or redistributing it. Do forced upkeep costs and role-play add to the gross enjoyment of the game? I'm not exactly charged at the idea of oil-change RP.

Personally what I would prefer to see would be ideas with new desirable elements, and added value in the system, rather than just making the existing system worse to financially buoy a niche sub-archetype. If you have to force players to use or do something, it's probably not fun in it's own right.

You know. What about anything like this:

1. Cars and bikes get dirty as they're driven and require a mechanic to clean. There's an automated car wash at the shop but PC mechanics are allowed to do it for cheaper.

2. Having your car tuned improves performance and ethicol mileage commensurate with the mechanic's skill, but the effect fades over time, encouraging repeat maintenance.

3. The aforementioned ideas about different types of parts, more like chrome, where they produce specific effects.

Even just having car washes would force corporate players to use mechanics and the whole tuning thing could save people money on ethicol and improve the car's general stats for a time, which could be handy for a racing subculture. Also, the nos idea.

@varolokkur

This is somewhat true and somewhat untrue, there's a lot of advantages to a motorcycle, from parts and upgrades being cheaper, to the thing just being cheaper overall, besides that, having that movement system be locked down into a single type of vehicle over tunes motorcycles for movement, when you could give them numerous other advantages. One potential advantage that may or may not be in the game, is for drive by's. I firmly think that you should be able to attack off of a motorcycle, if not already able too.

In fact balancewise, I think Motorcycles should have a lot more mobility than cars. However I think that the ability to ghost through traffic should have a way to be countered by a skilled driver... Diluting the ability to dodge traffic to everyone, or possibly even just allowing very skilled drivers to, at the risk of crashing duck traffic as well is a good idea. And is a net positive because it removes a massive gimmie, makes it a conscious choice, and emphasizes just how crowded the roadways are... Ducking traffic in RL is one of the most difficult things you can do on a bike, and is fraught with danger. To the point where 95% of states don't allow you to lane split for long periods of time(Speaking as someone who comes from one of the 5% who do.)

That all being said, I do think I'll walk it back a bit... Possibly keep it as an automatic, or having a soft lock on it, imposing a more difficult movement skill check on movement, with a warning that "You can keep going, and push through traffic but you may cause an accident during rush hour." If you do decide to push through traffic on the express. Because even when you move through traffic IRL, it's not generally a steady stable forward motion. That's incredibly risky, so you normally clear a section of cars, stop, look around, chart a path and continue on... You're able to keep moving faster than the cars who HAVE to wait in traffic with their larger frames, but implemented like this you also have the conscious decision and risk of being side swiped like IRL but still the ability to travel and the inconvenience of rush hour emphasized.

1) Only a small subset of the games players actually own vehicles.

2) Even fewer actually have their vehicles; a) damaged or b) upgraded.

These two factors combined leave mechanics who come into the game hoping to run bustling stores and experience a lot of rp in their chosen field rather underwhelmed which is naturally disappointing for those players. By breaking the problem down into two clear categories we can come up with two general categories of solutions and use those to inform our decisions. These solutions will likely fall into:

1) Make vehicles more accessible.

2) Create more reasons for vehicles to a) break or be b) upgraded.

Category 1 speaks for itself in why it would be an effective solution. More vehicles on the road means more work for mechanics to do as the odds of a vehicle breaking or needing an upgrade increase. Players who put the graft in to purchase vehicles when the prices were higher might be a little upset at seeing their work devalued but I believe that the gain from doing this would be greater than the loss. Waiting at the levs is poor "rp" all round anyway.

I've noticed a lot of people have a knee-jerk negative reaction to solutions to this problem that fall under category 2a and I understand why, vehicles are expensive and so naturally people are wary of having their (characters) hard work blown by damage later done to the vehicle. I believe this could be overcome by first applying a solution in category 1. If the vehicle costs less (or are otherwise more easily accessed) in the first place people will be less concerned about having their vehicle damaged later on.

Solutions under 2a category 2 I feel will hold the most weight when it comes to creating more rp for mechanics as a breakage on your vehicle is something that cannot be ignored. Like going to a medic when you are injured it is not really optional and creates rp for the medic (or mechanic in this case) whilst restoring full functionality of your character (vehicle). Tangible symptoms for vehicle damage like random stalling or eventually a breakdown if damage is ignored for long enough (like a slower version of bleeding on a character) will create rp for both the driver -and- the mechanic which I don't think the value of can be overlooked. It shouldn't be too easy for your car to break down all the way because of the effort involved in earning a vehicle, but I definitely feel it should be happening more than it is.

Solutions in 2b are in my opinion not as likely to bring mechanics or vehicle drivers rp as solutions under 2a as upgrades don't really add functionality or rp to the game beyond their instillation. Upgrades already exist and the vehicle will only go a bit faster as result of the rather expensive upgrades. Folks are content to use their car at its base speed in the same way many players are content to use their characters without buffing via drugs or even food in some cases. I'm not writing 2b solutions off as a way to increase the amount of rp mechanics get, but I think upgrades need to do more than just increase the speed of a vehicle or increase efficiency to really gain traction (pardon the pun) as a solution.

If you've read this far in my post thank you, you're a hero and the kind of person we need on this forum, someone who seeks first to understand before throwing critique at a player and their ideas. I hope this post has been a useful read for you in spite of the fact it doesn't provide any specific solutions and instead merely aims to break down the problems at hand into more bite size chunks. For a final clarification I believe priority to solution making more rp for mechanics should go; make vehicles more accessible -> Vehicles should break more and breakages should be more tangible -> upgrades to vehicles that actually add to rp once installed.

IS THIS COOL?!

But I'd still like more "frames" for vehicles that aren't "bubble on wheels".

Like especially some mid end tuner style cars, to contrast the bubble Sedan's that you see basically.

It should be easier to crash and crashes should hurt more, especially if you're on a motorcycle without a helmet or armor. That's one place where maintenance makes sense - a player taking on a risky behavior is doing so with the understanding it might go poorly vs a player just getting passively taxed for being successful.

I didn't see anything like that in what Jameson wrote. You might be reading in a bit?

This is like, exactly the kind of thing we all need to step back from, together. With the power of friendship.

What I was obviously saying was that the passive maintenance chores that have been suggested are not good suggestions compared to active things to work toward. Somehow that means I'm being toxic?

If your response to someone telling you that you're acting elitist, is to essentially double down, and then you're bothered by the responses you get? Then respectfully perhaps it's time for a different response?

Hmmm... I did consider the anonymity factors in terms of the way customization might work...

It's interesting to think about though... As right now, every vehicle is essentially exactly the same on first glance, meaning that you really need to scrutinize it to see if perse, it's got a racing engine in it.

That's something that kind of fascinates me, because for a motorcycle especially chopper culture is huge, and I don't see that dying down... And wicked cool designs are a staple of that kind of culture.

Hell I'd love for each gang in the mix to have a really cool custom tailored bike out there somewhere that a player mech might make. Like, I'm thinking like twisted heavy angled scooped forks for one of them, I have like this perfect image of a really serpentine chopper that I almost want to write.

Want a fucking stealth car? A massive combat fuck you tank?

That;s gonna be expensive to maintain. And gives factions a good reason to recruit a mechanic as well.

At a certain point, there's a metagame element that comes into play with figuring out a premium goods economy. There are many, many things in game which have like, theoretical IC social cachet because the game tells you they do, but they really don't in the player metagame itself. Luxury cars definitely fit into this category in my experience, since their utility is not vastly different.

What I mean about a metagame element is there is definitely a disproportionate ownership of vehicles in a certain set of player archetypes and, for lack of a better word, marketing to that group might not be the worst idea from the OOC and IC perspective.

Mechanically, one might imagine a single special upgrade slot on low-end vehicles, and perhaps two on higher-end vehicles, allowing for the installation of one of several types of bonus upgrades -- which themselves would have some generic status that would decrease over usage until the upgrade deactivated until it was replenished.

Just off the top of my head, special upgrades like stealth driving, expanded storage, and off-road suspension might appeal to some current owners, though I'm sure other options could be envisioned.

This is effectively all I am trying to say when I say risk of breakages should be increased. I'm not trying to suggest cars should be spontaneously combusting or naturally degrading -unless- they have received damage that would cause degradation over time or a breakdown, like engine leaks or a busted up tire. Just an increase in risk. I definitely never meant to imply there was -no- risk to owning a vehicle as I am fully aware they can presently be crashed (albeit folks tend to drive too carefully for this), firebombed or stolen.

0x1mm has hit the nail on the head in terms of providing ideas that increase utility to vehicles. Aesthetic or slight performance tweaks aren't really enough to incentivise players to buy mods imo but making your favourite ride cross country capable or making it harder to notice from a distance, now that's what I call an upgrade.

Also my tone hasn't really changed at all, I still don't understand what happened there but I don't think it's appropriate to keep hammering on the issue.

So in one of your posts here in this thread, just before the drama started.

You said this, I'm gonna pull some relevant word choices here that demonstrate what people are talking about when they say you do this thing where you start out going hard, and then try and walk it back and call it exactly the same.

Just gonna go through and highlight with italics words that come off as confrontational in bold, or demeaning of groups of players in italics. with the reasoning in brackets.

""""

There is a subset of archetypes (techies, mechanics, doctors, and to an extent deckers) that attract players with a certain attitude(Sounds disparaging, like you're saying they are less than for this certain attitude) - namely that they should be able to(Directly saying something for someone) take on a passive role that will feed them chores and RP.(The use of the words chores and feed here indicate's a vocal disdain.)

I think a lot of ideas that have been presented on this topic either

1) Devalue the investments of active, successful characters by introducing risks or upkeep costs to vehicles which are already some of the most expensive things in the game

2) Create an additional reliance on player characters in service roles without those characters having done anything to earn it( a good way to avoid this sounding demeaning would be to couch it in a feeling descriptor. As to say that these people don't earn it, denies the reality of the RP they do. Saying you feel they haven't earned it however, means that it's not a statement of fact but instead what you are feeling.)

#2 in particular can be really irritating.(Explicit statement of irritation. Tends to draw peoples own feelings up.) Characters in these passive roles frequently get pulled into the network of one faction or another and can become unusable to everyone else. Anyone who's had to wait for an NPC cyberdoc because the two PC docs in their sector are either untrustworthy or inactive knows that this is less than ideal.(This whole statement also comes off as a bit elitist. It's essentially stating, "If you've experienced this, you'd know, " rather than explaining a way to solve the problem, it's not a constructive critique)

More interesting ideas I think would focus on creating longer-term aspirations for these characters and ways for them to use their skills that go beyond creating maintenance chores.(Once again chores. Bad word choice.) Collecting the parts to build stuff from the ground up, more meaningful interactions with vehicles that would make things like aluminum panels or bulletproof windows attractive, that kinda thing.

""""

Now I'm going to do the same to your recent post.

"""""

Now that that's out of the way...(Sarcastic quip can enflame tensions)

The difference I'm talking about between passive RP and active RP is whether you are creating work for others or whether work is being created for you by game systems. Any role in the game has some element of the latter. If you're a doctor, people come in for treatment. If you work at a bar, people come in and order drinks. That's all fine and can open the door to plenty of RP, but it rarely creates RP.

Sitting around waiting for someone to crash so you can fix their car is passive. This is a fine thing to do and nobody should hassle you for it, but I think everyone would have more fun with suggestions that gave car owners and mechanics positive things to be proactive about, rather than negative things they need to do chores to fix.

Thus my vote for better positive incentives for souped up cars. If I could bash out a window and drag someone from their car or shoot them through the windshield, they'd probably be really excited to get bulletproof glass installed and they'd love their mechanic for doing it. If mechanics could fine-tune parts and if performance was more granular, that'd also be dandy. The stuff I was downvoting was like, automatic wear and tear just to force people to visit mechanics more often.

""""

You had one line that felt like you were confronting people to me. And the rest was stated respectfully and in a non-confrontational way.

To call it the same done is, externally, disingenuous but if you cannot see the difference when contrasting these two posts, I may have some reading material to suggest for you, if I can find it again.

I'd boil it down to a simple maxim, but ultimately, introspection about this kinda stuff as you are actively writing, IS harder than looking at after the fact... Hindsight is 20:20 after all. And I'm the last person to claim any kind of moral or philosophical superiority in this type of stuff. It takes me an amount of effort and two or three rewrites of almost every sentence as I'm writing it. Careful consideration, and sometimes speaking the sentence out to try and get if it will be considered poorly.

That being said I'm going to return to the topic at hand as I've belabored politely explaining this point enough.

I think proactivity is a good thing. And that riding motorcycles in general should be harder than driving cars in general. I don't know if that's the case or not now though. So I could be bitching about nothing. I also think there should be a "smart car" equivalent that costs about as much as a lower tier bike... Maybe as much as the second most expensive one. Just to kind of... Get cars to have an equal low tier option to bikes. I know mono's exist, so maybe adjusting their price down a little bit might allow more of them to be seen? I dunno.

Many people have been guilty of saying wrong things, remember? Let's not patronize each other.

There -has- to be some sort of feedback loop that creates ongoing opportunity, rather than one-shot I've got part X now.

Having a boost applied to your ride by tuning is also well and good, but the problem I see in that is that vehicles just don't get used enough as is in a HUGE part of the game world. Not to say that this isn't a great idea, but I think there needs to be something that encourages players in both halves of the game to want to use their vehicles on a weekly basis.

My biggest wish would be to drastically reduce the cost of the aspects of vehicles that don't involve actual player interaction (Vehicle price and ethicol cost) while balancing out that abrupt reduction in price with an amount of upkeep that balances out the use of a vehicle. I can't get into specifics for obvious reasons, but please imagine what upkeep is currently, and then simply alter a portion of that to be now geared toward player interaction instead of command typing.

[Storage]

N internally accessible containers with N capacity.

[Stealth]

Perception check vs. driving skill to see driving emotes, increasing difficulty modifier with speed. No idling @LP.

[Range]

+N% ethicol efficiency and +N% ethicol capacity.

[Off-road]

Non-city driving equipped, refillable water storage.

[Camouflage]

Toggle between N exterior colours and plate number.

[Restraint]

Locking passenger restraints, or compartment.

I think it's entirely possible that the chances of crashing, or the chances of dinging up your ride might be too low, or the chance drops off too quickly from a UE investment if there is really this much of a lack of things for mechanics to do. And please remember, I've actually come down hard in the past on mechanics because I've seen some of the things that mechanics have and are able to do with time and investment.

As a motorcyclist in the OOC space, one of the most common things taught and reinforced to bikers is that at the end of the day, it simply doesn't matter how much of an amazing motorcyclist you are, crashes can and will happen simply because you cannot control the skill or lack thereof of other drivers on the road. Distracted drivers, screaming kids, people eating, high/drunk, etc.

To bring this into Withmorian context, I think that regardless of your personal ability not to crash your ride, there should be some element of your ride getting damaged from time to time. We talk about the city being enormously packed, and the streets being covered in cars, and yet nobody here ever gets their rides smashed into by a high ganger trying to parallel park their Holden? Nobody merges into your space when riding a bike in the tubes and completely ruins your day? These are just a few examples of things that are everyday occurrences for city dwellers- and not simply complaining on SIC about nightmarish traffic. Your 'skill' as a driver simply does not matter when you're on a packed expressway and someone doesn't look and merges into you. You, as the driver, never had a chance 'get out of the way' when it's bumper to bumper traffic.

Point being, even though it -feels- like this is a thread asking for free chyen for mechanic characters, I'm starting to come around to the points raised here and realize that cars as we have them in the game really are not realistic, and there probably should be some level of maintenance needed beyond ethicol costs. That's not how cars work OOCly, and it's probably not how cars should work ICly, either. Granted, I'm not saying that cars should simply blow up or fall apart, but some wear and tear over time should be happening just from living in the equivalent population density of a Favela.

Big facts.

Also, xo1mm's add-on Ideas, can we configure our four passenger vehicles to set up like a Chex taxi if we want? I gotta get my private Uber or kidnapping on ty

i would be all over any idea where skilled mechanics would be able to add value/features to vehicles like suggested above

For real, you people know you would pimp your rides and supply these poor mechanics with work if cars were actually fun to customize

Getting shot in the face from snipers and seeing the scroll isn't fun, and yet it's a big part of the game.

I'm not arguing that vehicles should be hyper realistic, but if you're a skilled driver, have owned a car for two years ICly and nothing has happened with it, that's not fun for the driver, and that's also not fun for the people who work in the automotive infrastructure.

Why are we arguing about upkeep costs being bad in a game where we constantly tell people that losing everything is part of the gameplay cycle in the first place? If you can afford a 200K car, you can afford four or five kay a month to pop a fender ding out. And yes, it IS generating RP.

They absolutely do, actually. GMs take notice of who's buying "useless" luxury goods and playing a certain part. And they're more likely to assist players who do as well.

It's also a measure of RP. Or at least, intent. People buying "worthless" jewelry or other "pointless" objects are building clout in other ways. I really hate to see players discouraged from this. And in fact, I think the ability to dump even more money into purely cosmetic modifications, especially if customized by the tech, would lend to this even more.

Vehicles have an upkeep cost, and just increasing it to transfer resources from one player to another arbitrarily does not foster anything like an improvement in the overall experience. You could basically extend this rationale to every system in the game. I don't think mandatory paid niche PC upkeep on guns, armour, secure tech, clothing, or whatever else would improve anyone's experience -- and again, any PC-mandatory system will break down, and then what? Everyone's cars are broken until 1 of the 2 mechanic PCs logs in?

As you can tell, I'm pretty strongly against any mandatory upkeep, I don't think systems should be made worse unless they're too powerful, and vehicles are already niche-ish as it is. Instead let's give a reason for players to want to spend flash on them, instead of just making them so one sub-archetype gets a larger pay-cheque.

I'm willing to bet if we polled players how many times they had had to employ a character for their mechanic skills over the last year the average result would be less than one. That to me suggests the skill is under-utilised and that mechanics are not getting role play from a skill they have invested ue and time into. Bartenders by comparison get more rp than mechanics simply for tipping up behind a bar and advertising they are there which doesn't even require a skill investment. I'm not trying to diss bartenders here, I'm just trying to explain how disappointed I would be if I had invested time and UE into getting a job in game then got almost no rp out of the job.

Well for one, it's not actually mandatory, and for another, there's an automated system in place. You could duplicate that with vehicle maintenance, but you end up with what amounts to a second ethicol pump.

You can make vehicles cheaper and their on-going costs more expensive, but you're basically punishing existing owners, and not really adding anything interesting to the system. Mechanics don't want people to just be forced to see them I'm sure, they want to do interesting things with people's vehicles and have those players enjoy that.

Being able to shoot cars or smash them with bats would probably entirely fix the issue that's being discussed now (lack of RP and work for 'skilled' labor) but that would require a major game policy change- and one I believe was enacted due to rampant player abuse in the past.

Frankly, I think being a bigtime thug in Red and having some players of less renown come smash your headlights on your car and flee is hecka thematic, and I really dislike how non-interactive automotives are right now, as it stands. In fact, in recent memory and events, a character was able to pull a big-time heist (cool!) out of an extremely hostile situation, but yet the 10-15 characters and hostile NPC's in the room literally could not interact with their character before Unlock X, enter X fired off and chances for RP were instantly lost. (not cool!)

I'd argue that vehicles are probably grossly overpowered as it is right now for doing bad things to people, and the only reason we're not seeing more often is because of numerous nerfs and policy changes over the years concerning them- as well as a general lack of awareness of some of the things you can do with them.

I'd much rather worry about the here and now, and what's hard or not to implement, than sit waiting for Grid 3.0 or vehicle combat- but that's just my opinion.

All of that would be in this new perceived system, which is why I'm bringing them up.

At least try to set some lines for delving into a completely different (albeit related) system that would be a massive workload when, like you said, we're discussing mechanics that could be done in the more immediate future.

As for shooting, we can already shoot into other rooms. I'm willing to bet that there's a coded reason it would be difficult to code sniping into a nearby car, but if it's not too terrible a chore, even that alone could let some pressure off similar to the recent change to ORBs.

Pretty sure plate swapping isn't a thing right now and hasn't been since Cerb disallowed it forever ago. It's one of the things that makes getting away in a vehicle cleanly difficult and maybe needs to be looked at.

That being said you can already damage cars with GM support. I'm sure if there was a situation going on and you needed to fuck a vehicle up then you can always xhelp and the GMs would help.

That being said I already mentioned in another thread that as long as damaging a vehicle mechanically isn't able to be exploited (vehicles not in use for example) and there are ways to defend oneself against just being yeeted out of vehicles then it makes sense.

If you think about it the other person has to actually input two commands while you only have to input the single attack command. In both cases, they are instant commands.

Anyway, furthermore, I still think that doing shit to vehicles IN USE makes sense as long as there are ways to counter that too, so that it is balanced. Better windshields, hardened frames etc. so that not everyone can just smash up a car and tug anyone out.

But then think of it like this. Walking is threaded, but so is sneaking.

Attacking someone isn't threaded. Neither is entering a car. If you make one threaded then you instantly give the advantage to the person that types the attack command.

Vehicles already had the feature where you could instantly get out of combat if you entered them and now that no longer exists.

Furthermore, ICly it takes a while to walk on the street or go into somewhere because they are long distances. I'm not sure how much sense it makes for someone to take five seconds or something to get into their car or on their bike that is already in the same room.

There are even IC ways to disable vehicles and prevent them from moving.

There was a situation where I was waiting for someone to come out of a building, knew exactly where they would be, had the attack command primed and ready, yet all it took for them to get away was a unlock/enter macro that took maybe a second in total to finish.

I am not a slow typer, it's just near impossible to beat the macro of someone that knows where their vehicle is, while you don't know exactly when they'll be in your tile. This happened three or four times as well, so it definitely wasn't just luck. With the way vehicles currently are all it takes is someone getting to them to be invincible, hence my annoyance.

Like I said, attack is an instant command and it'd be almost immediately giving the advantage to someone wanting to ambush if the delay wasn't balanced properly. A 0.5 second or one second or something delay between both commands to ensure this "macro" stat thats apparently happening however I can get behind I guess.

Just because a few players are using macros to do it in an unrealistic time doesn't mean all vehicle players are or that shit is overpowered or invincible either.

They're not invulnerable. I understand that you want to make vehicles merely a faster way of transportation but like I said, that isn't why we have vehicles in the game.