NinerTwoGolf

One of the points of this issue is that it happens regardless if you have valuables in your car or not. If you wanted to get into the nitty gritty, an argument could be made that luxury apartments would have cameras and security that would probably see you stalking around a parking deck with a mask on and be on the way to ask you a few direct questions about your business. Well yes, that's when it'll be the most frustrating that there is a lack of RP to take stuff. You're going to be more upset at a death if you die with an MG on you over if you only had a .50. However this seems a little loaded to illicit or hard to come by items, at least with the mention cars and parking being used as stashes. This whole topic has many layers and flavors covering multiple issues. From people searching trunks while you are actively in the inventory yourself, to people searching trunks while you are getting in your vehicle, to people who try to get in your vehicle while you are also getting in it and basically plug and play those scenarios as you see fit for 'Player A unlocks his vehicle for 5 seconds to do X and Player B ransacks it.' As a legal player, who at best has some morally dubious coworkers to call for help, and a firearm I can only use if my life depends on it, who has to work 35 minutes to an hour (depending on salary, tax bracket, and where you buy it) just to afford a car speaker, who just wants to get in his car and go for a drive but some yahoo is very persistent to get into the glove box for said car speaker, as well as any other sellable goodies he may find, it's frustrating.

While City Parking is notorious for it, this can happen every where. Personally it has happened at Eclipse and the Casino when I want to just pull out a car and drive. It has happened at LSC when as soon as the /mechservice script is complete, it unlocks. This will happen at properties when I'm just trying to pull out stuff so I can build. And as @Quietthecutie stated, a committed asshole can basically prevent you from doing anything because as soon as you unlock the car, they'll go through it.

Massive +1 It's surprising to see how old this thread is and how common this problem is, including characters who were known for it still doing it. In my experience, they'll do it when you unlock the car to access the trunk yourself or when you are just trying to get in and out of your vehicle. It's extremely poor RP, with no interaction. On modern vehicles, usually using the fob to unlock a car will unlock the driver's door, but I understand the limitation of the server. The second part of that is that once you're in the inventory, there is no real counter to it. In the time that it takes you to go through the animation to get into a vehicle, they can open the trunk and get into the inventory and start looting it. You can lock your vehicle, drive across the damn city, neither matters. Only tackling or knocking them down seems to force them out. I think the more alarming thing is I had the chance to confront about this player about how this is a pretty shitty thing to do in terms of RP. Their reply, and I'm paraphrasing, was that the higher powers don't have a problem with it, and there is nothing against searching an unlocked vehicle, ignoring it was done in broad daylight in front of CCTV while I was simply just trying to enter the vehicle to drive. Due to action or rather inaction, the staff team have basically said that this is acceptable RP. Reports have been submitted regarding this action and have been denied, one quoting, 'There are no regulations against stealing items from a vehicle or taking advantage of an unlocked one.' At time of writing this, there is an active report against a member of the Administrative Team for this exact behavior. An action timer that give a player enough time to just get in their vehicle and relock it when searching the trunk, and one that is interrupted when the trunk is closed from it locking would be more than enough to curb this behavior. A range limit would also be helpful for being able to access the inventory of a vehicle, but I understand that this is also an issue with bodies.

After working in DCC for a little bit, there were a few things that I noticed I think could be better implemented or rework to give them more function. This mainly revolves around the /taxidrivers command and how that is reflected in game to not only DCC but to the general populace. /taxidrivers is an On Duty command for DCC, showing who is on duty, and whether they are on call or off call. The issue is that, well it really tells you nothing. It's suppose to be this nice IC way to tell who is doing what but the issue is it doesn't work as it should. Example being: This image shows three drivers on duty and off call, but one of these drivers is technically off-duty, as they are a General Manager catching up on paper work. It would be nice if he had the ability to show himself as Off-Duty, stating that while he is clocked on and doing work, he is not taking calls. The other is the on call/off call part where it lies slightly. A driver's status will change to On Call when they've accepted a request and are driving to it. It looks something like this: The issue is that when you arrive at that request, it will switch you back to off call. Here you can see that while actively on a call driving to a destination, it still reads as off call: All these points tie into the app that is available to everyone: From what I've been able to gather, it takes Active Drivers from everyone who is considered On-Duty and Free Drivers off everyone who is On Duty but also Off Call. This is where frustrations can start. As stated, On Call status is only if a driver has taken a request and has not arrived to it. This can cause confusion and frustration to customers when drivers are busy, but all they see is all drivers are free. The other issue with the app it only shows the vehicles pictured. A regular cab request can be fulfilled by multiple vehicles in the DCC fleet, but it will only count the Staniers that are active. As shown in that photo, one driver was in a Stanier, but the other was in an I-Wagen. I think this should be changed to not show how many are active, rather just listing the packages DCC offers (Regular, Luxury, Stretch, etc.) DCC is unique is that it allows it's workers to go AFK for short periods of time. Being table to go Off Duty in the system so that you are not counted on the app would be a nice touch. So the change could be making Duty and Call status togglable, something like /toggleduty and /togglecall to go along with /togglefare they already use. Have the app reflects that as well, with the active drivers being those who are On Duty, while free drivers are those who are On Duty and Off Call. It gives managers a way to see the status of everyone with a couple of keystrokes, while also giving a more accurate picture of how long getting a cab will take for customers.

+1 It feels like you could just add the Player ID into the command like /mechoffer [ID] [Work code] [LaborCost], giving it a range so that a typo doesn't have someone across the city receiving an invoice. Would be nice, I've tried to be a good husband and take my wife's vehicles to get washed and refueled when she is busy as a pleasant surprise only for some Yahoo to crash into me and make the whole gesture mute.

Fair enough, I don't know the ins and outs of every faction. Does this system apply to your vehicles as well for repairs and fuel?

That's a big +1 from me. None of them just can convey what ctrl+3 did.

I will say as a street racer, I don't mind the changes to the damage system. I drive my Elegy Retro pretty hard, focusing on posting clean and consistent lap times for my group. It was a recent discussion in our group over a lap time posted at Observatory. It was a very clean run, but the key to is was a very lucky bounce off a tree toward the end during the serpentine part. If you've run it, I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. It was a discussion in the group how good of a skid/bounce of the tree was, and how much that shaved off the run. With the new damage changes, that is a far more riskier move to try to consistently pull. Desync and lag smashes are always unfortunate, and racers know the rules when it comes to that stuff, but it is good to see your car be treated as your baby, an extension of yourself and not just something you can smash up. Anytime I scrape the guardrail or love tap a barrier I wince because my Elegy is my baby. I try to take care of her. I think a great change to compliment this would have Gov factions, (SD, PD, EMS, etc.) Have to pay to maintain their resources. Honestly that is something that always struck me as odd is that while LSC has a treasury, other gov sponsored factions have unlimited resources. I think an interesting and more realistic change would be if the Gov had to allocate budgets to the different branches under its control. It's income can come from the license fees, taxes, fines, medical bills, etc. From there, it allocates its portions as it see fits. Then those factions use their budgets for payroll, procuring equipment, repairing and refueling vehicles, and whatever else would be a tangible resource that has a fiscal impact. I think it would allow for more interesting interactions and RP opportunities, especially when the budget starts to get scarce. Do they stop hiring? Do they let go of underperformers and those with complaints because they can't afford to keep such sloppy people on the payroll? Do some officers get banned from driving because they keep crashing cruisers? Does someone lose access to their D10 or Hellfire privileges because they totaled the last one they had? Do police actually choose to terminate pursuits because a simple speeder in a super car will not be worth the resources to chase them down? Or does Gov start move money around, taking resources from other branches or the coffers in order to help a branch whose budget is spiraling out of control. Maybe officers who keep colliding with civilian vehicles now have to take their information down so they can be compensated for the damage they caused. (An example recently is an officer cut a corner and hit me head on, even though I was stopped in my lane. He drove off, and if I didn't know the officer, I would be SOL.) Even as a mechanic, I think about how a fleet maintenance system could be. How many of our mechanics would be banned because they keep damaging not only company vehicles, but others when driving the large tow trucks? How many mechanics could be cut because they don't work enough to offset their salaries? I'm still fairly new to the server, admittedly. Interacted with enough different groups where I feel I can spit ball these ideas and see what everyone else says.