Wheels need some love
Vehicle mechanics revamp please?

Yes please. Although I'd feel bad for all the people with old Kois, because that would immediately become a point of mockery.

"Nice eighty niner, chum. I'm just going to assume you've made a nest in the back seat out of tinfoil and second-hand ponchos."

Thank you for your reply! While I agree that the way vehicles currently are would certainly make them effectively unuseable for all but the wealthiest players, the current mechanics are also not conductive to vehicle themed RP.

Vehicles as they are, are effectively (not exclusively, but certainly majorly) a one time cost that spurs almost no RP (there's the vehicle transfer bit, but even that isn't all of the time).

I would like to see more opportunities for vehicle centric RP, and I believe my suggestions would provide that.

Also, is there anything else in my post that you liked or disliked? I understand it was long, but I don't think vehicles in sindome can be addressed with one single tweak, but rather requires a multitude of adjustments.

meet me at the mountain

@RedSteel

I gotta disagree that they spurn no RP, especially in the Mix. As someone who's effectively taken plots in various vehicle plots (stealing, destroying) vehicles definitely play a MAJOR part in schemes and plots against other players. Sure, some of these plots are done by wealthiest and well-connected PCs and maybe you haven't heard of it, and I think that is intended by staff.

Like I said, targetting vehicles and damaging them isn't easy but that's because obtaining a vehicle isn't easy.

As for running people over, that'd have to be really, really balanced because it'd be a way of damaging/killing a PC without giving them any chance of retaliation/fighting back. There'd need to be a definite counterplay to it that allows players to not just get rammed without a chance to see their attacker.

As for tailing people into garages.. this can already be done in a way. You can't break into lockers, sure, but that's because it's a locker system like you said and that's not intended. There's already a timeframe where if you know someone's going to park their vehicle that you can set up for it (if you want to take the IC risk and consequences that come with it). Also, such 'locker garages' are only present in certain locations and not everywhere and topside locations are already easier to spot a vehicle and break into it.

I think cutting through traffic on bikes could be a toggle, like ride safe/ride dangerous or something, just so people who own bikes but don't want to be badasses aren't eating shit all the time.

These are all great! I love all of your suggestions, thank you!

You already have to xhelp to steal a car. Maybe a confirmation prompt before attacking one is the solution to this as well?

I know the disadvantages you're talking about and to some extent I agree, but those situations come up pretty rarely in practice and 99% of the time I'd rather own a motorcycle than a car.

Maybe the problem isn't that bikes are better than cars, but that cars aren't good enough. Yes cars confer several advantages but they also cost way more and being mostly dorky looking and slower than the lev sometimes makes them feel unappealing.

Compare that to aeros, which are not that much more expensive than cars and are a million times better in every conceivable way. Needing a separate skill offsets that but I think the end result is that cars are just kind of lackluster.

I wholeheartedly support Eph's suggestions to damage or mess with a car that's occupied or in use, however it would be kind of crummy if every single day every work van, ambulance, and taxi was completely destroyed and tagged up because someone logged in at 4am and did what a certain subset of Sindome players love to do.

Because guns are cheaper and easier to obtain than vehicles and the upkeep of them is also very relatively cheaper. Unless you fuck up BADLY, you don't even need someone with a different skillset to usually maintain your firearm except buying an item. Which is also the case for vehicles right now. Unless you FUCK up badly and need a mechanic, the upkeep is the fuel that you have to purchase at regular intervals.

For instance, maybe you get some kind of turbo-boost noz that lets your car rocket magically through traffic, but you have to buy new tanks from the mechanic. Car parts are a bit vanilla. If they were more like chrome with options (thermal vision?) that might cause people to invest more.

My issue with making cars easy to damage is that people will abuse it. Mechanics will abuse it, too. Once you realize you can fuck up vehicles and then they have to come to you for repairs, there's your business model. If you have a vehicle in Red, you'll need to keep it in a garage. Which then sets up this whole meta, "Oh look, a tall shrouded geezer is going into Millsport, let's get him." Or even hanging out in the shadows outside a garage and jacking people who look jackable.

I was responding to your arguement that firearms require maintenance. There's no difference between me using 'fill grasshopper with tower' versus 'dismantle beretta' in your logic.

You'd be wrong about that.

By comparison, cars require specific shops to have to work done, of which there are only 3 in the game to my knowledge (and 1 for AVs). The reason for this is to protect mechanics.

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.

I like your ideas, though I still very strongly feel that there should be wear parts on a car, otherwise players just tool around at minimum speed so they never damage their vehicles, players don't have motivation to fix something barely damaged right now, but if parts were to degrade with use, opting for the cheaper early repair over your tires blowing out and needing a tow would be a thing.

That's kinda dumb.

Let's take that concept a few step further.

You can now only damage other players with swords.

You can only damage NPC's with melee.

You can now kill sleepers but only with Cyberware weapons.

You can only grapple if you've got a special grapple glove and at least five ranks in Biotech.

In no other place do you see an offensive action against really anything or anyone restricted to a single skill.

My advice, if I wanna kick your fucking car, let me dent some panels. But add a security system feature for mid and higher end non stock security systems that deals damage back to me...

Similarly to Eph I'll suggest another verb for the beefy among us. Mostly to be used on motorcycles.

Tip, tip the vehicle over, takes a check to right the vehicle if it's successful and deals chip damage of sorts to it. This can be used on everything from crickets which would have a very very very low check to right and to tip, And at ludicrous strength levels, to things like cargo vans and AV's to disable them completely until a similarly strong person or a tow truck or (POTENTIAL SUGGESTION) an AV retrieval rigger drone came around...

Let me put it this way.

I want to break into your apartment,

I have more options to get into it now, than I do to damage your car.

I want to kill your dog.

More options now than I do to damage your car.

I want to take your gun...

And so on.

Every other hostile action has more than one approach to it.

Restricting it to a single skill as it is now is a travesty.

Also sure. Let's shoot into vehicles and let's have cars run over people as a response. I'll take that.

And those archetypes who can do something to the vehicles, know what they can do?

They can affect things that aren't cars too.

Let's throw mechanics and gearheads a bone here, and give them some interesting fucking shit to deal with on the regular.

Don't want people abusing it. Have policy built around preventing people from abusing it.

Just like we do for pickpocketing.

Just like we do for ganger looting.

Just like we do for excessive theft.

Just like we do for excessive murder.

Just like we do for car theft.

Just like we do for topside violence.

Is that understandable?

It's one that requires the biggest amount of overwatch from GMs and is the one that will probably lead to the most amount of problems.

Also, comparing combat to most everything else in the game is not the most illuminating. You can use a large number of skills in combat, but that doesn't mean that everything else in the game should be done with multiple skills.

'Why can't I use artistry instead of medicine to patch up wounds? They both involve sewing.'

'Why can't I tell how much things weigh using forensics? It means I have a fine grasp of detail.'

See what I mean? Each skill has its uses. What Ranger said about their being archetypes for a reason is dead on.

Players should absolutely be able to vandalize cars at 4am when no one is around. Just because they can do it doesn't mean no one saw it. Now there's a huge Mix-wide RP hunting down the dumb motherbaka that went around slashing tires.

More ability to trash people's rides is a terrible solution to the problem of mechanics not having a lot of work.

As for wheels needing some love... are we really sure that they do need love? I could see there being a few quality of life improvements that could bring them in line with other vehicles. They offer a lot of benefits for a decent amount of risk.

I'd do the following:

1) Add toll lanes in the tubes. Want to get there fast in rush hour? Pad NT's bottom line.

2) Make it easier to swap plates with someone else's car. Someone giving you problems? Stick your tag on some other chums whip.

I think a few light tweaks is all it would take to get cars in line with bikes and AV's in terms of overall usefulness. I'd maybe also suggest dropping the price a small amount so they don't directly compete with AV's on some pricing.

B) there are timestamped server logs, GMs can retroactively puppet.

Like Grizzly said. Hydraulics, sound system. Turn your car into a lowrider or add some handlebars to your bike and lengthen the exhaust pipes and make it look proper Harley.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg_KZQ7k3kI

Also. This would be a funny but easy addition... custom horns like Progias that are installed by mechanics

but no godfather theme

You won't have a fender to kick because there will be no fenders.

And as long as the garages aren't lockers, that leads to more RP...

And as long as vehicles wear from use, that leads to more RP..

Why do you think active vehicles are rare?

I do not have access to this, nor do the other GM's. And none of us want to retroactively puppet NPC's to play cleanup, that's not how it works.

And while yes, that is an option, it's clearly not something that occurs to most people.

There's some QOL improvements that could go into car lyfe. I think we've established that.

This idea that we need more non-interactive RP options just to drive very specific careers is total nonsense. We have the ability to trash rides right now. It's called xhelp and RP. As I said before- there are a lot of careers in the game with far less coded support and special abilities than mechanics have, and we're not making enormous threads over it.

Personally I like the idea of adding more ways being added to damage or force maintenance them in ANY way.

Weather, rust, hell, maybe an oil change every so often. For bikes a carburetor tune up, or just general maintenance that would aggravate driving checks and make them harder and eventually force the issue of taking them to the mechanic.

There is a reason you can't kill sleepers.

I think there are few vehicles because of cost-to-value ratio not because there aren't many mechanics.

If you aren't playing a gearhead because the archetype doesn't have enough to do but playing a gearhead character sounds like what you really want to do LOL plz go fucking do it anyway and get in line

Let's maybe kinda backburner vehicle damage a little since people can't handle it.

Introduce even a very basic 'maintenance' system. Sure, make it very forgiving even, so it has to take quite a very long time before a full breakdown occurs. It can be as simple to start as some kind of build-in numeric value, like a basic vehicle 'health' value only deducible by those with the right skills and tools, that runs down over time as the vehicle travels.

Re-grade all vehicles so that newer model years degrade 'maintenance' more slowly, just like IRL (more or less), and cost more, of course. Older model years degrade more quickly, and perhaps even can critically roll some kind of rare chance at just breaking down, just like IRL.

This allows for cheaper vehicles, making them more accessible (but with clear downsides). And it gives mechanics a lot more to do.

When that happens to me I go find something else to do. That means I can't take advantage of every single opportunity every single time but I'd rather get a thematically appropriate and adequately challenging response than not.

I don't know about regrading vehicles based on their manufactury date considering some vehicles are just described as being manufactured in 2089, so you'd be giving the players that bought a specific type of vehicle a disadvantage just over a description even though there's no other option.

So you can harm the driver of that cargo van that just drove up and kidnapped your chummer with current mechanics?

Tough. Trade your clunker in if youve got the chy, if you don't keep driving and look schlubby like you should you sad junior. Everyone just gets an immaculate ride forever after a onetime purchase with no maintenance? Fluffy bunny driving simulator?

The suggestion also obviously presumes a certain degree of latitude on staff's end w/r/t possible grace periods, chyen adjustments, generous one time trade in values if such a system were implemented....they could absorb player tears a dozen ways.

Are you upset Joe Suit's Ferrari might be slightly more expensive to maintain or something? Welcome to the world of owning a sweet ride, what do you want me to tell you.

If some retroactive scuffwork to iron out was a holdback to new systems we'd never implement anything new.

On the other end, it comes at significant risk (especially with bikes) and very high up-front cost. Having to now also maintain those vehicles kinda counters their utility (you will have to spend time trying to arrange RP time with a player mechanic) adds 2nd operating cost besides ethicol and overall adds pain to owning a vehicle, and the only upside I can see will be more mechanics RP. So... meh?

Sports Car > Basic Coupe > Bikes

It can be pretty logical. We don't have very many kinds of vehicles. Vehicle age / type makes for a pretty basic 'formula' in deciding what a mechanic would need to charge to 'tune up' a car. One might cost more because it's older. It might also cost more because it's an expensive sports car. One of the selling points of a Civic is literally that it's cheap to maintain. What about that doesn't make sense to you?

I'm not talking about weapon tiering because that's not the topic.

I'd love more vehicle 'tiering' because it'd...you know, reflect tangible reality.

If you're treating vehicle descriptions only as 'flavour' your RP regarding them is flawed. There probably isn't very much RP regarding someone's vehicle 'tier' most of the time, something this would also help to address.

If you think vehicle price at current doesn't properly reflect their 'tiering' or value a Game Complaints thread would be appropriate.

I have no dog in this fight, it'd just be a neat system (I did play a mechanic once...created the Hayasa!). Yay for underrepresented archetypes getting some stuff to do. Yay for one more reason to get out and go do something with a player.

All right, we can scrap the 'model year' thing because....just because.

We can flatten it for simplicity sake. But all vehicles should absolutely have some kind of 'maintenance' system, eventually, or there's basically no point in having mechanics in the game, unless by even long-term design they're only around to like...add aftermarket parts that are....well, FOIC.

And apparently to, I guess, fix GM-assisted vandalism once in a while?

zzzz

Thread over.

I think the amount of replies in this thread is because you have very vocal people whose ideas would nerf vehicles and equally vocal people who are arguing not to. Mechanics don't have much to do with it at this point.

There are lots of suggestions that could empower mechanics without nerfing vehicles. I feel like we'd have more consensus if we focused on those.

I think giving PC's a IC vector to create more vehicles would be a worthwhile job and method to expand the vehicle variety. Even if it's just OOCly e-mailing a list of @messages to [email protected] upon completion.

I'm still hoping one of you takes that race idea and runs with it...