New Options for Car Mods

[Speed Racer]

I think it would be really cool to allow mechanics to have the ability to properly tune a vehicle that's brought to them by making more precise edits to the vehicle files, namely in the handling department. Here are a few provisions I've thought through, and potential issues that I'm not able to thoroughly think through as just a player:

• First and foremost, I want to dispel any fears that I'm asking for the ability to give vehicles an extra ton or two to make them ramming machines. All proposals here are aimed at realistic modifications one could make in real life and to hopefully reduce some of the unrealistic aspects of car mods that we currently see on the server.
• I don't see the need to touch anything with overall engine power since that's already covered well enough by IC purchase options. The following handling settings in the in-game files are just a few that I propose the ability to change;
  • All numbers involved with "wheel traction attributes"
  • vecCentreOfMassOffsetX, vecCentreOfMassOffsetY, and vecCentreOfMassOffsetZ
    • These can technically be altered by body work and the in-game suspension "upgrades," but the idea behind being able to mod these settings is like adding ballast to the cars. Also, while the suspension changes let you alter the CoM on the Z-axis, that also seems to come with a negative effect on top speed for cars in this server, which I hope to mitigate here.
  • fBrakeBiasFront
  • Potentially some of the Suspension Attributes, but I haven't personally delved deeply enough into the files myself to figure out exactly what each of them does to confidently recommend any here.
• The UI and general method for implementing this has numerous paths it could take. The two easiest options I see right now are as follows:
  • Make them customizable at the discretion of the mechanic. In this scenario, the player would give the mechanic a general description of how they want the car to handle and let the mechanic player work out what's best to fit the customer's request based on an easily-digestable reference sheet made available to them. (Drawback here is that it's just more for mechanics to learn in their training)
  • Hard code specific values as sliders in the /modview menu for customers to choose. This puts the onus for doing research on the customer.
    • It should be noted that no matter the solution here, there would most likely need to be a new /mechoffer option that doesn't include any parts costs and only uses labor costs as there technically aren't any parts being added to the car. There is also the issue of fine-tuning a car that could become unreasonably burdensome financially when making incremental changes.
• Obviously even with these being the only files we edit, some silly things can still happen if certain numbers are put in. I'd be happy to help advise or provide the resources I use to the dev team to help ensure hard limits are put on these so trolls can't go making their muscle cars stick like glue to the pavement, or modding a faggio to be a roll-risk.
• Potential positives for this on the customer end are pretty limitless, but some notable examples include:
  • Letting people have actual drift cars (push the CoM forward a bit, reduce the minimum traction, etc.)
  • Letting street racers fine tune their cars to their liking (play with the brake bias, move the CoM around to induce different weight distributions, etc.)
  • Give an actual use to off-road tires (reduce their base traction, but reverse the effects of driving on different surfaces so they gain grip when going off-road.)

 

I'm really interested to hear from potential flaw or exploits people see in this idea as laid out so far so I can workshop it and hopefully give the dev team as little work as possible and encourage them to implement something like this.

I'll end with a fun fact for those who have taken the time to read this to the end - you might notice I left out changing the mass value of the vehicles. This might sound unrealistic if I'm asking to play around with the CoM by adding/removing ballast RPly, but the reason for this is that total mass has no effect on performance and only affects the results of collisions. If a tow truck had all the same stats as a Comet SR except for its mass being notably larger than the comet's, they'd perform exactly the same. The only difference would be that the tow truck would win any ramming competition against the Comet thanks to its extra mass. So if we went and added extra mass as a bye-product of changing the CoM, we'd be making cars collide very different to how we already expect them to.

[TacoMan]

Love the idea! Keep bringing these idea's to the server and it will be better then ever.

[TheRealNvM]

Yes. As someone who races having custom modifications more than the current UI would be amazing and I'm all for it.

[Jae]

+1. It'd be pretty epic to have people sit there and figure out the tuning on certain vehicles for certain situations. Mod shops could have their own tunes that they sell and it would open up more roleplay.

 

The biggest roadbump here is the limitations/issues of RAGE that you and I have already spoke about. Hopefully there's a way to safe proof this and prevent people from gaining an unfair advantage.

[Qiang]

+1

[Xoza]

+1

Would be great to be able to take your vehicle to a shop and dyno it and fine tune various things to your liking.

Of course doing one thing, will affect something else.

Edited July 7, 2020 by Xoza

[Maccy]

+1

My own touch on this suggestion would be to do a complete handling overhaul and balance vehicles better by stock, once a complete overhaul to the handling of cars has been performed you could then fine tune using your suggestion.

The only drawback is on the dev side and I'm sure there'd be a way to get around it such as creating personal client-side handling.meta files for the owner of the vehicle, however as the stats you mentioned are all stored in the handling.meta I assume it'd be a bit of a task bringing these server side so that anyone getting in the vehicle would feel the benefits of your personal tune. Overall I love the idea of adding this level of RP for both mechanics and every sort of player on the server and adding the financial/time sink for people dedicated to the car culture.