Electric Vehicle QoL Improvements

[Speed Racer]

There is a similar post not too long ago about electric cars in the city that was a good start to what I want to say, but I'd like to combine those thoughts into one post while fleshing out more of my own in an effort for more exposure. The referenced post is the following: 

 

Obviously we already have a host of electric cars on the server, but they don't act as electric cars should, and I feel they deserve their own flag as Xoza mentioned in a comment on that thread, in order to have more defining characteristics to them besides their lack of sound, ans possibly some scripted options around the city for recharging.

 

Let's start with what I feel might be easiest to implement - the ElectricCar flag.

As mentioned in that thread, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that electric cars have to fill up on fuel like regular vehicles. In order to not mess with fueling costs or options while also making it more realistic for electric vehicles, some edits could be made to cars with this flag that lets them "burn fuel" slower than regular cars (I'm not entirely sure what would be balanced here, but I'll spitball the number 75% of the regular rate just to get the ball rolling), but can only "fuel" to maybe 50% of the regular fuel tank capacity. This would have the effect of making them cheaper to operate while also reducing their operational range - much like real life. This unfortunately doesn't address the issue of how long the action of "fueling" takes, but I'm not sure if that could be handled with this car flag.

Another defining characteristic of electric cars is that they can't stall. I'm aware how much potential this change would have to change the "meta" (In parenthesis because it's weird to think of a meta in an RP server but too many of y'all care about winRP to ignore the fact that there is one), but I have a few proposals to keep things balanced. First, damage could start affecting car performance at higher numbers than on regular cars. Instead of engine sputtering starting around 300-500 as it currently does, damage to the car could gradually start degrading fuel efficiency or "enginepower" (an actual flag already in the car files) at a specified rate until it hits 0 and won't move. Maybe even consider having electric cars blow up if they hit 0 to simulate battery casing failure, I'm not entirely sold on that idea though. Regardless though, it has never made sense to me why electric vehicles can stall (this was brought to my attention when I was racing the golf carts over the weekend and stalled multiple times from collisions with tire barriers while moving <10kph!)

 

Next let's talk about possible scripted options for these cars around the city:

Currently I see two options - 1, modifiy how gas stations interact with cars that have these flags, or add separate charging stations in parking lots throughout the city. I'm not sure how much work it would be to implement either of these options, so I have no particular preference or suggestion for either, but the logistics are straightforward to describe though. For option 1, the pump could check if the car has the electric flag or not (or maybe utilize the /refuel vs. /recharge command suggested in the previous thread), then fuel at a slower rate and cheaper price if the electric option is chosen. For option 2, the charging stations would essentially function the same as gas pumps that only work for cars with the electric flag. Maybe add in the option for businesses to charge to use them, or just let them be a gift from the city for choosing eco options. Again, no preference here, just listing options in the hopes that at least one fits into the RP goals of the city commissioners.

I'd like to note for this section though that I realize the scripting of this will likely take a lot more effort from the devs than creating, modifying, and applying the general flag to the proper cars. And it's because if this that I'd like to place a lot more emphasis on the 1st portion of this suggestion in an effort to see quicker results. The changes made in the latter half of this post can be looked past RPly by imagining or /me'ing plugging into the charging stations while at gas stops and complaining ICly about how expensive electricity is in the city, while I find it really hard to come up with IC ways to describe why my electric car has stalled or why I get the same fuel economy as my buddy in his muscle car. I'd like to think I understand the plights of the devs when reading these suggestion posts and always try to make/describe my suggestions in as feasible a manner as possible from a coding standpoint.

 

Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear any and all feedback!

[NeverMind]

+1

 

Well thought out suggestion, makes a lot of sense from an RP standpoint. Most likely requires a lot of dev support but I think it would be good

[Whitney]

+

Edited December 29, 2020 by Asterisk